Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

A.A. Milne’s son with his beloved bear: a posed photo of Pooh and Christopher Robin?

***Thanks to Louis for help with this story*** The following is a parable about how history is written on the internet. Let’s imagine you have a web page and you want people to visit it. How could you get the history scoop of 2014? Well you could go and bribe some doctorate students, ask for […]

A particularly murderous episode in Japanese history

***Thanks to the person who sent this in. Sorry I can’t find your name now!*** It is the middle of the first century AD and you need holy solace from priests in your native Alexandria. You head down the dingy streets of the city as the sun is just breaking and then turn out in […]

Dear Reader, Sun still shining in Italy and Mrs B with six more weeks till baby touchdown. Some tension here not least because she has opted for a home birth… den! den! den! doooorn! Huge thanks to those who sent in emails below and also to Borky, Invisible, Chris S, Ricardo, Wade and Amanda for sending in […]

In 1968 at the Olympics

Massacre in Paris of Protestants, 1572.

*** Peter G wins this. The wife with same name gave away… For answer spool down*** The Index Biography is a new form of biography pioneered by this blog and introduced in a previous post. The creator must find a biography of a famous individual from history, they must turn to the index and write down […]

A photograph from the 1890s showing a side-show couple: fat boy and slim boy boxing.

Archaeology is an extremely vague art and the greatest danger its practitioners face is the temptation of joining chance findings together to create imaginary narratives. Take the first flower funeral in history. In 1960 Ralph Solecki, a US archaeologist, excavated a Neanderthal grave in Iraq in the famous Shanidar Cave: one of several Neanderthal graves […]

The story is often told because it is a thrilling and terrifying one. In the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 a bear triggered an alarm at a US base leading personnel to believe that their airfield was under attack by Soviet saboteurs. US nuclear bombers on the airfield were scrambled and were […]

A bookshop hit by German bombs, Britain, 1940.

The poison duel is dramatic enough: two men with two glasses before them, one poison, one not. Both swig at the same time. But just imagine now, instead, that you add dominoes into the mix. Yes, dominoes… Perhaps only death by lawn bowling or tiddlewinks could be more exciting. This story dates to 1882 when […]

The earliest European picture of cirumcision? Oh for anaesthetic or laughing gas.

Humanity began its long escape from the seasons about 10000 years ago when the Neolithic Revolution saw a nomadic primate named homo sapiens start to settle, grow plants, drink beer and domesticate animals. Though some of our cousins in the Amazon rainforest and the Pacific still keep up an essentially natural animal existence, most of […]