Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Two slaves and their owner.

Location: tradition found in the Germanic regions of Continental Europe and Scandinavia, and also in parts of Britain. Aim: The collection of the raven stone (korp-sten in Scandinavia, Lloyd 1854, 331) that will render the owner invisible, though note that the stone is also credited with bringing luck and curing humans and cattle of diseases: […]

Beach has a heaving filing cabinet full of spells: spells from the Middle Ages, spells from early modern Europe and spells from as recently as the Second World War. Some of these apparently date back to deepest antiquity; some are probably the spontaneous invention of men and women with borderline psychologies and would, as such, […]

Not sure about this one…

Get ready a human flotsam and jetsam story. A few months ago Beach introduced the Itza, the last independent Indian state in the Americas. The Itzas held out against the Spanish in Guatemala until 1697, a remarkable achievement. When he was looking through the sources he ran across the following reference in Jones, The Conquest of […]

He took a gramophone with him…! No wonder he never got home.

Beach has already proved (to no one least of all his own satisfaction) that Napoleon III survived death. But Beach now discovers, to his horror, that Napoleon III was not Napoleon III. This story appeared in the American press in 1858. This was a story given by one Louise Mercier on her sick bed in 1853. […]

Clearly staged photo of a US landing

There are arguments about the date for this one, but allegedly this is a rolls royce being delivered to the Nepalese royal family.

History, particularly military and political history, often enough seems to be a series of interlocking junctions and roads. The roads splay and, as we march along, other roads and junctions appear as those behind us disappear in the twilight. In the same way that we sometimes remember our mortality, stroking the skull on the desk, […]

Michael Kazin, War Against War The failed fight to keep America out of the war.

This is a particularly precious account from the Athenian Mercury, a late seventeenth-century publication. As Beach is always interested in encounters with supernatural entities he thought that he would print it in full: this might stand as an early alien encounter. He likes the way the narrative unwinds. He didn’t see the climax coming. Not […]

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A House Full of Females Perhaps the book I most want to read from January.

This trick is so well known that Beach has seen versions of it on crass TV shows. Still here is the ring dodge in all its pristine glory from 1894. At the London Guildhall, on Monday, Ann Francis was charged with attempting to obtain money by false pretences. Detective Evans, of the Great Eastern Railway […]

This picture (1929) is normally shows because it was the last voyage of the airship in question: things ended badly… Beach was fascinated by how they got on. Andrew Z writes, 30 Mar 2017: Your picture of the R101 at its mooring mast reminded me of something I’d read recently in the book “Airship” by […]