Monday Mermaid: Singing Florida Mermaids October 16, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
This was published in The Orchestra in 1870. It is a curious account of singing fish in the US… It is very tempting to connect these phenomenon and others like them to the mermaid tradition: in the same way as that the rhino is presumably somewhere behind the unicorn. ‘One day as I was returning […]
Dumb Duels #5: Golf Duel January 13, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
A golf duel from the US picked up by a British newspaper in 1927 and so dating to that year? From America comes an account of a strange duel – a combat with golf clubs and balls as ‘the weapons’ wherewith two disputants went out to seek satisfaction. A St. Louis man and a visitor […]
Pre-Columbian Trips to America? Ballast! January 19, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
Imagine the excitement of the archaeologists who had gathered at NA-57 off the Florida coast near Fernandina in 1972. In some offshore piles they had found various bits of ‘rubbish’ from European settlers: ceramics, pipes, glass fragments… Nothing special you might think. But what was unusual was the dating. British settlements began in the area in […]
European America or American Europe? Calculating the Probability of Pre-Columbian Contact December 9, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Medieval
The idea of pre-Columbian contact between the Americas and Europe or even Africa has been one that has understandably excited a lot of attention. What are the possibilities that Europeans ended up in, say, Florida or that ‘Floridans’ made it to, say, Scandinavia in 1491? Well, in this post we are going to take the […]
