Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

  Persia’s Socratean moment as Persian mystic Mansur al-Hallaj is killed in Baghdad 922

Folie a deux was once used by psychologists to describe shared madness. Not just one person, but two or three or many more experience the same unreasonable convictions. Strange History wants to offer a short series of cases of shared madness within households, i.e. people living together, typically families. It should be noted that for […]

  Love this image of flirting in a Georgian garden, but what extraordinarily hard faces…. The two know the game.

Noah’s Ark has had a bit of a rough time over the last hundred and fifty years. Indeed, from the first attacks on what might be called ‘literal Christianity’ the aetheist rottweillers have gone after the Ark with a passion that is frightening. Why? Quite simply because the authors of the Pentaeuch (God or/and mere […]

Cocaine toothache drops, for tiny tots who can’t get to sleep…  

There follows a story that appeared during research into poison duels. As with many duel stories it is thrilling: ref Hartlepool Mail, 18 Dec 1888, 4. Herr Karl von Krulhanser— the Professor, he was called— was an eccentric man of science. With the exception of a few students, to whom he gave private lessons, he […]

On the 6 August 1945 American planes dropped their first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The Japanese would surrender within a month, arguably hundreds of thousands of US lives and very possibly hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives were saved by Little Boy and his elder brother Fat Man. The Japanese surrender came about because of […]

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