Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Nixon vs Khrushchev: these two deserved each other…

While looking into the case of the execution of princess Misha’al in Saudi Arabia in 1977 Beach ran across this passage. Eight months after the airing of Death of a Princess [April 1980], another prince approached King Khalid asking approval to have his adulterous daughter executed [so early 1981?]. The King, fearing a repeat publicity […]

Kent State University, 1970

Cunning men were the healers and magicians of the English countryside from the middle ages up until the reign of George V. They had various jobs: including making love potions, casting birth charts, healing animals and individuals, and undoing witchcraft. However, the activity that got them most in the newspaper was their talent for finding […]

Love watching or looking at Lyndon Johnson. He always looks so bored.  

Between 1917 when Lenin declared the revolution to 1956 and the invasion of Hungary Soviet massacres of innocents or opponents were frequent, massive and only seriously contested in the West by the small national Communist parties. Yet one of the extraordinary things about these bloody outbursts is that they have been forgotten by all but […]

Japanese in the Philippines 1942

The Magus by Francis Barrett (London 1801) is a typical work of modern magic: plagiarized from earlier works with badly drawn Hebrew letters strewn about like rice at a wedding. But the author Francis had one novel feature in his book. His announcement of, Beach can barely hold back his excitement, a magic school in […]

Zizka leads his Czech warriors on

Suicides are not always easy to determine. Did the man who drove his car into a bridge support do so as a deliberate act because he had just learnt of his bankruptcy or did he do so because he had not slept for 24 hours and was exhausted and prone to error? Did the woman […]

Looks hopeful, a lot will depend on how many of the major powers are covered: The Secret War

Beach was innocently looking for stories about human bodies in trees. This one has no human body, but it seemed too good to waste. A correspondent of the Horticultural Times contributes the following account of the so-called snake tree, which is said to exert such a terrifying influence upon the natives of the Mexican Wilds. […]

Cunliffe’s new book: his vision gets ever larger…

A nice folklore/ghostlore story from the English Midlands. The peaceable village of Wolstanton, near Newcastle [Lyme], vulgarly called ‘Hoositon,’ has, the last four or five weeks, been disturbed by a very ill-behaved ghost, which, (it is confidently said), has been knocking, scratching, &,c. at a most tremendous rate; and not driven away in the mean […]

1956?