Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

One of the twentieth century’s bigger mistakes. Axworthy, Revolutionary Iran.

      ***Invisible first across the line, look below for the answer*** 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 eight peripheral facts […]

Allegedly Dioscorides and presumably late medieval?

Here is a record that Beach simply cannot explain and that to the best of his knowledge is unique in England. Before getting to the fairy juice though some details about the document in which this unusual reference appears. Every British parish had, in the nineteenth century, tithe apportion records. The writers of these documents […]

Absolutely dreadful art, but interesting history. The Germans are facing away from the ‘camera’ naturally.

A couple of months ago Beach offered a post on British wild men. Here is one to add to the list, Simon Goodman or Simon Goodwin aka Tim Goodman or Tim Goodwin: those name variants give some warning of the kind of historical bog we are about to wade into. Simon Goodman was born c. […]

Found this very beautiful GL writes, 30 April 2016, It’s a very understandable error, but what you are picturing here is not a knitting needle. All the carving would be seriously inconvenient if you were trying to use it to directly manipulate loops of yarn (as knitting does). There is a reason why knitting needles […]

The clog was the preferred footwear of the English industrial north, and particularly the industrial north-west. Shoes were cut from wood and tipped with iron in Lancashire, in the West Riding and the mill towns of Cheshire and Derbyshire. The clog cost relatively little, it was good for defending yourself, it was durable and it […]

Happy Times in the Russian Girl Guides. Some of them look like they’ve killed a lot of the enemy, note bottom right eyes

This is a curious little snippet of American native religious ritual from the least expected source, a late seventeenth-century book of apparitions. We are introduced first to the protagonist. A goodly minister, Mr. Farnworth, that came hither from New England (being a Nonconformist and extream poor, dyed as all about him said, of meer Poverty, […]

Bonnie and Clyde, first time I’ve seen her, she’s terrifying.

Tony Judt’s Postwar (2005) is one of the most important history books of the last generation. However, the book that runs to over eight hundred pages has a strange lacuna. It lacks notes and it lacks bibliography. Judt was quite open about this lack of reference apparatus and explains it in his introduction (in a […]

The single book I’m most excited about this month: Caroline Grigson, Menagerie

The Assassins were a well known medieval Shiite sect who delighted in sending out their fida’is (assassins) to kill enemies with daggers. Our word ‘assassinate’ (already used routinely by Dante), of course, comes from these charming individuals. The etymology of Assassin in Arabic has long been supposed to come from the word for hashish (Hashshashin […]

Sceptical but intrigued about this one: Schrad: Vodka Politics