Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

1950s

This interesting account appeared in the British press in 1827 (Anon). It describes excitement about mermaid bones, in Portsmouth and an unusual dinner. ‘Mombuss’ is Mombassa, which we have seen before connected to mermaids. Beach seems to hear Lieutenant Emory, two hundred years ago, leaning across the table and saying ‘capital meat, Captain!’ The skeleton of […]

Chinese Ostriches The Qianling Mausoleum was used for three hundred years (from the seventh to the very early tenth century) by Tang dynasty emperors and their court officials. It includes, in some of its magnificent stone sculptures, a large flightless bird, pictured above. This bird is clearly an ostrich, which begs a number of questions. […]

June 1930 and various snooty Britons are opening their spanking new copy of Tatler, the house magazine of Britain’s upper middle classes and down-at-heel aristocrats. But what is this on page 25: ‘a spring time fantasy’ involving some posh tots! It would not be very difficult to imagine that Titania and her friends Peace-blossom, Moth, […]

! 30 Nov 2017: Bruce T writes: Check out the works of Daniel Carter Beard. His books from the late 19th to early 20th are full of such tricks. I own a copy of his “American Boy’s Handy Book”; which is still in print, as are most of his books. The ABHB alone is enough to […]

Kennedy meets Khrushchev.

This is one in the immortals series. Human beings who lived remarkably long lives (be they factual or fictional). First the report from 1825. Died on 13 the December, at Kingston, Jamaica, an old negro woman, Patience, alias Nancy Lawrence, supposed to be aged about 140 years. The precise age of this extraordinary creature could […]

Who needs the channel study…

Note the harp…

There are few things in life sweeter than self important people being made to look silly. The picture above is one of this blogger’s favourite. The subject is, of course, Benito Mussolini, in the mid, late 1930s.* A group of Fascist dignitaries are prancing up some steps at the Foro Italico: but not all is […]

Here is a Scottish account from 1833 (Anon) of what were apparently river mermaids. What is most interesting here is certainly the reaction of the community, though the resolution of the mystery has some entertainment value. Some time back, the inhabitants of some hamlets, situated near the Tay, a little below Dunkeld, had been kept in […]

Late 1500s

A busy day in paradise, so Beach thought he would limit himself to sharing this charming parrot story. Mr Braham was John Braham (obit 1856), an early nineteenth-century opera singer: ‘he sang before Napoleon’s Josephine and gave lessons to Nelson’s wife.’ Part of the charm of the story is the parrot in the presence of two […]

The half million club is a select group of nine human settlements that managed to break the half million population mark in Antiquity or in the Middle Ages: the biggest cities around before the discovery of the New World. To give some sorts of limit to this exercise six chronological moments have been chosen at […]

A woman with a key around her neck haunts the French saloons. What is her story? Beach is always looking for Victorian urban legends (this one is 1870) and particularly sexual ones. Ask yourself this. Would this tale have appeared in a British newspaper if it had been set in London rather than Paris? The […]