Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Roosevelt in a wheelchair: 40,000 pics in Roosevelt presidential library, only two have Roosevelt in a chair.

At the trial for Duke of Norfolk, at the very end of Henry’s reign, Bess Holland, Norfolk’s mistress gave the following testimony about Henry VIII’s obesity. She claimed that the Duke had told her: That the king was much grown of his body and that he could not go up and down stairs and was […]

Heavy or light persecution of witches: note the Celtic fringe and Italy. It has been suggested that ‘highland’ areas attracted persecution.

This is an interesting reference to the mermaid business in 1878. As will be seen, a mermaid, caught in the West Indies, was sold to the Westminster Aquarium. It will be remembered that about two months since much excitement was caused by the landing of a West Indian mermaid at Glasgow by the ss Blenheim. […]

Mid October 1941. A man with a mustache walks up and down besides a train, while snow falls. He is conscious, all too conscious that he is about to make a decision that will change the direction of the war, perhaps even its outcome: a true hinge moment. And the decision? Quite simply should he […]

Children devour stories… Announce to three kids in bed, just before lights out, that you will tell the tale about ‘naughty Uncle John and the security guard’, or ‘how Daddy went to fox land’, or the one about the ‘biggest fish in Little Snoring’ and absolute silence will reign. The children will listen, crucially ask […]

Magnificent 15 cent French Book of Hours

Dear Reader, A tense January as efforts to get Italian citizenship run into problems: a middle name on a British birth certificate has already led to hundreds of euros spent on legal advice, consulate visits and general headbanging. Starting, though, the writing of a new book and that is a balm. There follow the most […]

***Sue got it – scroll down for the result*** The Index Biography is a quiz 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 about the individual’s life. We offered up […]

Angela Merkel as a young woman with flares.

One of the grimmest statistics of the American Civil War is Nathan Bedford Forrest’s assertion that he had twenty-nine horses shot from under him: J. O. Shelby had a more modest twenty-four horses on his tally sheet. With great respect to these two Confederate warriors, there is always the fear that their claims are exaggerated: […]

Books where everybody dies. Sorry, but loved this.

Here is a short mermaid report from the middle of the eighteenth century. It appeared in a British newspaper 11 Sep 1749, but the mermaid catch was said to have actually taken place in Denmark 3 Sep of that year. We hear from Nykoping in Jutland, that the Fisherman there had catched a Mermaid, which […]

In spring 1127, in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire strange things happened. At night locals heard repeated horn blasts and some, who were foolish enough to be out in the dark, saw ghastly sights: men appeared on black horses and on black goats riding through the woods following black hounds. It goes without saying that this was not […]

A duel was described in a British compendium in 1784: the Weekly Entertainer since you ask. The full text is below for connoisseurs, but what was remarkable about it was that eight men died and 2 were injured. Briefly the story went as follows. A group of friends in a tavern in Galway had an argument. At […]