Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

  Hitler’s liar, Joseph Goebbels…

The Hungarian Count Pál Teleki is a tragic Second World War figure, obit 1941 (that says it all). In the last year of his life tensions between Hungary and her neighbours were growing. Teleki was emotionally an Ally, an old fashioned conservative democrat, who would have been far more at home in Britain or France’s […]

German servicemen confronted with Nazi attrocities on screen.  

Lower Gornal is a village in Staffordshire close to Dudley. The following news story appeared in 1881 and relates to what Beach has tentatively termed ghost riots. That ghosts are seen is, of course, absolutely par for the course, particularly back in the nineteenth century when fairy sightings were occasionally reported in local newspapers. But what is special […]

The modern age intrudes on an age old pursuit: English fox killing.

Diplomats and ambassadors find themselves in a rather unusual situation. They are to represent their country, first and foremost, of course, but they are also to fraternize with their adopted country. This strange and strained sets of loyalties makes declarations of war particularly painful. The ambassador meets the foreign secretary with whom he has often […]

Twelfth century snail wars? My money’s on the main with a mace

Last week’s silly post on royal tennis deaths and flashbacks from Game of Thrones got Beach thinking. We all die, but if you were a European monarch what were the chances that someone would kill you? The weekends are short so Beach limited himself to England. From 1000-1700 there were 43 monarchs: obviously there is some […]

Qua campis cervos agitabat sacra juventus/ Incumbit fessus nunc baculo senior./ Nos miseri, cur te fugitivum, mundus, amamus? (‘Here the holy young man who chased deer in the fields, now, stands a broken old man with a stick/ O what wretches! Why, world we love, do you flee from us?’) Alcuin O Mea Cella Beach’s […]

Experimental torpedo boat on Detroit river, 1940  

Trip away today so a brief post about a rather unusual denouement to a life, Scottish Highland style. Allan was a villainous magician. In fact, we have come across him in the past roasting cats. When Allan was dying on his home island of Mull (in the 1600s though we are in a legendary past […]

Looking down at destroyed Dresden, after the allied occupation  

Let us, first, introduce Fort Douaumont. The mightiest of the Verdun forts, Douaumont was captured by the Germans early in the battle for Verdun, 25 February 1915, just four days after fighting had begun. The fort was taken (with hardly a shot being fired) because of unbelievable French carelessness in garrisoning the jewel in their Verdun […]

German propaganda poster about what the allies would do should they win the Great War: it may have been wise…  

There are few things as entertaining as a power struggle in the upper echelons of a totalitarian state. What could be better than glimpses of profoundly unpleasant people, with an endearing lack of boundaries, doing profoundly unpleasant things, to slightly or momentarily less powerful unpleasant people? Perhaps it is the closest we get to an […]