Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

One of the joys of ancient and medieval geographies are the small ethnographic details that sound strange, but that might just possibly be based on fact. The following comes from the works of Chang De, a thirteenth century ambassador and informant for a famous Chinese work, The Record of an Embassy to the Regions of […]

Winston Churchill is a hero to almost all points of the spectrum of British politics and it is quite natural that his views are trotted out to justify positions. How predictable then that proponents of the European Union and those against the European Union, the single most pressing issue in British political life, trot out […]

Archduke Joseph Karl (obit 1905) was one of the minor scions of the Austro-Hungarian royal family. He was famous though for a particular interest: in a country where gypsies were despised he was a Roma-phile, writing books on gypsy culture and even learning their language. In his attempts to advance the claims of the gypsy […]

At the lychgate we may all pass our own conduct and our own judgments under a searching review. It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. In one phase men seem to have […]

Poor old Tsar Nicholas, months away from execution. Heavy the head that wears the crown, but heavier still (to judge by his face) those who’ve just lost it….

As noted previously on this blog the idea that gypsies steal children is an old one, at least five hundred years old if one piece of medieval German legislation is to be taken seriously. It is an idea that has died out in most western countries, but one that has survived curiously in Italy where, […]

OK not serious but loved this memory of the Wright Brothers…

We’ve looked before at Irish haunted houses in court cases. But in this forgotten nineteenth-century ghost story there is some ambiguity about whether the noises were nasty neighbours, creaking floorboards or spirits from the other side (1885) A remarkable case was heard on Saturday in Dublin. Mr Waldron, solicitor’s clerk, sued his next door neighbour, […]

Vivid shot of German general Anton Dostler being executed for his part in the murder of American POWs.

Today an unmarried mother, in a western country will be, assuming that the father is nowhere to be seen, taken care of by the state or by her family. This was not necessarily the case in the nineteenth century, and in that period an unmarried mother would find herself the object of scorn to boot. […]

Nazi deportations of Greece’s ancient Jewish population, 1943  

The idea that someone is out to get our children has been around from classical times. Several antique Christian writers, for example, credit ‘the Jews’ with stealing children and this became, by the Middle Ages, part of the notorious ‘blood libel’ for which hundreds and perhaps thousands of men, women and, yes, children of Jewish descent […]

Do you remember the ape buried in Iron Age Ireland? Well, here is a cousin, who also travelled far from home. In 2001 a monkey, a macaque, in fact, was dug up at Iulia Libica (Llívia), a late Roman settlement in the Pyrenees. He was, at death, 78 cms tall: a young male. It goes without […]

Courtesy of Bosch a view of heaven. We see his hellish scenes too often…

This story appeared in 1893. It is a witchcraft report from Italy in a period when Leland assures us that there were still many cunning women and planet rulers making their living in the country. What is unusual is the advice given. In any case, first the preliminaries… At Ponte a Ema, about three miles […]