Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

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 […]

London 1930 a bobby helps to judge who has the best ankles.  

A painful moment from 1939, at least for any Britons reading this post. Neville Chamberlain and his capable foreign minister, Lord Halifax, have travelled, 11 January, to Rome for a meeting of minds with Mussolini. In fact, Britain is just nine months away from a World War and a year and a half away from […]

Amelia Earhart before rushing off for that round world flight…

The month is March 1912, the day unspecified, but you walk into the dining room in the Forbidden Palace in Peking and one breakfast is much like any other. The sole guest is about to have breakfast and the twenty five dishes for this important meal have just been laid out by the eunuchs. Beach […]

1967 Sweden changes driving from left to right: curiously fatalaties dropped…

Roman coins have been found within and without the Empire. Denarii and solidii turn up in Scandinavia, Free Germany, Ceylon, Mainland India and Ethiopia, there is even one fascinating outlier in Madagascar (another post, another day). These coins will have arrived in two separate ways. Some will have been brought by Roman traders and some […]

Battle of Britain shot from the summer of 1940 with Parliament in the foreground. 30 Dec 2014: Andy the Mad Monk writes, ‘Sadly this picture is photoshopped.  The original does not have the clock tower in the foreground. Link to a copy of the original pic – note it is copyright to the Imperial War Museum […]

There is always a joy in imagining yourself in those fabulous nineteenth-century pantomime production where glitz, technology and spectacle came together and left audiences in London, New York, Chicago and Manchester speechless. It is only rarely though that we get to look behind the magician’s curtain, to see how things really worked, with very few exceptions […]

By the end of 1916 the British establishment and the establishment in waiting of a future Irish state had come to loathe each other. The cause for this was not only the long history of rebellion and suppression (‘Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag…’), nor was it just the fighting of the Easter […]

The great scholastic hero, Aristotle, shown at work in his study.