Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Joan of Arc has appeared once before on this blog in that fascinating moment where she apparently picked out the Dauphin with psychic antennae. Today, two years on, Beach is turning instead to another part of Joan’s paranormal life, her voices. Joan heard, from her early adolescence onwards, voices. These voices gave her instruction and […]

There are some rare accounts from the middle ages (though not from antiquity?) of trees that are alive. The following comes from the great eighth-century Chinese geographer Du You. Du You is talking here of the Dashi, the Chinese word for the Arabs, that have just started to come onto the horizon with the Islamic […]

Family on the run from the dustbowl.

3.5 kilos, homebirth, lots of stitches, baby and mother doing well. 29 Nov 2014 Invisible sent this beautiful piece in. Looking for anecdotes of Charles I, ran across this charming welcome to a new-born daughter. Miss Talbot to a new-born child, daughter of Mr. John Talbot, a son of the Lord Chancellor. You are heartily […]

A fourteenth-century chess game. What’s the blue bag for on high?

Sparse 19 cent version of Elizabeth walking in the puddle, note the pipe!

Keith Thomas includes in his classic Magic and the Decline of Religion a few precious pages on gibberish charms that were sometimes given out by ‘cunning men and women’ (aka witches) to those who wanted protection. These were typically worn about the neck of someone who wished for help against demons or better health. Some […]

Italians and World Wars don’t really get on. A combination of poor military culture and one of the most macho yet incompetent political classes on the planet made for messy interventions, and amputations rather than extrications. However, even by sorry Italian standards, the six weeks beginning 28 Oct 1940 and ending 7-8 Dec 1940 were […]

  What is the red bull? Tony B with the answer: The Red Bull is a Bonacon, a fabulous creature perhaps based on the European Bison or Wisent, which levels whole sections of forest with its farts. It also defends itself with them. The only reason it’s familiar is that I once painted a Bestiary […]

Great news from London tonight. Launched in this month’s Fortean Times and run in association with the Fairy Investigation Society, which has been reconstituting for the last months and that will send out its first communication this weekend, the Fairy Census 2015-2016 is  ‘a go’ (the organizers don’t apparently follow the Gregorian calendar). Now what […]

Late WW2, Canadian Tank troops deep in France

There is absolutely no doubt that Roman merchants passed down the Red Sea and traded with the Ethiopians. But how exciting when every so often we see more than just coins and broken pots. Here is an account of some Roman Syrians who had visited India in the early fourth century AD (for philosophical purposes!) […]

A good book title should be like a good wine. It sits on your tongue and then spreads and then evokes… And there can be no genre of scholarly writing that evokes better than geography and travel literature the discoveries of those who, to respectfully rephrase one of the titles below, dared the horizon. Beach […]

  The Nazi ordered forward by the prisoner

A rare casual photograph of the Marxist mass murderer