Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

The founding fathers as bikini models  

This story comes from a German grammar book with Teutonic compositions dating to 1903 An apothecary once insulted an officer. The officer therefore challenged him to a duel. The duel was to be with pistols. When the opponents had arrived, the apothecary said: ‘I am not used to fighting with pistols, but I have another […]

  Aztec warriors from the Codex Mendoza  

Anne Boleyn was, of course, the second wife of Henry VIII, who ended her short life with French steel interposing between her chin and her shoulders, 19 May 1536. Her execution came after a travesty of a trial in which she was found guilty of high treason against the king (a man of unusual psychology): she […]

Late medieval French book of hours  

Civil Wars are generally – the American Civil War is a fascinating exception – confusing with there almost inevitably being more than two factions. However, it is arguable whether, with apologies to Syria and Bosnia, the world has ever experienced civil wars quite as confusing as those reported in Florence, Italy in the fourteenth century. […]

The earliest image of vomit?

Irish children are brought up with the attractive lie that St Patrick drove all snakes from the country when he arrived in Ireland in the fifth century. Certainly there are no indigenous snakes in Ireland, but over the years small snake populations have been established; not least in the Irish boom when snakes became prestige […]

The Nazi faithful salute the fuhrer at Nuremberg.

Anyone who has ever read a book on Joan of Arc will know that the English-hater was supposed to have had some kind of relations with fairies. But what exactly were those relations? The trial at which Joan battled for her life in 1431 included a long list of charges against the Maid. Some of these charges […]

The last helicopter leaves Saigon: the US ‘occupation’ is over; the hell of war is over, a new hell awaits the inhabitants…  

Thanks to Chris from Haunted Ohio Books for pointing out a dimension of the poison duel that Beach had recklessly passed by: poison duel by animal. First, the tarantula duel from 1887 courtesy of Chris Grand Forks [North Dakota] Daily Herald 20 September 1887: p. 3 A Toledo (O) special dispatch says: Particulars of a […]

This blog has long taken pleasure in noting late cases of witchcraft from Britain and Ireland. From time to time Beach announces, in arrogance, that this case or other was absolutely the latest: just last month it was an assault on a witch from 1924 from Devon. However, the following remarkable case seems to make […]

Manifest destiny: US hunters have wiped out the most important inhabitants of the west, the buffalo

From about 400 to about 1200 there are pitifully few western witness accounts: almost all experiences are filtered through poetry, hagiography, or legal documents. We don’t really see scenes or meet characters: there are names and there are gilded set pieces (a wedding, a miracle, a battle). This makes the exceptions so much more exciting… […]