Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Filming of the wizard

Julian Amery, conservative politician, canvassing on the beach.

Lee Harvey Oswald being shot Two readers sent this in: thanks!

An autobiographical post. Six months ago  I detailed some experiences in Shiatsu. In the last eight weeks the same practitioner gave me a series of treatments in Reiki as part of her training. Reiki for the uninitiated, in which I would still include myself, is the laying of hands on or, for the most part, […]

Looks genuine… Nathaniel writes, 6 Nov :’As you said, the Ku Klux Klothes advertisement does look genuine: It seems odd that a racist organization would be involved with (or lend its name to) a clothing business. But apparently, the 1920s KKK was mostly a fraudulent pyramid scheme.

In 1834 a British paper ran with this story (1834) in early August: A fisherman at St Valery-sur-Somme (France), a few days since, caught in his net a fish exactly resembling the description given of the Mermaid. The head and breast are of the human form, and, when half the body is out of the […]

It is one of the earliest dreams recorded in history. Very approximately 1400 BC an Egyptian prince, Menkheperure, was riding out by the pyramids. We know this with some exactitude because Menkheperure later had the events of that memorable day written out in stone (pictured above). After some hunting, Menkheperure decided to shelter from the […]

Several years ago Chris from Haunted Ohio Books came across, in Paranormal Great Lakes, an Illustrated Encyclopedia, Charles Cassady, Jr., Schiffer, 2009,  p 64, a marvelous sounding monster called the Rolling Muff. As Beach has a now four-year interest in what Bob Rickard has called Unidentified Rolling Objects (UROs) he thought he would share this with […]

Female boarders abseiling down building.

The playpen originated when a hunter-gatherer mother realized, many thousands of years ago, that she could keep her child in a safe corner of the cave with a simple barrier. But when did the business of playpens becomes serious, when were the first commercial models available in the shops? Beach set himself the task of trying […]

WW1 execution, probably for desertion.

Dear Reader, A crappy October. Three bouts of flu and a three-day migraine: never in my life anything like this. Not sure what is going on but I’ve been confidentially and confidently told that it will mark a change in my life! Sceptical, but looking forward to being able to swallow without pain again. Certainly […]

***Melissa gets it, scroll down for the answer*** The Index Biography is a quiz pioneered by this blog and introduced in a previous post. The creator must find a biography of a famous individual from history, they must turn to the index and write down eight peripheral facts about the individual’s life. We offered up previously […]

This note was published in Folklore in 1942 by, of all people, Violet Alford, one of a handful of impressive interwar British folklorists. Following Professor Hutton’s Presidential Address on Werewolves, this note may be of interest. An English friend, born and brought up in Portugal, remembers, when she was about seven years old, the mysterious […]

1941 (in England?) Stephen D. 31 Oct 2017 writes: Re your tank picture: these are, I think, the infamous Covenanter tanks (Cruiser Mk V; A13 MkIII), ordered in 1939, declared obsolete in 1944 after no combat use, and after over 1,700 had been built. They were designed for whatever reason by the London, Midland and […]