Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

A phrase that has recently gained more and more currency: even to the point where undergraduates shout it out in class discussion, is ‘the one percent’. It is an offhand, contemptuous way of referring to the internationally wealthy.* Beach was delighted, the other day, to come across, in a ghost story no less, to the […]

A Sumerian recipe!

For the discerning Nazi child. EC writes, 28 Apr 2017: That is a still from Andrzej Wajda’s 1983 film A Love in Germany. See link:    

The war in the Mediterranean Pacific 28 Apr 2017: Umbriel writes ‘While you’ve captioned your pic of this past 26 April as “The War in the Pacific”, I thought I recognized it as having been taken in the Mediterranean, and found copies on line confirming my recollection: It is, interestingly, a Spitfire in US colors […]

Allegedly (how often we have to use this word with photos) the woman had been a victim of the Nazis. The photograph was taken in Sweden. Nathaniel to the rescue, 28 Apr 2017: This is the crucial link, which sounds authoritative.    

Truly Beach isn’t that interested in this ignorant-native story from India, but the comparison to what is evidently a home grown British urban legend: A good story of a thief comes from Calcutta. ‘The Native,’ as Miss Fox called Major B ‘s servant, stole a musical box, ignorant of its use, and fancying it contained […]

Anyone who has ever studied the supernatural will know that the way we look at the impossible changes from generation to generation and from place to place. For example, in the nineteenth century in the UK and in the US ghosts often dragged chains, as they had since antiquity: today they do not. In the […]

Some peripheral reports from the 1883 Dundee ghost flap. Readers will remember that reports began in late 1882, and that they died out at the quarry in late Jan 1883, after an energetic policeman had intervened. 19 Feb 1883 a Dundee paper reported that the ghost had been caught. If this really was the or […]

Something about the blue and red of the French king and the black, white and flames of death.

Yesterday, Beach introduced the Dundee ghost of 1886. Here is the sequel. All is quiet at Blackness Quarry, but elsewhere in the town evil brews. Here is the main report Two or three weeks ago we drew attention the remarkable doings of an individual who the role of a ghost, and disported himself in the […]

In early 1883 in Dundee, the coastal Scottish city, a ghost was glimpsed in Blackness Quarry. Here we have a ghost flap, a ghost riot and a ghost hunt all combined. It is an interesting case because contemporary reports were rich in details. This, though, is the only report, known to this blogger, from the […]

15C manuscript  

In the 1890s Samuel Miller published a series of pamphlets entitled Shakespearian Costumes. The pamphlets were supposed to recreate the historical versions of Shakespeare’s characters from various plays. Indeed, on the title page we are informed: ‘compiled from authentic sources as given by Montfaucon, Royal MSS., Holbein, Zuccaro, Strutt etc.’ Beach does not look forward […]

The photo dates to 1930. Are there any good histories of modern tattooing out there?

Sorry!