Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Nutritionists disagree on almost everything. However, if you go and visit several score one of the few points of consensus (along with ‘eat vegetables’) is that sugar is bad for us: in fact, there is far more agreement about sugar than about fat. Humanity’s dalliance with sugar dates back to the first time that a brave […]

Christopher Othen, Katanga 1960-1963 Always been curious about Katanga, two many bad 1980 novels…

Beach recently had the immense pleasure or reading John Widdowson’s If You Be Don’t Be Good, a collection (and analysis) of bogeys used by Newfoundland parents in the interwar and immediate postwar. JW’s purpose was to examine how parents controlled their children in Atlantic Canada, particularly through folklore. But he also picked up many fascinating, […]

Another book that passed me by… The lost religions of the near east. Gerard Russell, Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms  

Lost technology….

Happy Christmas to all readers. This was Strange History’s photo of the year. A teen (Jewish?) girl photographed by British or Dominion (Canadian?) troops at the liberation of Bergen Belsen’s hospital, 15 April 1945. Frighteningly thin, she has just survived the worst war in human experience, on one of the most dangerous acres of European soil. […]

The three brothers….

This is a beautiful idea, but evidence for it is difficult to find. Essentially all supernatural beings agree not to haunt or terrify humans on Christmas eve. Can anyone supply any other evidence? drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com Beach has got it back to the 1880s. Enjoy the beautiful late Victorian writing… We remember now […]

The Ravenhearts raise a unicorn…

Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin is often said to be the father of modern conjuring. But like many pioneers his innovations brought him difficulties and even the threat of physical violence: The great magician of the Palais National possesses at St. Gervais, in the vicinity of Blois, a pleasant domain where he spent the last summer. There, […]

The Rosenbergs on holiday in happier times.

Beach has often written on the myths created by American newspapers: and the (deliberately?) naive recycling of the same by British newspapers. Here is a nice example which is making fun of tales concerning snakes: the only surprise perhaps is the absence of the ‘monstrous snake’. True to form this was taken by a Lancashire newspaper (20 […]

Image from the Tlaxcalan Cortez. What are the animals?

Ilse Koch, ‘the bitch of Buchenwald’, seems to have been an unpleasant human being. She was a sadist, and she was, as a matter of record, – something almost as serious in the 1940s and 1950s when her reputation was made – ‘promiscuous’: she had opportunities to sate both desires as the wife of the […]

Donald Crandell, The Spies of Lanikai This book covers the question of pre 11 Dec spying for Pearl Harbor. Always been curious about this. Read a couple of bad chapters elsewhere… Hope this fills the gap.