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  • Index Biography #37: Prize a book December 31, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Index Biography #37: Prize a book

    ***Matthew gets it…*** The Index Biography is a new form of biography 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 here Sheridan le […]

    Daily History Picture: Miranda Arrives in the Americas December 30, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Miranda Arrives in the Americas

    Shortly before his emphatic and embarassing defeat. People carried on shoulders rarely end well…

    Daily History Picture: Shaven Romanovs December 29, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Shaven Romanovs

    Those Bolshevik bastards… Actually the four Romanov girls were shaved because of the measles (?)

    Daily History Picture: Prehistoric Gummy Bear December 28, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Prehistoric Gummy Bear

    Adorable. Could this be mass produced for the greater good?

    Daily History Picture: Civil Rights Protest December 27, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Civil Rights Protest

    ‘integrates your money but segregates you’

    Ghost Changes Will December 26, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Ghost Changes Will

    This is one of those only in Ireland stories, which the British press loved in the nineteenth century. The tale originally came up in the Cork Examiner, but this text was taken from Bu He, 3 April 1869. An amusing instance of post mortem bequest and its consequences transpired at the Kanturk Petty Sessions on […]

    Daily History Picture: A Historical Christmas to You All! December 26, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: A Historical Christmas to  You All!

    Victorian Urban Legend: The Cheese Thief December 25, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern

    This tale appeared in a good Protestant paper in the six counties. It has a puritan twist and a capitalist ethic. The following story is told of Mr. Sheaf, a grocer in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: it appears that a man had purchased some wool of him. which had been weighed and paid for and Mr. […]

    Happy Christmas! December 25, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite
    Happy Christmas!

    ‘I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,’ said the Ghost. ‘That they are what they are, do not blame me!’

    Daily History Picture: Polygamist Prison December 23, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Polygamist Prison

    1889 polygamist Mormons righteous in prison.

    Celia Alleyne: A Fairy Woman? December 22, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern

    In 1920 the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research published a letter from Celia Alleyne. I like this letter because having been through tens of such cases from the twentieth century now this is (a) written by a person of above average intelligence and (b) average in terms of relations with the ‘fairies’ (or […]

    Daily History Picture: Miranda in Prison December 22, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Miranda in Prison

    Miranda shortly before his death: the most colourful death and now montony in a small room. Can anyone go lower on sad prison images?

    Daily History Picture: Mini Skirts For Ever December 21, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Mini Skirts For Ever

    Why we love mini skirts…

    Creepy Christmas Fairy Tale December 21, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Creepy Christmas Fairy Tale

    Here is a remarkable fairy account from Newfoundland. We are in Canada and the report appeared in the Evening Telegraph 26 Dec 1900. This, then, is a creepy Christmas story. A resident of this city, who is subject to extraordinary hallucinations, was the other night, as he seriously states himself, ‘again carried off by fairies’. […]

    Digital Manuscript Losses December 20, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, Contemporary
    Digital Manuscript Losses

    Beach has recently been dealing with the horrors of losing manuscripts in times before personal computers and photocopiers. But why exempt the contemporary world? Why ignore the potential of broken hard discs and failed backups and lost pen drives to ruin lives? Example. Several years ago Beach found himself associated with a family whose matriarch […]