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  • Daily History Picture: Russian Gas Masks December 20, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Russian Gas Masks

    And on bikes too: Great War image

    Fairy Wings: Bat, Bird or Insect? December 19, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Contemporary, Modern
    Fairy Wings: Bat, Bird or Insect?

    Another fairy wings question thinking of the last two posts on the origins of fairy wings and on the production of fairy wings: what do fairy wings look like? Here Beach is going to start wide by looking at all winged flying supernatural creatures including angels, Cupid, putti (curse them), cherubs (curse them), Psyche and […]

    Daily History Picture: Australia Celebrates December 19, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Australia Celebrates

    Sydney 1945: Japan prostrate.

    New History Books: Surge of Piety December 18, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : New History Books
    New History Books: Surge of Piety

    Christopher Lane, Surge of Piety: I read one of Norman Vincent Peale’s books many years ago and was fascinated. If the publisher wants to send me a copy…

    Making Fairy Wings December 18, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Making Fairy Wings

    After yesterday’s post on the origin of fairy wings, Beach now asks a parallel question. If from the later 19C children were wearing fairy wings at parties who actually made the damn things. Today there are special firms. What about in 1850 or 1890 or 27 October 1933. Here is a short article from that […]

    New History Books: Rasputin December 17, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : New History Books
    New History Books: Rasputin

    Douglas Smith, Rasputin: ‘you have to sin to be forgiven’. Fascinated, watching with my daughter, by the role that Rasputin take on in the Disney’s Anastasia.

    In Search of the Earliest Fairy Wings December 17, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    In Search of the Earliest Fairy Wings

    Next year Beach has to write an article on the history of fairy wings, something that he is greatly looking forward to: for absolute beginners fairies were not shown with wings until relatively recent times. There are three big historical questions: (i) when were fairies first portrayed in art or literature as wearing fairy wings; […]

    Daily History Picture: More Gifts for Hitler December 16, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: More Gifts for Hitler

    An anniversary bomb!

    Ann Atkin and the Gnomes December 16, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, Contemporary
    Ann Atkin and the Gnomes

    Aged 7 or 8 Beach had a life changing experience in the garden of a Mrs Ann Atkin’s in south-western England. He stumbled on this article today and wanted to publish it for the historical record, but also out of, well, gratitude. Briefly he was a member of the Gnome Club of Great Britain. Somewhere […]

    Priest as Cunning Man December 15, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Priest as Cunning Man

    This is an interesting case from 1867 recorded in a local newspaper. Readers might need to be reminded that Britain was an overwhelmingly Protestant country at this date; that the Protestant majority despised Catholicism and that Lancashire, in the North-West of England was one of the places where English Catholicism had survived best, albeit as […]

    Daily History Picture: Presents for Adolf December 15, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Presents for Adolf

    I would be fun to do a series of these from all wars and all armies

    Daily History Picture: Illuminated Manuscript December 14, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Illuminated Manuscript

    A voice among the gentiles…

    Burning Bluecoat Memoirs December 14, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Burning Bluecoat Memoirs

    Exam grading and sadness at leaving a much loved job continues. In this melancholic frame here is some more missing manuscripts. These stories are often, as the distance of a more than a century, quite amusing. But there is no question that, at the time, they must have been horrifically painful for those involved. A […]

    Daily History Picture: Penguin and Girl December 13, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Penguin and Girl

    One of those magnificent pre war London Zoo shots.

    Dumb Duels #4: Cigarette Duel December 13, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Dumb Duels #4: Cigarette Duel

    A nice story from the British press about a duel  at Casale (not clear where this is other than northern Italy) from a great Italian actor, Ernesto Rossi (obit 1897): a cigarette duel. A strange duel is related to have been fought by the celebrated tragedian Signor Rossi. The latter, during a farewell performance of […]