Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

The thieves’ candle is a longstanding tradition in Britain, America and, indeed, throughout the western world. Usually the candle was the hand of a dead man with one or more of the fingers made into candles. These candles were supposed to provide safety, invisiblity and be able to cast sleep spells on victims. For example, […]

Castor oil is a vegetable oil that in Beach’s parent’s generation was used as a panacea for problems of the digestive tract. Unlucky children who had complained of a poorly stomach, perhaps with the foolish idea of missing school, were given a table spoon. Castor oil has no miraculous effect on the body but it […]

The machine gun was one of the most vicious military innovations of the late nineteenth century; and in the twentieth century, it slaughtered more individuals than the motor car, Ebola and ISIS put together. However, who had the honour of being first penetrated and killed by a machine gun bullet? The answer depends, of course, on […]

Woe, the poison duel series is over, at least till someone else finds some new evidence. Here though are two bits of supplementary evidence, poison duels in plays. This slightly bitchy review appeared in 1835. Another new burletta, entitled An Affair of Honour, was also produced during the week at this theatre. The main interest […]

In 1876 the telephone was born after a half dozen inventors had scrambled for the right formula for years: who could forget poor old Philip Reiss with his beer barrel, sausage skin, kinitting needle and two cups of mercury? The telephone was, in fact, one of those technologies that took off remarkably quickly and was […]

M. R. James is among the finest of the English-speaking ghost writers, finer even perhaps than Le Fanu and so much better than Howard Phillips L in style and in dialogue. But there is one undoubted problem with his canon: it is small, a mere thirty four stories. The quality is consistently high but fans […]

In 1892 Laurence Gomme gave a presidential address to the Folklore Society. Gomme was particularly interested in the parallels between British (by which was meant at this date British and Irish) folklore and the folklore of the ‘savages’. If he could snap some branches from the golden bough while proving that the Aborigines and the […]

This story was allegedly taken from the Detroit Free Press by an English newspaper, 27 Oct 1894. That it appeared in the DFP there is no reason to doubt, English newpapers are almost frightening reliable about these things: that such a duel took place between an English and a French man in Tombstone… Well, this […]

This story comes from a German grammar book with Teutonic compositions dating to 1903 An apothecary once insulted an officer. The officer therefore challenged him to a duel. The duel was to be with pistols. When the opponents had arrived, the apothecary said: ‘I am not used to fighting with pistols, but I have another […]

Anne Boleyn was, of course, the second wife of Henry VIII, who ended her short life with French steel interposing between her chin and her shoulders, 19 May 1536. Her execution came after a travesty of a trial in which she was found guilty of high treason against the king (a man of unusual psychology): she […]

Irish children are brought up with the attractive lie that St Patrick drove all snakes from the country when he arrived in Ireland in the fifth century. Certainly there are no indigenous snakes in Ireland, but over the years small snake populations have been established; not least in the Irish boom when snakes became prestige […]

Thanks to Chris from Haunted Ohio Books for pointing out a dimension of the poison duel that Beach had recklessly passed by: poison duel by animal. First, the tarantula duel from 1887 courtesy of Chris Grand Forks [North Dakota] Daily Herald 20 September 1887: p. 3 A Toledo (O) special dispatch says: Particulars of a […]

To add to the Poison Duels series here is another fictional story. This time from the Sunderland Daily Echo 17 July 1895, but taken originally from Tit Bit 21 July 1894. Beach loved it and found it more satisfying than the other poison duel set in Germany. Other Poison Duel fictions? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com There were […]

Folie a deux was once used by psychologists to describe shared madness. Not just one person, but two or three or many more experience the same unreasonable convictions. Strange History wants to offer a short series of cases of shared madness within households, i.e. people living together, typically families. It should be noted that for […]

There follows a story that appeared during research into poison duels. As with many duel stories it is thrilling: ref Hartlepool Mail, 18 Dec 1888, 4. Herr Karl von Krulhanser— the Professor, he was called— was an eccentric man of science. With the exception of a few students, to whom he gave private lessons, he […]