Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

…certainly should not have been. Buddha statues in Viking Denmark, Viking weapons in pre Colonial Minnesota, American Indians in Europe… Some of these may be genuine traces of past contact…

…as anything else the collapse of the medieval order that had held Europe together for a thousand years from the end of the Roman Empire to the discovery of the…

The Portuguese ‘discovery’ of Australia is one that has excited Australians and Europeans for most of the last century, since, in fact, it was first realized that there was a…

…Saladin (Salah ad-Din), as he is now acknowledged as beeing of Kurdish, and not of Arabian stock….. Thanks Louis! 17 March 2014 MR writes, ‘My favorite discovery of recent years…

The earliest eyewitness account of the Laplanders (the Sami) to leak into European writing comes in Alfred’s translation of Orosius (late ninth century). It depends on the testimony of one…

…up by Epoch Times. DPY is convinced that the Cherokee were originally Jewish: is this to be linked with the extremely dodgy archaeology behind the discovery of a Roman Jewish…

…1976 presidential debate: ‘there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe’. Ford was president at the time and not an unintelligent man. What was he thinking? Was this some sort…

…modern Ypres. Indeed, several other European centres enjoyed getting rid of kitties. Frazer in The Golden Bough noted cat burning festivals in Paris (Place de Grève): in 1648 Louis the…

…war the Germans had sent their weather boats and weather specialists to the Arctic north in an attempt to find out what weather fronts were sweeping into Europe. This proved…

…meanwhile, to immortalise this act of incompetence. Sigh. A Poxy Invasion of Europe: Mike Dash writes in with some thoughts on other limits to Steppe expansion, LTM on Asian plague…

…the sixth or seventh century B.C. (pp. 111-120). For me, I am amazed that men should have divided Africa, Asia and Europe, for these are most unequal. Europe is quite…

…someone, btw, I just can’t remember who). As a Briton Beach does wonder why Americans do this so much more than Europeans. What is it about the American bush that…

…But in which case where did the last state-ordered axe executions take place? Were there examples from South America or eastern Europe? [drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com] Beachcombing would also…

…Gifts (1977). PLF was, in 1934, just 18 and was walking across Europe. What’s fascinating is that the debate, which had been a small point in the German newspapers, continued…

…mud of medieval London? It is not unlikely [that there was Chinese penetration of ancient and medieval Europe], and I am reminded of it by the fact that I was…