Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Location: tradition found in the Germanic regions of Continental Europe and Scandinavia, and also in parts of Britain. Aim: The collection of the raven stone (korp-sten in Scandinavia, Lloyd 1854,…

Beach has recently been thinking a lot about a crucial difference between European nations, one that is perhaps not immediately evident to outsiders, but one that divides the continent into…

…Radko writes in with some battles from the Hussite wars. ‘I am aware that not many people outside of central Europe know much about the subject and that there isn’t…

…of Europe, there is a Peshev Plaza in New York and there is a ridge in Antarctica named after him (with moon craters the only modern celebrity that matters). So…

…in ‘You know, certainly, that image was made by Durer from descriptions of the rhino King Manuel of Portugal brought to Europe (or gave orders to be brought) in 1515….

…spirit of confusion, Beachcombing thought that he would air then a nineteenth-century theory for the origin of the fairy-faith in the west of Europe, what might be called ‘the Pygmy…

…have necessarily been foolish enough to go and actually look for this land. But at least in northern Europe the migration of birds does seem to be a possible prompt…

…and so cheap that large parts of the social order were permanently tipsy: the Soviet Union in its last twenty years had a serious vodka problem; likewise some European cities…

…in fifty or a hundred years given the last three hundred years of history? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Beach would sadly have to rule continental Europe out. In the…

…this or that about the triggers for the First World War: far more than about the Second World War, where the cause was straightforward and wore a Bavarian moustache. Europe…

…in northern Europe had been ‘more negroid’ or had ‘more negroid features’ . However, this is the first instance we’ve found where there was a definite attempt to link lingering…

…notion because gypsies had not arrived in Europe by this date (though see…): Leland, btw, studied gypsies some years beforehand so his theory reflects an interest. Leland, next, comments on…

…very tentative conclusion suggested links with the Caucasus with the promise that more testing across Europe in the next years will help sharpen the exact region. We don’t have to…

…greatest river in South America. No doubt they got sick of the constant wars in eastern Europe and sailed to the New World and right up the Amazon river centuries…

…put this into terms that early modern Europe would have understood and that perhaps are easier for the twenty-first century. The tempestarii are witches, great storm raisers, and the Magonians…