Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

…the individual theories is entertaining. While reading though a question kept nagging away. If a conspiracy theory is ‘a counter-historical theory where human agency is used to explain events’ (not,…

…of a human preoccupation. Thrillers end with heroes in tiny underground boxes, cinema epics – including a notable recent effort – have been filmed in coffins: there is even a…

Placenames, like history, are as much a product of human incompetence as human genius. Take the phenomenon of pleonastic placenames – an intimidating word signalling the limitations of language and…

…involve bloodshed. It will describe though one of the last ordeals by fire of the Middle Ages, an attempt to use flames to judge a human argument. What is even…

  In the ancient Mediterranean parrots were an exotic bird. They were rare, they were multicoloured and they could even repeat human words more convincingly than the native mimics: starlings,…

…existed) the words don’t really apply to the exact spot of the monument. Generally speaking I feel that permanent structures marking episodes of human tragedy, stupidity, or egotism do not…

…some archaeologists have looked for other inspirations. And it is only natural too that there is a long history of psychic assistance – ‘the human metal detector’ – in searching…

…got all moist-eyed about human transience. The truth is that Kenneth Clark was an art historian and will be remembered as an art historian: if he wasted his time on…

…do away with ‘old’ food replacing such reactionary nonsense as omelettes and soufflés with FUTURE food. The Futurist philosophy of alimentation involved reducing food to pure sensory experience. Ideally, human…

…share with all other mammals. What intrigues me, though, is the possibility that human beings have other sex differences peculiar to themselves and derived from uniquely human habits of more…

…into the human imagination (and on occasion into human madness). If there were any earlier competing references, even from mythology, Beachcombing would, of course, love to hear about them! drbeachcomingATyahooDOTcom…

…described here? Well, the simple answer would, of course, be, rejecting the human references, the gorilla. But Dr Thomas Savage when he, in the mid nineteenth century, named the animal…

…see them. I have often known them come to my aid when in childish difficulties, but I never mixed the fairies up with the human spirits which I often saw……

…writers in the humanities have a duty it is in part to remind us of the fact of human chaos and this brings us to Nick Middleton’s Atlas of Countries…

…particularly true of wells on the edge or a little way from human settlements. It is almost as if the well is a resource shared by humans and the wilderness-dwelling…