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  • Daily History Picture: Owl Beauty November 30, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Owl Beauty

    Delightful fragment from an illuminated manuscript

    Index Biography #48: Prize a book November 30, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Index Biography #48: Prize a book

    ***Invisible gets it – scroll down for answer*** The Index Biography is a quiz pioneered by this blog and introduced in a previous post. The creator must find a biography of a famous individual from history, they must turn to the index and write down eight peripheral facts about the individual’s life. We offered up previously […]

    Daily History Picture: US Nazi Rally November 29, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: US Nazi Rally

    US Nazi rally at Madison Square Gardens, 1939.

    Daily History Picture: Marilyn Kicks Off November 28, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Marilyn Kicks Off

    US vs Israel soccer match

    Big Brother Urban Legends November 28, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Big Brother Urban Legends

    The three great totalitarian states that dominated Europe in the 1930s were the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Did these have their own urban legends? Of course. But what were they? Beach wants only to open one obvious form of totalitarian urban legend: what he will provisionally call ‘the big brother story’. Now, […]

    Daily History Picture: Improvised Shovel November 27, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Improvised Shovel

    German helmet made into a shovel… Hard times.

    Mermaid Monday: Stoning Mermaids November 27, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: Stoning Mermaids

    This brief account was published in the press in 1827 (Anon). Within these last two or three days there have been several mermaids seen on the rocks at Trenance, in the parish of Mawgan. I will state the particulars at length, as I have been enabled to collect them, and which are from undoubted authority, […]

    Ghosts and Photo Fakes November 26, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Ghosts and Photo Fakes

    Ghost photograph fakes always have a certain interest, not least because they are usually so clumsily done. However, these, which appeared in the Tatler, 9 Oct 1907, were a cut above. There follow screen captures of the five photographs. The editor has written in ‘The making of ghosts has ever been a favourite pastime of […]

    Review: Grossman, Life and Fate November 25, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Review: Grossman, Life and Fate

    Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate [1960] This blogger has been very reluctant to write posts on historical fiction for the simple fact that he cannot stand most representatives of the genre. But Life and Fate was started reluctantly during the recent flu wars, and has been great bedtime and pre-siesta reading ever since. Written in […]

    Daily History Picture: German Surrender at Normandy November 24, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: German Surrender at Normandy

    Daily History Picture: Germans Land in Canada November 23, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Germans Land in Canada

    Still worrying about this one!

    Daily History Picture: Who is This? November 22, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Who is This?

    Sorry.

    Turkey Horror in Ireland November 22, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Turkey Horror in Ireland

    Beach would like to introduce to the sheer unadorned horror of the Irish turkey. Let’s start slow and, then, gradually crank up the volume. Willie Reilly of Gelsha was going home… It was fairly late: when he came to where Johnnie Connor lives now, there was a bend in the road and there was at that […]

    Daily History Picture: Niagra Veteran November 21, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Niagra Veteran

    Annie Edson Taylor

    Devil Wings Mystery November 21, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Devil Wings Mystery

    This site has pioneered the study of fairy wings. In the last years a number of posts have pointed to the origins of fairy wings in Britain in the late eighteenth century; looked at fairy wings types; and even looked at how fairy wings were constructed by anxious mothers in the 1800s. Our colleague and […]