Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Shuck (aka shock) was a demonic hound that haunted much of East Anglia in the early modern period: and in the absence of satisfactory ancient and medieval records may have…

…golden ghost, despite later references to a tradition there was nothing of the kind: at least prior to the discovery. There was a woman who was apparently not taken seriously…

Don Giovanni dei Medici (obit 1621) was the son of the first Medici Count of Tuscany. He had, however, the very great misfortune to be born illegitimate and though acknowledged…

In 1766 Jeanne Baret, a young Burgundian, joined a round-the-world trip, a French mission to claim territory in the Pacific and Indian oceans. Her experiences, the subject of a recent…

Beach’s reading today comes from Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars, Nero (31) There was nothing however in which [Nero] was more ruinously prodigal than in building. He made a palace…

…drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com So lumps in the Atlantic on early European maps become proof for the Chinese discovery of America… The coast of Antarctica (without ice!) demonstrate that…

…onwards, in Western Europe at least, the flood of the written word is almost painful. Yet notwithstanding this deluge, incredibly, there are whole facets of life that entirely escape notice….

…living in the landlocked kingdom in the heart of Europe, which is ruled by an Admiral, who was captured by his greatest friends. You are fighting a country, which you…

…custom was followed throughout Northern Europe from Scandinavia, to Germany, in the Lowlands and in England (think of the Walkington Wold Burials). Indeed, the whole ‘Germanic’ portion of Europe seems…

…Libya, and in that district of Europe that lies between the Achelous and the Nessus; the leopard is more abundant in Asia Minor, and is not found in Europe at…

…thinking about saints), with an emphasis on introspection and mysticism. All this laughably in a period, when Europe was starting to tear itself apart in religious warfare. The saint falls…

…In that work Piccolomini discusses the arrival of Indians in Europe blown from across the Atlantic at a date when America was unknown to Europeans (another post another day). Next…

…friends? – as what follows after. To the best of his knowledge this is last time that a European state involves itself in the persecution of a witch. Anything else…

…in Europe would end with Stalin’s armies much further into Europe. Would they stop at the Greek, Yugoslav, Italian borders? The other possibility is that, an invasion of France in…

…was a nineteenth-century reaction to the discovery of the golden cup. (iii) As possibly with Mold the story may predate the discovery. Having been through all the sources I think…