Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

…in question. Most disasters in European history – 500-1700 can be traced to such unhappy coincidences. Most golden ages, meanwhile, mark the coupling of an agricultural boom or a cultural…

Beachcombing tries to get a geographical spread going with his posts where – if there is a depressing bias towards Europe and Blighty – he covers pretty much the whole…

…Ice Age Europe. Elasmotherium looked little like a horse, but it had a large single horn in its forehead. It became extinct about the same time as the rest of…

…of continental Europe. A minor Churchillian classic that is often overlooked is his obituary on Neville Chamberlain, interesting both as a piece of writing, as parliamentary theatre and as a…

…or are there other cross channel or Latin versions? Beachcombing is going to put a small wager that this tale will have been told across Europe about a half dozen…

…it to Europe. So how do we explain this concrete source describing impossibly large people? Beachcombing would appeal to memory tricks and the distortion of the senses in an exotic…

…the streets of northern Europe and North America. As with all new foods there is a period of chronic anxiety when the food in question is given unreasonable properties, either…

…limits of the institutions handed down to her by her father and those institutions have (largely) protected her Beachcombing to his infinite regret lives in a republican age where Europe’s…

…of Europe into ‘God’s bloodline’ (cue Holy Blood and Holy Grail emails) as before these same monarchs had been part of Odin’s family tree. And Arab potentates very often enjoyed…

…soon demonstrate, merfolk). The rest of Europe got all enlightened, revolutionary and ‘with-it’: taking the long slippery slide that leads to social democracy, universal but mediocre healthcare, a do-gooding parasitical…

…On balance Beachcombing would have preferred to have had an account of the Mongol envoys travelling through Europe. But he can hardly complain. After all, in this account there is…

…They would, however, be extremely common in northern Europe – though, of course, Pliny was in Italy – perhaps too common to justify all the excitement Pliny conveys. Other druids’…

…sister pairing. And, it was possible to argue – up until the Second World War – that the various royal lines of Europe were in reality a single cankered rose…

…earliest version of this legend – at least in the form known to medieval Europe – appears in the Greek Physiologus. Beachcombing says ‘appears’. In fact, this text, dating from…

…the North Atlantic. There is also the problem that Laplanders and other Asian sub-arctic peoples were being reported in western Europe at about the same time. Contact with sub-Arctic peoples…