Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

…at will) and three bat-like dragons who have just hatched and who are difficult to take that seriously. Beach was also impressed by the parallels with medieval European history and…

…via INTERPOL in a number of countries.Police eventually found out that the woman had travelled around Norway and Europe with nine different identities: Jenevive Lancia, Claudia Tjelt, Vera Schlosseneck, Claudia…

…the archaeological rumour mill and their general direction is clear. It seems that there was a European presence here in the late Middle Ages (though there are serious dating problems…

…that turn up in Europe as there are a lot! AGib also wrote on describing a similar incident. GT writes, meanwhile, ‘How about a fourth possibility, it was lost on…

Beachcombing previously had some fun describing the tricks the ‘civilised’ use to frighten ‘savages’ in jungles and deserts far from the capital cities of Europe. But what about – today’s…

…custom is attested from eleventh-century Normandy, and I learnt about it from Elisabet van Houts’s paper, “Gender and Authority of Oral Witnesses in Europe (800-1300)” in _Transactions of the Royal…

…be physically incapable of entering churches, and certainly wouldn’t live in one on purpose! I suspect the answer is that the further east you go in Europe, the later people…

…classical times, but he is always surprised that diffusionists don’t use this text more. Plutarch then describes a peculiar ritual carried out by Europeans, perhaps Britons. Now when at intervals…

…up with some lovely epitaphs taken from tombs around Europe. Here, for example, is an Italian one for a child who did not make it to the evening of his…

…what he had seen during the campaign in Europe. He used to be so embarrassed, because, “love, I haven’t thought about this in years,” but as his own end came…

…sky were recorded by medieval Europeans and seen through their own Christian biases. In fact, he once put up a post on astronomical entries from the Irish Annals: which have…

…sites and fairies. In your discussion of the last of the fairy faith in Europe, I commented that it could be argued that Marian apparitions took the place of fairy…

Giordano Bruno (pictured badly) was a sixteenth-century philosopher with a thing about infinity. Giordano also had an infinite capacity to create irritation. Indeed, his travels around Europe have a fascinating…

…DOT com *** 31 August 2012: Pineybelt writes, ‘Many examples of vestiges of human sacrifice at sun festivals in Europe in the 17th,18th and 19th centuries are described in Sir…

…and had many things that the English, coming from one of the most barbaric parts of ancient Europe, would never have seen before: cities, books, churches, theatres, factories, bureaucracy… But…