Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

The Giant Sloth? The giant ground sloth is one of the most charismatic of extinct creatures. Dwelling in South America Megatherium was, when it tore down trees, and walked over the pampa, the size of a small elephant and was finally hunted out of existence about 10,000 years ago: one of the victims of homo […]

1892 Franz Ferdinand goes hunting.

ABCs (alien big cats) is the useful acronym given to descriptions of exotic felines that allegedly live wild in the British and Irish countryside. Between April 2004 and July 2005 the British Big Cats society recorded some 2,123 sightings of ABCs from pumas to lynxes. What is going on here? Well, there are a couple […]

French soldiers in WW1, beautifully colorised.

This record is dated ‘Exeter, November, 1737’, presumably it appeared in some local newspaper. It is rather rare to find a two legged mermaid, though they are not unprecedented. Some Fishermen near the city, drawing their Net ashore, a creature of two legs, having human shape, leapt out and ran away very swiftly. Not being […]

Introduction The spring of 1982 was a time of some tension in the South Atlantic and would climax with Argentine troops landing on Falklands, and the subsequent battles between the British taskforce and the Argentinean army and navy. However, as so often when the gods in Olympus are still deciding which side to back, farce […]

Pox or the Gallows The lines are certainly old ones. A mighty aristocrat offended by some commoner asks whether the man before him will die of the pox or on the gallows tree. The commoner shoots back ‘that depends whether I embrace your Lordship’s mistress or your principles’. No question that it’s memorable. But where […]

New York newspaper imagines invasion Sep 1940.

This story comes out of Kirby’s Wonderful Museum, vol IV, p. 359. Kirby claimed to have extracted it from a 1618 publication, The Abridgement of the English Chronicle. We are back to stupid sport bets. In this moneth [but which year?], John Lepton of Kepwick, in the county of Yorke, Esquire, a gentleman of an […]

German patrol in Alsace before WW1

Ice cold drinks in 1940s New York

British cartoon about German Christmas presents in the war.

Ghost illusion

This is an 1851 report from Lough Swilly, a long sea inlet on the coast of Donegal. This was a very poor area in the nineteenth century. A correspondent has solemnly assured us that the crew of a boat in Lough Swilly, on the 4th inst. [October], saw, within twenty yards of them, a real […]

Doppelganger and Familiar Robber This is a very unusual story and has two acts. Note that it is put here for the familiar robbers story in the second part: the subject of two previous posts, one from the US one from Spain. But is the doppelganger tale also an urban legend? The story is messy. […]