Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Earthy medieval art: love the hands going up – spare me…

Paolo and Francesca look forward to hell: notice the book dropping.

The Cripple’s Death It says something terrible about Britain’s nineteenth-century legal system. In 1812 a twelve year old was brought to the scaffold for having broken a window. He was barely able to walk, needing crutches: in fact, he was a ‘cripple’: he had been put on a man’s shoulder’s to break the window and […]

1918 Fairy on the New York stage.

This is a weird entry that I haven’t been able to find my way into. The year is 1891 and this is clearly a mechanism of some kind: but how did they do it? drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com Or was it a light show, like Pepper’s Ghost. The latest addition to the side shows […]

Wilhelm and Alfred This post is written not with a sneer still less with pleasure, but with real sympathy for two men who saw their courage relegate them to a thousand footnotes. Welcome from left stage Wilhelm Korpik and Alfred Liskow. A light ripple of applause fills the auditorium. German Attack Wilhelm and Alfred had […]

Classic 19C ghost confusion at night. Fascinated by the raciness of the nightgowned woman.

Introducing HMS Hood This blog dealt yesterday (it feels longer ago) with Helen Duncan, medium extraordinaire, claiming, in Portsmouth in 1941, that HMS Barham had sunk before the British government had announced that ship’s demise. In that post I acknowledged that there was another case where Helen Duncan had learnt that a ship had sunk […]

Introduction It is one of the most extraordinary psychic events of the twentieth century, rave some. It proves that mediums really can communicate with the dead, state others. A Scottish medium, Helen Duncan brought, in early December 1941, a relative of a crew member of HMS Barham into contact with her recently dead son (or […]

Pooh at Hastings. Had they been there would Harold have lost? (Love the ‘miel’)

Young boy reads in blitzed out book shop in London, WW2.

Italian girl fined on beach in 1957 at Rimini

That Joke The words are famous and supposedly came out in a verbal duel between Lady Astor (Britain’s first active woman MP) and, from a different wing of the Conservative party, Winston Churchill. Lady Astor: ‘If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee.’ Churchill: ‘Nancy, if I were your husband I […]

WW1 Romanian soldiers: consensus is Romanian officers terrible; Romanian rank and file tough and effective.

This report came out in 1809 in the wake of the famous Caithness mermaid letters. Last week, whilst a sloop belonging to Beverley, was at anchor in Hawk Roads, near Grimsby, a boy on board saw the appearance of a woman at some distance, whom he supposed by some accident had unfortunately fallen overboard a […]