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  • The Origins of Forehead Cross Tattoos? March 8, 2018

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    The Origins of Forehead Cross Tattoos?

    The Forehead Cross The forehead cross has become a relatively common modern tattoo, both in the industrialized west and among some developing countries. However, those who wear it will probably not know that the first record of this design dates back to the sixth century AD. Let us travel through time and space to the […]

    Man at Station Changes Course of War February 4, 2018

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Man at Station Changes Course of War

    Mid October 1941. A man with a mustache walks up and down besides a train, while snow falls. He is conscious, all too conscious that he is about to make a decision that will change the direction of the war, perhaps even its outcome: a true hinge moment. And the decision? Quite simply should he […]

    Baby Face Günter in Saverne January 8, 2018

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Baby Face Günter in Saverne

    A delicate occupied zone with an unfriendly population. Think US Marines patrolling in southern Afghanistan or Israeli troops walking through a Palestinian village. That is challenging enough. But could we make it a little more interesting for, say, an HBO series? Why not, for example, put the occupying troops under the control of a young […]

    Mussolini and the Water Sprinkler November 14, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Mussolini and the Water Sprinkler

    There are few things in life sweeter than self important people being made to look silly. The picture above is one of this blogger’s favourite. The subject is, of course, Benito Mussolini, in the mid, late 1930s.* A group of Fascist dignitaries are prancing up some steps at the Foro Italico: but not all is […]

    Drunk Thesps, Faith’s Vomit and a Cake-Caked King September 2, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Drunk Thesps, Faith's Vomit and a Cake-Caked King

    Christian IV of Denmark (r. 1596-1648) was a proactive, alcoholic king and one of the strongest arguments Beach knows for a republic. He got Denmark embroiled in several useless wars but made up for this by renaming Oslo Christiania after himself. In July 1606 this troublesome and vain individual descended on Britain and he and […]

    Breaking the Ampoule January 23, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
    Breaking the Ampoule

    A WIBT moment from eighteenth-century France: the collision of the hoary old with the bright-eyed, metallic and ghastly new. It involves a cathedral, a hammer and the crystal fragments of a Roman perfume bottle, the Sainte Ampoule, one of the longest continuously used objects in world history. This tiny flacon had been made in the late Roman […]

    Fat Boy Blusters October 23, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Fat Boy Blusters

    The US bombing of Hiroshima went off, in operational terms, flawlessly. The bombing of Nagasaki was a different matter. For one thing, Nagasaki was not even the target: Fat Man was supposed to have been dropped on nearby Kokura but smoke from a conventional raid obscured the bombing run. Everything that could go wrong on […]

    Simon Bolivar Meets Ferdinand at Sport October 13, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Simon Bolivar Meets Ferdinand at Sport

    Simon Bolivar was a Venezuelan troublemaker who would lead the Spanish Americas to freedom. Ferdinand VII was the cretinous Spanish monarch who would allow this to happen. What Beach had not known until recently was that Bolivar and Ferdinand actually met as boys in 1800 in extraordinary circumstances. Bolivar (right) was seventeen; Ferdinand (left) was sixteen. […]

    Maria Screams September 13, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Maria Screams

    A WIBT moment from early nineteenth-century Portugal. Thousands of well dressed but harassed men and women are milling and pushing in Lisbon harbor before a score of great British and Portuguese ships. The tense silence is suddenly broken as a piercing scream begins from behind. The woman’s voice, from a royal carriage is continual. Maria […]

    70 Million Dead in One Second September 8, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
    70 Million Dead in One Second

    The year is 1908. You are walking through a jungle territory in southeastern Cameroon in central Africa when you hear the sickening smack of the machete on flesh. Expecting the worst you emerge, your rifle half lifted, but see only a local hunter with a kill. He has taken a chimp in a trap and […]

    St Thomas and the Meretrix April 12, 2016

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    St Thomas and the Meretrix

    This is one of the great scenes from Catholic hagiography. St Thomas of Aquinas has just been kidnapped by his own family and locked up in a room with a naked woman. OK, yes, yes, we can backpedal a moment…. Thomas was born to a noble Campanian clan and as a younger son, the youngest […]

    Immortal Meals #24: Jaén’s Eggfight August 12, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    Immortal Meals #24: Jaén's Eggfight

    Jaén in Andalucia (Spain) is a town with its roots in Spain’s troubled late middle ages, half Arab, half Christian. Jaén also stars in a wonderful book by one of our greatest living medievalists Teofilo ‘God’ Ruiz now at UCLA. In City and Spectacle, Ruiz describes life in fifteenth-century Jaén in terms of the shows, […]

    Emperor Stars in Anti-Colonial Play June 20, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Emperor Stars in Anti-Colonial Play

    Puyu (obit 1967) has gone down in history as the last Chinese emperor, not including of course Mao and his successors, and what a life he had. Brought up in the Forbidden Palace he was perhaps the most spoilt boy in the world: having servants beaten for a whim; this perhaps made up for the […]

    A City Without Buildings: Themistocles Before Salamis May 13, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    A City Without Buildings: Themistocles Before Salamis

    A WIBT (Wish I’d Been There) episode from the wars between Greece and Persia in 480/479. The Athenians, save some brave warriors who attempted to defend, futilely the Acropolis, have fled from their city. The unstoppable Persian army has fired the temples and the holy places of Athena: and the Persian fleet has moved down […]

    Pheidippides: The Greek Who Met A God April 13, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    Pheidippides: The Greek Who Met A God

    Pheidippides enters the history book because he could run fast and far, and because in 490 BC, with angry Persian immortals just outside their walls, the Athenians decided that they needed help. They looked for assistance in the most violent of all Greek polis, the Spartans to the south. Sparta, though, stood 150 miles from Athens […]