The Curious Engineer

Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

2010–2012

948 posts

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2012 365

December 2012

  1. Beachcombed 31
  2. Death of the Doctor
  3. Columbus Knew Where He Was Going, Claims Soviet Historian
  4. The Fairy of Florence Campanile
  5. Long Distance Runner DOESN’T Disappear into Broad Daylight
  6. Mysterious European Figure in Pre-Columbian Baffin Island
  7. The Empire of Claus
  8. The Mirage of Brasil
  9. Roman and Medieval Vineyards in Chilly Britain
  10. Love Goddess 4#: Juliet, Verona and the Invention of Love
  11. The Horror of Sea Hedges!
  12. Nancy Price, the FIS and a Troll at the Seaside
  13. Not Suitable for Engineers: Choking Danger
  14. Further Thoughts on the Inventio Fortunata with Thanks to Readers
  15. Medieval Nun Vampire?
  16. Lazarus Plants
  17. Clipping the Church
  18. King Arthur’s Last Men: Stranded in the Arctic North?
  19. Alpine Fairy Music
  20. A Bone-breaking Country Flight in Italy, c. 1920
  21. Ponte Vecchio: Love Goddess # 3
  22. Oxford Graduate in Fourteenth-Century North America!?
  23. Good Executions?
  24. European America or American Europe? Calculating the Probability of Pre-Columbian Contact
  25. Medieval English Ghost or Vampire?
  26. Music in the Woods and Vocation
  27. A German Vampire?
  28. Viking Family Memories
  29. BB and Fairy Belief
  30. The Lamps Are Going Out, But Where?
  31. Summoned by Bells

November 2012

  1. Beachcombed 30
  2. A Fairy Cup?
  3. Alwyn Ruddock: Enemy of History?
  4. William Bottrell and the Strangest Funeral Procession in the World
  5. Modesty and Killing
  6. Wynne’s Madonna at Ely: Love Goddess 2#
  7. Witches, Confessions and the Truth
  8. Late Pixy Accounts from Devon
  9. More Kopenicks
  10. Families and the Durability of Memory
  11. Oldest Still Used Clothes
  12. The Inventio Fortunata: A Lost Medieval Journey to the Arctic North
  13. Crowds #6: Bully Crowds
  14. Beatrice: An Unlikely Love Goddess 1#
  15. American Indians in Galway, Ireland?
  16. Giant Caterpillar Outside Manchester, 1850!
  17. The Last Survivor of the Second World War
  18. The First Sub-Saharan Africans in China?
  19. Native North American Vampire?
  20. Mysterious Hominids in India
  21. Bristol Discovers America
  22. National Symbols and Erotics: the Great War
  23. The Tara Harpoon: Eskimoes in the Irish Sea?
  24. Billesley and Shakespeare: Books, Weddings and Fornication
  25. The Greatest Heist in History? The Captain of Kopenick
  26. Madame Tussaud Meets the Guillotine
  27. Was Chess Invented in Ireland or China or India or…?
  28. Goodwin Wharton and the Fairies
  29. Sherlock Holmes in the Blitz
  30. Newgrange and a Hundred Generations

October 2012

  1. Beachcombed 29
  2. Review: Goodwin Wharton
  3. Welsh Candles and a Ghost
  4. Shakespeare’s First Anne
  5. The Missing Autobiography of Mario Esposito
  6. Wikipedia Comes of Age: Wincest, Exobiddling, Osloed and Getting Wilked
  7. Fairy Jousting?
  8. A Fourteen-Month Pregnancy in Nineteenth-century Cornwall?
  9. The Last of 2973
  10. Flying with Diana
  11. Indonesians in Medieval Africa
  12. Dowding and the Fairies!
  13. Immortal Meals #10: Love Feast in Fifteenth-century Florence
  14. Mythic Lines at the Alamo
  15. Whoops, Apocalypse!
  16. Coins Out of Time
  17. Japanese Cartoons from Siberia and Beyond
  18. Modern and Early Modern Animal Sacrifices in Britain
  19. Out of Place Artefacts: Eyebrow-Raisers and Eye-Poppers
  20. Egyptologist Meets a Cat Goddess
  21. How Big Are Fairies?
  22. Majorana’s Mysterious Disappearance
  23. On First Looking Into Lucas’ Star Wars
  24. Church Porch Devilry
  25. Cartooning the Great War
  26. Roman Empire vs Caliphate in Sub-Saharan Africa
  27. Mud, Blood and Poppycock
  28. A Phantom Inventor: Flavio Gioia
  29. Transit of Venus
  30. Holy Gunpowder
  31. The Queen of Cuba, Mermaids and a Far-Swimming Slave

September 2012

  1. Beachcombed 28
  2. The Origins of One-Foot
  3. Suicide at Saipan: How Many?
  4. Lord Ferrers and the Silk Rope
  5. Child Sacrifice in Carthage
  6. Hell Fire and Death Bed Cobblers
  7. Never Fall Asleep in a Hungarian Cemetery
  8. Long-Knife Victims
  9. Jesus Christ and Naked Men
  10. Crowds #5: POWs
  11. Christ’s Wife
  12. Hostage Taking in Ancient and Medieval Times
  13. Review: Walter Starkie, Raggle Taggle
  14. Fusion and Confusion in Post Roman Britain
  15. Earliest Flying messengers
  16. The Last of the Ancient Centaurs and Fauns
  17. How Cats Create Neurotic Societies
  18. Prison Breaks with Planes
  19. English King Discovered Under Carpark
  20. The Strange Siege of Nagy Ida
  21. Are Societies What They Eat?
  22. A Fairy Encounter in Nineteenth-Century Madrid
  23. The Man Who Accidentally Started WW2 Five Days Too Early
  24. Armpitting
  25. Negosanu and the Countess
  26. Generals, Entrepreneurs or Politicians?
  27. African Pygmies and European Fairies
  28. Stay Alive to 1975!
  29. Casualties and Memory
  30. Children of the Dung Heap

August 2012

  1. Beachcombed 27
  2. Accidental Hanky Panky in Late Nineteenth-Century Ireland
  3. The USS Charleston Says Hello with Gunpowder
  4. Eating Prisoners of War? Ten Thousand Years of ‘I Surrender’
  5. Ireland the Great and White Man’s Land
  6. The Bottle Hoax
  7. Cursing, Roman Style
  8. What Makes a Good Student Historian?
  9. Prolific Souvestre and Allain
  10. Baring-Goulds’ Pixies
  11. Prussians in the Frame: Brownies Out
  12. The Glut of Celebrity in Seances
  13. Gluten, Famine and the Slow Crawl of Medical Knowledge
  14. Capital Punishment Cobblers
  15. Closing Door Erotica
  16. Baal Cobblers and a Remarkable Survival
  17. Panty-stealing Zimbabwean Goblin
  18. See But Can’t Touch
  19. Two Red Letter Books
  20. Protestantism, Statues and Sore Breasts/Fronts
  21. The Mythic Mountain Treasure
  22. Shakespeare’s Road Trip in Wales
  23. The Cloud of Death, Hawker and A Letter to the Times
  24. Photo Fakes and Irresponsible Buffoonery
  25. Never Forget the Church Sprite!
  26. Scooby Doo Crime 1#: Headless Coachmen and Crime
  27. The Terror of the Cow Charmer
  28. The Hairies: Thoughts from Africa
  29. The Immortal Major Fraser
  30. Queens On Top (or not?)
  31. Highest Placed Spy

July 2012

  1. Beachcombed 26
  2. Genetics vs Environment among Monarchs
  3. They Do It With Drawers You Know
  4. The Mysterious Island of Chronos/Cronos: Stonehenge, New Hampshire or Lundy!?
  5. Charles I and Cromwell
  6. The Cow-Man of Wicklow and His Sad End
  7. Mutant Hares, Modern Satyrs and Centaurs
  8. Revelation: Music, History and the Incredible Public Service Broadcasting
  9. ‘Psychic’ Phenomena: Trends in Time?
  10. Precious Pot Sherds at Tell-el-Hesy
  11. The Trolls That Tuck You In
  12. The Crown of the Queen of Serpents
  13. Crowds #4: Religion
  14. Kobolds and Lights in Derbyshire
  15. The Christian Wolves of Ossory
  16. Flying In and Out of Windows
  17. Burning Reputations in Science
  18. Pixy Music on Dartmoor
  19. The Buckle That Came In From The Cold
  20. Don’t Get Mad, Get William: The Authorship Question
  21. Quentin Craufurd and Telepathy Among Birds
  22. The Greatest Curse: Epitaphs for Dead Children
  23. Mad Cures: Sore Throats and Currents
  24. Bomber Command and War Guilt
  25. Weird Nineteenth-Century Names
  26. The Triumph of the Dilettantes: Top Ten Fairy Books
  27. St Columba: A Medieval Clairvoyant?
  28. Archangel Steals Money in Naples!
  29. Crowds #3: Crowds as Art
  30. Things that Go Baring-Gould in the Night
  31. Creative Pretexts for War

June 2012

  1. Beachcombed 25
  2. Sixteenth-century Conjuring Tricks
  3. Tree Rings and Supernovas and a Red Cross in Anglo-Saxon England
  4. The Virgin and the Fairies
  5. Islam Creates Europe
  6. Desperately Seeking Marjorie
  7. Romans in Japan?!
  8. On the trail of Captain Quentin C. A. Craufurd (and his fairies)
  9. The Eastern Origins of Playing Cards
  10. The Survival of the Marranos
  11. All Hail the Male Witch!
  12. Llewellyn Thompson: Champion of the World
  13. The End of the Britains: Rome Abandons Britannia
  14. Crowds #2: Speaking to Crowds
  15. Desperate Men: 490 BC
  16. So You Want to Catch a Fairy…
  17. Decapitation Gone Wrong in China, c. 1900
  18. A New Digital Library of Alexandria: Mark II
  19. Trolls in Staffordshire (in the 1970s!)
  20. Worthless Currencies
  21. Germany über Alles?
  22. Thomas Digges and the Telescope
  23. A Welsh Mermaid and the Bastard with the Binoculars
  24. Ginx’s Baby
  25. Undead in Bulgaria
  26. Admiral Byrd and Nazi Cobblers
  27. Maverick Leaders: Silvio Berlusconi
  28. Exclaves!
  29. Electrifying Sheep
  30. The Monger-Goss Theory of Dragons and ABCs

May 2012

  1. Beachcombed 24
  2. Horror and Gore in Children’s Histories
  3. Two Thousand Infants Sold to Russia for Human Sacrifice
  4. Dare-Nots
  5. Seventeenth-Century English Dragons
  6. The Wandering Jew in Burnley
  7. Cellini and the Salamander
  8. The Talking Dog and King’s Fellow
  9. The Problem with Sea Apes
  10. The Devil in Disney
  11. The Postures: A Missing Erotic Classic
  12. Marco Polo and Pasta
  13. Self-Immolation Duc-Style
  14. Transvestite President?
  15. Shape-Shifting in a Nineteenth-Century Court-Room
  16. Immortal Meals #9: The Discovery of Nero’s Rotating Dining Room?
  17. The Great Snake Scare of 1828
  18. Nashville Debutante Fights Imperial Japan
  19. The Leprechauns of Liverpool and the Bowling Green from Hell
  20. Review: I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student
  21. Immortal Meals #8: The Ash Wednesday Supper
  22. Welsh Pre-Marital Sex, c. 1850
  23. Badgers, Pigs and Asses: Celtic in English
  24. Geologist Galivants with Spirits and Fairies
  25. Aggressive Ghost in Fourteenth-Century Germany
  26. Selling Wives
  27. Indecent Lifting and Heaving
  28. The Last Invasion of Britain?
  29. Lost in Transmission
  30. Zombie Planes
  31. The Babel of History

April 2012

  1. Beachcombed 23
  2. Victorian Osiris Kills Father and Paints Fairies
  3. Pyramids in Italy
  4. The Popess: A Female Pope?
  5. Shadowfax: A Fantasy Horse
  6. Fairy Shysters
  7. Honey and the Anvils of Women’s Thighs
  8. Chickpeas, Menstrual Blood and Witchcraft
  9. Human Confetti in the Jungle of Guyana
  10. Coincidence in Jersey City
  11. Irish Merman Off Connemara
  12. More Christ Confusion
  13. Nanny Coincidence
  14. Newspaper Archives as Controls or Filters
  15. Misfortunes with Severed Heads: Richard Owen and Lancaster Jail
  16. Pixie-Led in the South-West
  17. Review: Freedoms Fliers by J. Todd Moye
  18. Did Christ Exist?
  19. Singing Enemy Songs: Lili Marleen
  20. The Irish Invade Canada
  21. A Witch’s Secret Letter
  22. Frau Feie and Jousting
  23. Force Feeding Queens
  24. How Many Burnt in the Burning Years?
  25. Suicide and Historical Loopholes
  26. The Gospel of the Witches: Missing or Faked?
  27. John Lukacs: The Legacy of the Second World War
  28. Bullwhips and Brown Belts: Beach’s Style Guide
  29. Icelandic Penis Collections, Gnome Sanctuaries and Other Unusual Museums
  30. The Republic of New Afrika

March 2012

  1. Beachcombed 22
  2. Britain as Island of the Dead
  3. Handlist of Adult Changelings
  4. The Bizarrest Date in History
  5. Invisible Library in Skyrim
  6. Britain’s Obsession with the Second World War
  7. What are the White Women Ghosts?
  8. Dark Age Scotland Without Oxygen?
  9. A Dutch Mermaid
  10. Perrottet: Sinners’ Grand Tour
  11. Escaped Lions
  12. Crowds #1: And so it begins… Images from 1914
  13. Amerindians in Sardinia!?!
  14. Hibernating Hirundines
  15. Stalin Suffering the Children
  16. St Patrick and Confusion
  17. Fairies and Vegetation
  18. Churchill, De Gaulle and Waterloo
  19. Procopius, Brittia and Britain
  20. Pulling Things Out of Rivers
  21. Fairy Sighting on Skye, c. 1880
  22. Breathing Out the Spirit: Another Modern Witch
  23. From North Carolina to Chad: Families and Food
  24. A Romani Mystery in Eleventh-Century England
  25. Japanese Torpedo Boats in the Baltic
  26. The Psyche Fairy Fake
  27. Christ’s Execution in a Marble Jar
  28. Gravestones: The Disparate Couple
  29. Escaping the Guillotine
  30. Witchcraft Murder in Modern London
  31. Selling (Balkan) Europe by the Pound

February 2012

  1. Beachcombed 21
  2. In Praise of the Hindoestanen
  3. Cat Clocks – No Really!
  4. Anne Frank, Ghost Weddings and Post-Mortem Baptisms
  5. Witty Gravestones
  6. Mermaid Killing in Exeter
  7. Swallowing or Choking on (Operation) Mincemeat
  8. The Slave Free Centuries
  9. Fake Fairies
  10. Dragon Rats in Oxford
  11. The Valley of Sweet Bells and Dead Bodies
  12. Irish Changeling in New York
  13. Slaves for Sale
  14. Somehow Still Walking
  15. Hippocratic Cobblers.
  16. August 1914: Surprise or Countdown?
  17. An Aberystwyth Mermaid
  18. I was afraid to move: I was gasping for breath
  19. The Valley of Elves, Nymphs, Cars, Swans or Whatever
  20. The Rocking Stone Unrocked
  21. Cato’s Sword
  22. Fairies and Golf Balls
  23. Irish Giants: Prehistoric and Otherwise
  24. Anticipating the Telephone
  25. Mona Lisa Madness
  26. Beachcombing’s Invisible Library
  27. Anticipating Email by Three Hundred Years
  28. Image: Princip’s Conscience

January 2012

  1. Beachcombed 20
  2. Owen’s Untimely Death
  3. The Decline of the Public Domain
  4. An Overlong Name
  5. Ancient Laughter, Modern Bewilderment
  6. The Soul Zoo
  7. De Gaulle and Ike at Gettysburg
  8. Ecdicius and the Eighteen
  9. 2012 and All That
  10. Remembering Bologna
  11. What Religion did Fairies Follow?
  12. Review: The Discovery of Jeanne Baret
  13. Burning Libraries! Two Lost Folklore Collections
  14. Hauntings and Technology: the Teflon Effect
  15. Medieval and Ancient Rats
  16. Vintages Past
  17. Napoleon in a Pot
  18. Throne Room Tricks
  19. Mermaids, Ahoy!
  20. Israel Saved by the Soviets in 1973?
  21. An Eagle, A Basket and A Boy
  22. Jesus Lived to 114 in Japan!
  23. Outlaws on Ice
  24. Medieval Dog-Heads: An Eye-Witness Report
  25. Plotinus Meets a God
  26. Accidentally Obscene
  27. Epiphany Gift to Readers: Scary Fairies PDF
  28. Snakes, Fairies and St Patrick
  29. The Earliest Roman Ghost in Britain
  30. Electrocuting African Tribal Hosts
  31. A Surprise at Apple Down Cemetery

2011 365

December 2011

  1. Beachcombed 19
  2. Socrates, Sneezing and Daemons
  3. A Six Mile Stride
  4. The Future of English
  5. Lincoln and the Angels
  6. H.P. Lovecraft’s Invisible Library
  7. Lancashire Voodoo c. 1850
  8. Stalingrad’s Madonna
  9. Highland Gladiators
  10. What do fairies smell of?
  11. Eating Flags
  12. A Faun’s Invisible Library
  13. Death by Laughter
  14. Review: Five Days in London
  15. Jung, Active Imagination and the Bicameral Mind
  16. The Bearded Princess
  17. Cannibalism and Syphilis
  18. Fairy Death Bed Conversion
  19. Christian Cannibalism in the Middle Ages
  20. Dunkirk and Golden Bridges
  21. White Horses, Sex and Sovereignty
  22. Britain, Europe and Wife-swapping
  23. Luftwaffe Kills A Rabbit, Perhaps
  24. The Everliving Child
  25. Rhyming with Death
  26. Dud Eighteenth-Century Ghosts
  27. Turkish in Medieval Cambodia?
  28. Flying to the Moon on Geese
  29. The Zambian Space Programme of 1962
  30. Swearing to Mermaids
  31. Case of the Cottingley Fairies

November 2011

  1. Beachcombed 18
  2. Preeminent Horses: Rodney
  3. Don’t Play with Fire (in Scotland)!
  4. From Vienna to the Baltic in Roman Times
  5. Spontaneous Human Combustion and Witchcraft!
  6. Letting Off Steam
  7. Haunted Chessmen
  8. DNA Champion
  9. How to Choose your Bride in the Late Nineteenth Century
  10. Impressionist Heresy in the Soviet Union
  11. A List of Supercentenarians
  12. American Indian Settlers in Iceland?
  13. Big Bones in Churches
  14. A Dark Age British Sasquatch?
  15. Magic Translation and Flowers
  16. Hitler’s Italian Fantasy Life
  17. Marengo: Napoleon’s Horse
  18. Fairy Investigation Society
  19. Self Decapitation in South East Asia
  20. Spitfires and Radars in 1944
  21. The Great Crying
  22. 35 cms from Oxfordshire
  23. Gunfire in Notre Dame
  24. Review: The Middle Kingdom
  25. Eating People Isn’t Wrong (in Tibet)
  26. A-Z of Thuggery
  27. A Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century London
  28. Immortal Meals #7: Papal Orgies
  29. Finishing Horace and Whittier in WW2
  30. John Goodman Household: Africa’s First Flier

October 2011

  1. Beachcombed 17
  2. City of Ravens: Boria Sax
  3. Buying Up Clarice
  4. E Publishing Opportunism
  5. A Look Up Caterina Sforza’s Skirt
  6. Doublets in Ancient and Medieval History
  7. Eggs, Mermaids and Fairies
  8. A Seventeenth-Century Icarus
  9. Cocaine, Nicotine and Ancient Egypt
  10. Caithness Mermaid Mystery 2: More Mermaids
  11. Berlin, 30 April 1945
  12. Escapes, Wives and Cases
  13. Eleven Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Strange Deaths
  14. Immortal Meals 6#: Arguments at Tehran
  15. Incitatus: Caligula’s Horse
  16. From the Mahogany Ship to Mons Badonicus: An Archaeological Fantasia
  17. Swedish Husbands and Yemeni Wives
  18. The Wold Cottage Meteorite
  19. Hearts, Genies and Gnosticism at Nag Hammadi
  20. Suger’s Sherbert Holder
  21. Ultra, Enigma, Secrets and Squealing
  22. Royal Claimants
  23. Maggie Walls and Witch Cobblers
  24. The Meal that Stopped a Suicide
  25. ‘Psychic’ Joan and the Dauphin
  26. Agony at the Dentists
  27. Blondie at Cresson
  28. P.R.A.W.N.S.
  29. Boethius’s Astronomy: Did it Exist?
  30. Joy Riding on the Moon
  31. Fairy Gifts

September 2011

  1. Beachcombed 16
  2. World Centre
  3. Mermaid at Exmouth Eats Boiled Fish
  4. Radioactive Japes
  5. Tute’s Glass Ball
  6. Eleanor’s Lovers
  7. Meteor Destroys Pub
  8. Alan Turing’s Breasts
  9. Hildegard’s Headaches
  10. Secret Weapons
  11. Burning a Shed in Wales
  12. In the Margins
  13. Deviant Burials
  14. Plagiarism, Sock Puppets and Wikipedia
  15. Men and Women Out of Balance
  16. A Dragon in Medieval East Anglia
  17. Strange Historical Personal Names
  18. Last Witch Killing?
  19. Death in the Garden
  20. Bartering Chinese Women: Mao and Kissinger
  21. Thinking of Flying in the Eighteenth Century
  22. Pietro Montini: A Tribute
  23. Did You Hear the One about the Fairy and the Alien?
  24. Vivoo in Naples
  25. Eighteenth-century Scandinavian Merfolk
  26. Population Games and Rorschach Tests
  27. Eccentric British Funerals
  28. Dubious Archaeology
  29. Favourite Historical Cities
  30. The Safe Battle at Burnley, 1860

August 2011

  1. Beachcombing 15
  2. The Cha-Cha of the Dahomey
  3. Skraelings and Demons
  4. Irish Fairies in New Hampshire
  5. Mystery Discovery on the Isle of Dogs
  6. Cornish Mermaid – Half Priest, Half Fish
  7. The Sausage War
  8. The Oak of Fairlop
  9. Christopher Columbus’s Origins
  10. Funny Fairy Stories
  11. The Family that Commits Suicide Together…
  12. An Ecclesiastical Harem from Eighteenth-Century Spain
  13. Naval Blunders
  14. Taxis in the Mid Atlantic
  15. The Famous Benbecula Burial of a Mermaid
  16. Female Flyting in the Raj?
  17. Fairies Investigated in Irish Court
  18. D’Annunzio Over Vienna
  19. Flight in Eleventh-Century England
  20. Flight in Seventeenth-Century Warsaw?
  21. Dried Cats
  22. Changelings and the Law
  23. Battle of Maldon and Overheart
  24. Head-hunting German Phrenologists
  25. Late (Pregnant) Witch in Devon
  26. Mussolini’s Barber
  27. Stalin, Molotov and the Finns
  28. Fifteenth-century European Knowledge of Australia?
  29. Death Diaries and Plane Doors
  30. A Changeling on Man
  31. Last Human Sacrifice in Europe?

July 2011

  1. Beachcombed 14
  2. Cat Burial in Iceland
  3. Caithness Mermaid Mystery 1: Mermaid Sighting
  4. A Celtic Tribe in Kazakhstan?
  5. András Toma: The Forgotten Prisoner
  6. Last European Headhunters
  7. Fidel Castro is a Jesuit Spy! [sic]
  8. The Hare that Killed a Hundred Thousand
  9. Leonardo’s Dream and the Kite
  10. Women Warriors of Benin
  11. Self Castrators
  12. Forgotten Anglo-Irish Inventor Anticipates the Modern Age
  13. Lost in Shangri-La
  14. Perpetua’s Death Dream
  15. The Emu War of 1932
  16. Dragons in Swtizerland
  17. William Corliss RIP
  18. Anglo-Saxons in Southern India?
  19. Impossible Escape from Calais
  20. The Kingdom of Yetholm
  21. Immortal Meals 5#: Mannerheim and the Cigar
  22. Strange Speeches
  23. Mid Atlantic Frogs?
  24. The Nanjing Belt
  25. The Midsummer Oak and its Skeletons
  26. Flying/Levitating/Jumping in Modern Tibet
  27. Cave Art Cobblers?
  28. Fury and Cannibalism
  29. Missing Holmes
  30. Bringing Back Flogging?
  31. Beachcombing Beachcombs from Florida to Japan

June 2011

  1. Beachcombed 13
  2. Thomas Hood or Tom Hood’s Invisible Library
  3. Incest in Ancient Egypt
  4. Invisible Library at Reading
  5. Bishop Q
  6. The Were-Hyenas of Ethiopia
  7. King of the Tramps
  8. Review: The Great Pretenders
  9. Lincoln’s Prophetic Dream
  10. Christian Orgies
  11. Torturing Guy
  12. Oaks: Sacrificial and Otherwise
  13. The Green Devil of Quimper
  14. Giving Birth in a Coffin
  15. Immortal Meals 4#: Eating a French King’s Heart
  16. Jousting with Medieval Tanks
  17. King Arthur In Australia?
  18. Churchill buries Chamberlain
  19. St Andrew and Scythia
  20. Unusual Riots
  21. The Dauphin’s Heart
  22. Druids’ Eggs
  23. Destroying Cassino
  24. Ancient Beliefs in Modern Egypt
  25. Cyclops Origins
  26. Roman Mosaics and Bras in 1930s Leicester
  27. The Strangest Instrument
  28. Animal Effigies and Indian Mounds
  29. Maximilian’s Shirt
  30. The Impostor

May 2011

  1. Beachcombed 12
  2. Converting Martians
  3. Marco Polo Meets a Dragon?
  4. Blind Mice and Licking Knives
  5. Google Burns the Library at Alexandria
  6. Last Words of the Executed
  7. Against All Odds
  8. A Frightening Roman Cat
  9. True Lies
  10. William Herschel and Trees on the Moon
  11. Air Mines on the Salonika Front
  12. Bad Ass One-Liners from the Epic Tradition
  13. Occam’s Razor and Flying Bombs
  14. Origins of the Two-Finger Insult
  15. Giving Corpses Acrid Enemas
  16. Vampire Mermaids and Migraines
  17. Scotland’s Sandy Pompeii
  18. Roman Vampires?
  19. Last Words: Last Lies
  20. Manned Kite Flight in Medieval China
  21. Superman versus Hitler
  22. Shelley, the Cat, the Kite and the Bolt of Lightning
  23. Saving and Murdering in the Holocaust
  24. The Leper Prince
  25. Viking and Pirate Black Cats
  26. The Saint Who Became A Cat
  27. Julian in the Desert
  28. Flinders Island
  29. Hill Hill Hill Hill
  30. Black Cats: Unlucky for Some
  31. From Ox Carts to Railways
  32. Beachcombed 11

April 2011

  1. Crowning Corpses in Portugal
  2. Misplacing Masterpieces at Railway Stations
  3. A Book about Spitting
  4. An Early Sighting of the Loch Ness Monster?
  5. Stealing Swords in the Congo
  6. Sink or Swim: Infanticide and ‘Baptism’ on the Ancient Rhine
  7. Immortal Champagne Toast
  8. The Monster of Mondoñedo
  9. Heavenly Bodies in the Pacific
  10. The Football Charge of the Somme
  11. Cellini’s Canon
  12. The Commissar Vanishes
  13. The Fright Break!
  14. Vedic History and the Myth of the Golden Age
  15. Weeping Beachcombing Leaves WordPress
  16. The Meson del Fierro
  17. Woolly Mammoths among the Pharoahs?
  18. Cat Fishing and Brahms
  19. The Underwear of Dictators’ Lovers
  20. Kamikaze Exploration Irish Style
  21. Immortal Meals 2#: Eating in a Victorian Dinosaur
  22. Sfiga
  23. The Day Wager
  24. Barbecuing Friars in Late Medieval Florence
  25. First Unicorns?
  26. Review: Shadow Pasts
  27. Sweet Will of Stratford
  28. Crocker Land
  29. Best of Enemies

March 2011

  1. Beachcombed 10
  2. The Death Dealer of Kovno
  3. Eden in the Persian Gulf
  4. Vikings Vikinged in Dorset UK
  5. Discovering Australia in the Sixteenth Century
  6. Headless Races
  7. John and Paul: The Patagonian Giants
  8. Reading Runes at Runamo
  9. Playing Solitaire in Hitler’s Bunker
  10. Image: Tupaia’s Map
  11. Review: Atlas of Remote Islands
  12. Mermaids Sighted from Early Submarine
  13. Lancashire Kick Boxing
  14. Capital Punishment and Prehistoric Burials
  15. Jesus Christ and an Egg from Leeds
  16. Coke-head Spiders
  17. Frederick to Saladin: Roman Fantasies
  18. Image: Murder Inc
  19. Immortal Meals #1: Keats, Wordsworth, Haydon, Lamb, Monkhouse, Ritchie and the Comptroller
  20. Deciding Canadian Policy with Seances?
  21. Killer Ice-Cream!
  22. The Last Foodtaster in History?
  23. Review: Behind the Palace Doors
  24. Floating Yogis in the Fourteenth Century
  25. Nationalising Women on the Volga
  26. Transvestite Knights in the Thirteenth Century
  27. Mass Hysteria and Ancient Theatre
  28. The Problem of Pygmy Fairies
  29. Cobblers: a UFO in Palazzo Vecchio?
  30. Iambulus’s Island
  31. Queen Victoria Drinks Blood from a Skull in Tibet

February 2011

  1. Beachcombed 9
  2. Josephus’ Armies in the Sky
  3. Cat Music and Cat Organs
  4. Toasting Poland
  5. Walter’s Ancient Book in the British Tongue
  6. Catching Mermaids on Man
  7. Review: Lost Worlds
  8. Flat-earthing: the Destruction of Knowledge
  9. Viking Decapitations and the Knife Experiment
  10. Flexible Glass in Tiberius’ Rome
  11. Thirteenth-Century French Envoys in Mongolia
  12. Bierce’s Second Act
  13. Third-Century Indian Coins in Twentieth-Century Ethiopia
  14. The Last Unicorn in Medicine
  15. Childhood, Memory and Lies
  16. Cabinet of Curiosities from Eighteenth-Century London
  17. Prospero the Etruscan and Lying Historians
  18. Total Eclipse
  19. America Come Lately: Why?
  20. Diodorus’ Island
  21. Review: Myth or Legend?
  22. Painted Snowballs
  23. Atlantean ‘Flying Boats’
  24. Lavoisier Blinks
  25. Sex Life of Unicorns
  26. Bow Your Hamms to Chocolate
  27. Obscene Riddles from the Book of Exeter
  28. Image: Napoleon’s Lost Sword

January 2011

  1. Beachcombed 8
  2. Surviving Decapitation
  3. Human Health c. 8000 BC
  4. Human Sacrifice and the Athenians
  5. The Werewolf Faith in Nineteenth-Century France
  6. Review: Night Climbers of Cambridge
  7. Irish Werewolf Cub-Scouts from Hell?
  8. The Werewolf of Temesa
  9. The Allendale Wolf
  10. A Pillar and an Archer in Medieval Alexandria
  11. Image: Holy Adowa!
  12. Review: The Codex Seraphinianus
  13. Beethoven and the Fire from Heaven
  14. Silly Sieg Heils
  15. A Roman Werewolf and a Dinner Tale
  16. Irish hang-women
  17. A Werewolf in 1960s Italy
  18. Atlantis in the Far East
  19. The End of the Werewolf Faith in Strasburg
  20. The Ass Who Became a Saint
  21. The Dog-Headed Saint
  22. Image: Cow Sheds and Massacres
  23. Last Will and Testament of a Pig
  24. When Muhammad Kissed Ferdinand
  25. Review: Nuns Behaving Badly
  26. Plato’s Atlantis after Plato
  27. Epiphany Gift: War In Dollyland
  28. Prelude to Epiphany: Fitzgerald in the Trenches
  29. Mary Anning and the Fire from Heaven
  30. Image: Executing Christ
  31. Fairy Death in Ilkley

2010 218

December 2010

  1. Beachcombed 7
  2. New Year and Minnie Louise Haskins
  3. First Greek Encounter with a Parrot
  4. Martin Luther and the Fire from Heaven
  5. Tenth-Century Arabs in Mozambique
  6. Droit de Foreigner
  7. Fire from the Heavens in Early Medieval Ireland
  8. The Catalan Caganer
  9. Aulus Gellius and Antique Forteana
  10. Image: Omagh Ground Zero
  11. Review: Moa Sightings
  12. The Search for Fusang
  13. Homer Hasenpflug Dubs and Roman Legionaries in Ancient China
  14. C-section by Banana Wine
  15. First C-section and Pig Gelding
  16. Saint Patrick’s Sinning Past
  17. A Medieval Buddha at St Pancras Station?
  18. The Library of Dream
  19. The Emperor of the United States
  20. Review: Creative Malady
  21. Vasari’s Corridor
  22. Atlantis: myth and history and type C mysteries
  23. One Man’s Tulip, Another Man’s Onion
  24. Image: St Paul’s Rides the Blitz
  25. German Naturalists, Electric Eels and Horse Fishing
  26. Classicists and the Other Side
  27. Back to the Arabian unicorn
  28. Plato’s Atlantis Before Plato
  29. Image: Arresting Trouble
  30. The Crocodile, the Dog and the Wardrobe
  31. Review: The Folio Book of Historical Mysteries

November 2010

  1. Beachcombed 6
  2. Jean Hill Misremembering Kennedy
  3. Dear Lord and Father: Songs Against Songs
  4. Bats Fight Japan
  5. Byron’s Skull Cup
  6. Dog-headed Indians
  7. J. Norman Emerson and Intuitive Archeology
  8. The forgotten kingdom of Mannau
  9. The Vasari Phenomenon
  10. Changing Sex in Victorian England
  11. Great Balls of Floury Fire
  12. Review: Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition
  13. Zoological Soup and Aroused Pig: Futurist Cooking
  14. The Napalm Snake Mystery
  15. De Gaulle Flies into History
  16. Arthur’s Grave at Glastonbury Revisited: The Irish connection
  17. Biodynamics and Nazi Market Gardens
  18. Dark Age Haunting in the County Durham
  19. French Kisses, Guinea Pigs and the Spanish vice
  20. Tennyson Loses Poland
  21. The Three-Thousand-Year-Old Toads of Hector of Troy?
  22. Review: Darwin’s Tortoise
  23. Crow Bombs: Avian Missiles in the Medieval World
  24. On Church Fathers and Peacock Flesh…
  25. Mystery Chinese Weapon from 1277
  26. Hot Chocolate at High Mass
  27. Baby-Eating Eagles
  28. The Moas of Cannibal Gorge
  29. Rant: Lost Works, Mary Beard and ‘the Survival of the Fittest’
  30. The Parrots of the Atures

October 2010

  1. Beachcombed 5
  2. The mystery of the hibernating hirundines
  3. Review: Farquhar, Foolishly Forgotten Americans
  4. New Born Lambs, New Born Ideas
  5. The Made-Up Battle of Karánsebes
  6. Aristotle and the Flatulent Earth
  7. The Last Scalping in History?
  8. Pytheas and the Mysterious Marine Lung
  9. Image: Decapitation at Aitape, 1943
  10. Rhyming Violence in Early Medieval Ireland
  11. The Great Republic of Rough and Ready
  12. Last Axe Decapitations in the West
  13. Getting the Future Wrong: Book titles
  14. Elizabeth Siddal: poets behaving badly
  15. Image: Dancing to Save the World
  16. Review: After the Funeral – the Posthumous Adventures of Famous Corpses
  17. Christopher Columbus and Mermaids
  18. Harry: A 175 Year Old Survivor of the Beagle?
  19. Calleva: the Last Romano-British City
  20. The Isis Arms: Britain’s oldest pub
  21. Going Dark Age on the Circle Line
  22. A Ring, A Curse Stone and J.R.R. Tolkien
  23. Druidic Ravens at the Tower of London?
  24. Politicians and Maps
  25. Mayan Blood and Mayan Victims
  26. Antique Christians in Furthest China
  27. Germans Pay for the Sins of Their Great, Great, Great Grandfathers
  28. Hunter-Shoppers
  29. Image: Comrade Lenin in Antarctica
  30. Boiling mice in the name of history
  31. Those Nice Austro-Hungarian Machine Gunners
  32. Beachcombed 4

September 2010

  1. Dragons and Hairy Stars in Early Ireland
  2. The Table Leg that Changed History (Kind Of)
  3. San Miniato: Renaissance Vandalism
  4. Image: They Can Because They Think They Can
  5. Blowing Up Robin Hood Airport
  6. The Galeotti: Rowing Out Of The Barbary Coast
  7. Garibaldi’s Worst Hours
  8. Super-Centenarians in the Roman Empire
  9. A Kingdom in a London Hotel Room
  10. Baron Munchhausen and Jack the Ripper
  11. The Cornbeef Sandwich that Almost Destroyed a Spacecraft…
  12. Ten Thousand Romans in Turkmenistan
  13. The Treasure Message: A Challenge
  14. Dowsing for Submarines
  15. ‘English As She is Spoke’
  16. The Nine Unknown – An Invisible Library
  17. Life on Mars and Other Stories
  18. Arthur’s Grave at Glastonbury
  19. The Tiv and Hamlet
  20. A Medieval Coin in New England Soil
  21. Review: A Handbook on Hanging
  22. Curse Thy Neighbour
  23. Tom Wintringham and Lenin’s Tractor
  24. Image: Pius XII in a bombed out Rome
  25. Eating Roadkill
  26. Centaur of Volos
  27. History and Akasha – A Walk on the Wild Side…
  28. Transexual Medieval Irish Abbot
  29. Tally-ho: From Fighter Planes to Norman Knights?

August 2010

  1. Beachcombed 3
  2. The Buddha Converts to Catholicism
  3. Review: First Light
  4. In Search of Aristotle’s ‘On Comedy’
  5. The Last ‘Battle’ of the Revenge
  6. Churchill’s Dream
  7. Madog: The Missing Trans-Atlantic Poem
  8. Numbers and the White Slave Trade
  9. 24 August 1940: The Night That Hitler Lost The War
  10. Fasting Against God in Medieval Ireland
  11. Women Drivers in Stalingrad
  12. Centaurs in Deepest Arabia
  13. The Buddha in Viking Sweden
  14. Biggles Meets the Sandman
  15. Roman legionaries in Central Asia?
  16. The South Will Rise Again…in Brazil
  17. The Dual Death of Harold II
  18. The Soccer War of 1969
  19. Review: Off the Beaten Track in the Classics
  20. Image: First light
  21. The Mystery of Hanno’s Fiery Streams
  22. Unicorns in Sixteenth-Century Arabia?
  23. Latin or Celtic Arthur?
  24. A Hitlerian Invisible Library
  25. Republic of Indian Stream
  26. Sex and Roman Coins
  27. Dowsing for Machine Guns
  28. Romans on the Shores of the Caspian Sea
  29. The Battle of the Somme in London
  30. Victorian Poacher Sparks Will o’ the Wisp Scare
  31. A Column of Burning Snakes
  32. Beachcombed 2

July 2010

  1. Bat-men and New York, 1835
  2. Russian Roulette Before the Pistol
  3. Shakespeare’s Lost Letters
  4. False Armistice: the Cable that Lied to a Nation
  5. Review: War Elephants
  6. Elephants and Burning Pigs
  7. The Last Elephant Charge in History?
  8. An Elephant Invades Italy in 1936
  9. Elephants in Eighth-century Honduras?
  10. Mongol elephants in America?
  11. Execution by Elephant
  12. An Early Christian Apostless
  13. Purring – a Lancashire Martial Art?
  14. ET Phones Home in the Fifteenth Century?
  15. Invisible Libraries: a Victorian Contribution
  16. A Roman Emperor in Second-Century China?
  17. A Fifteenth-Century Interest in Scandinavian Plague Rats
  18. A Head Turn that Ruined the Twentieth Century
  19. Genocide on the Isle of Wight?
  20. Adult Breast-Feeding in the Renaissance and Early Modern World
  21. New Theory for Vesuvius, 79 AD
  22. Death by Celluloid
  23. Medieval Sex: The Good Salvation Guide
  24. The Karma Sutra of the Ancient Mediterranean
  25. Cat Murder in Early Modern Ypres
  26. Review: The Sledge Patrol
  27. Did Hitler and Lenin Play Chess Together in 1909?
  28. Mad Coin-Burying Halliday
  29. A Mystery Animal in Ancient Africa
  30. Nineteenth-Century Witchcraft in Hebden Bridge

June 2010

  1. Beachcombed 1
  2. Oft hung John Lee and an urban legend
  3. German Crusaders lost in Central Asia?
  4. Review: Strange Histories
  5. Nazi Kurt captured in Arctic Circle in 1981
  6. Jesuits and Altitude Sickness
  7. The return of Mayan-style human sacrifice
  8. The God Mars and Florence
  9. World’s Last Latin Speakers in Africa?
  10. Totalitarian Trees
  11. American Pilot Purloins World’s Last Roman Eagle?
  12. Surviving Hanging
  13. The American Civil War and a Coincidence
  14. A Medieval Christian Fairy World
  15. Review: Curiosities of British Archaeology
  16. The Last Cavalry Charge in History?
  17. Ancient Britons Killing Roman Elephants?
  18. Marchers on the Moon
  19. Language Confusion in Vinland
  20. Unluckiest in History
  21. Celts in Ancient Sicily
  22. Hitler’s Class-Mate
  23. Victorian Venus Spokes
  24. Outrageous British Street Names
  25. Victorian sewer pigs
  26. American Indians in Roman Europe?
  27. Orgies in Victorian Skipton!
  28. Longbow at Dunkirk
  29. Victorian Will o’ the Wisp
  30. Vegetation on Mars
  31. Circumnavigating Africa six centuries before Christ

May 2010

  1. Oleg Penkovsky, Six Breaths and World Destruction
  2. Tibetan soldiers in the Second World War
  3. Tyrkjaránið – Arab Pirates in Iceland

2013–2015 →