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Strange Air Battle in the Caucasus
Posted:Wed, 19 Jun 2013 23:01:33 +0000
In volume 7 of the Seyahatname the Turkish traveler Evliya Celebi describes his travels in Austria, the Crimea and the Caucasus in 1664. 28 April of that year he had a remarkable experience in Circassia. As there is no English translation of EC we have to rely here on Carlo Ginzburg’s paraphrase of a translation [...] -
Running Naked in the Nineteenth Century
Posted:Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:01:50 +0000
There are few things in life quite as sweet as grown men making fools of themselves. Beach recently stumbled upon this account and he has got it vaguely marked down for a strange sport tag: any other suggestions for the same, drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com In passing yesterday [1808] through the Ride in Hyde [...] -
Magonia #8: The Comte de Gabalis and the Sylphs
Posted:Mon, 17 Jun 2013 23:01:54 +0000
The Magonia series is now almost at an end. But Beach could not sink the sky boats without a reference to the Comte de Gabalis, one of the most hellishly strange books ever written (first edition 1670). The CdG is a seventeenth-century esoteric text, essentially a long discussion of the secret life of elementals: the [...] -
Totoro and Kiki: A Tribute
Posted:Sun, 16 Jun 2013 23:01:49 +0000
***Dedicated to little Miss Beachcombing who makes 5 today and who Beach will be spoiling for the next hours*** Ghibli is a Japanese cartoon studio that has, in the last thirty years, created two of the greatest films for children and two of the greatest fairy/witch films ever made: Totoro (1988) and Kiki (1989). [...] -
Peter, Abraham and Muhammad on the Wrong Side of the Urals
Posted:Sat, 15 Jun 2013 23:01:08 +0000
Here’s a bizarre scenario (with no basis in the historical record…). c.c.c.1000 a Jewish, a Muslim and a Christian missionary find themselves on the wrong side of the Ural Mountains among a horse-killing, horse-worshipping pagan people (and before anyone writes in there is some ancient and medieval evidence for Jewish ‘evangelism’). The Christian missionary, Peter, [...] -
Magonia #7: Grimaldus and Chemical Warfare
Posted:Fri, 14 Jun 2013 23:01:41 +0000
There follows another extract from Agobard’s essay on thunder and hail. It is not actually linked in any way to Magonia: so why bother? Well, first, it is certainly bizarre and should be recorded on strangehistory. And, second, because many who have written on Magonia have undeservedly conflated the Tempestarii and this strange episode. A [...] -
Swiss Zulus
Posted:Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:01:00 +0000
‘Never invade Russia in November’, ‘never start a land war in Asia’ and ‘don’t ever but ever bring a sword to a gun fight’. That last point might be self evident. However, because of the technological gap between different cultures in the post medieval period, all too often courageous men with spears and blades found [...] -
Blood at El-Halia
Posted:Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:01:16 +0000
Civil war is always terrible. But the Anglo-Saxon world has experienced, at least in modern times, relatively mild versions. The English Civil War was admittedly the most traumatic event on British soil in the last seven hundred years, but, with shameful exceptions from Scotland and Ireland, civilians were not usually put to the sword. Likewise [...] -
Magonia #6: Leland Sings Magonia
Posted:Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:01:53 +0000
Elizabeth Pennell writes in her memoirs of Charles Leland, the nineteenth-century folklorist and alleged bullshitter: He got well over the gout in the spring and summer of 1891, as he travelled by easy stages several weeks at Via Reggio, Geneva, Homburg to London for his last visit there. He went on with his Heine [the [...] -
Buried Alive in Ninteenth-Century India
Posted:Mon, 10 Jun 2013 23:01:56 +0000
***Dedicated to Leif*** Busy day chez Beachcombing as two Romanians help to retrieve a garden that has been abandoned for forty years to a state of wellbeing. On the subject of digging this brilliant piece was sent in by an old friend of this blog, Leif. The text comes from The Court and Camp of [...] -
Vision Quest #3: Witch Lotions
Posted:Sun, 09 Jun 2013 23:01:09 +0000
An interesting witch case from fourteenth-century Italy with hints of hallucinogens. The following passages appear in the work of Bernard of Siena (aka Bernardino, and Bernardine) (obit 1444). This, btw, is before the witch craze really catches fire. It has several curious features. I having preached of these charms and of witches and of sorceries, [...] -
Jasper and Butternuts on the Edges of Vinland
Posted:Sat, 08 Jun 2013 23:01:22 +0000
***Dedicated to Wade*** Jasper is a silica stone that was used by our ancestors both as a decoration and as a form of primitive match. Because of its fire-making properties jasper is often found in archaeological digs. A nice example of this is the dozen odd pieces of jasper that have been discovered over the [...] -
Magonia #5: What’s In A Name?
Posted:Fri, 07 Jun 2013 23:01:00 +0000
One significant part of the Magonia puzzle that Beach has not yet troubled with is the name. Surely there should be a clue in those four syllables as to what Magonia really was? Well, there have been, suitably enough, four theories that have been put forward, over the years, to explain what the word ‘Magonia’ [...] -
William Thornber and the Witches, Boggarts, Sorcerers and People of the Fylde
Posted:Thu, 06 Jun 2013 23:01:39 +0000
Part of the StrangeHistory project is to put up sources that for some reason have not made it onto Google Books and the like. In an attempt to do just this Beach spent a long hour typing out, yesterday, 3000 words from William Thornber’s The History of Blackpool and its Neighbourhood (Poulton 1837). I know, [...] -
Nine Historical Mysteries
Posted:Wed, 05 Jun 2013 23:01:39 +0000
***Dedicated to Moonman*** Thanks to an email from an old friend of StrangeHistory Beach found himself wondering about moments from history that are mysterious, and where this blogger would chop off his own digits to get at the truth. In what follows, he has avoided the classics because, to be frank, he just doesn’t care [...] -
Sex Madness!
Posted:Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:01:11 +0000
A very early morning and, after Beach finished his drudge work surprisingly quickly, he found himself dragged by a link (from a book of sermons by Bernard of Siena…) to a 1938 film entitled ‘Sex Madness!’ The adolescent in Beach got antsy and he wasted the next 51.58 seconds watching this tawdry but fascinating and [...]
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