"...we should pass over all biographies of 'the good and the great,' while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows."
~Edgar Allan Poe

Friday, December 14, 2018

Weekend Link Dump



This week's Link Dump is sponsored by still more of our Christmas Cats!







What the hell became of Lloyd Gaines?

Watch out for those cursed Christmas trees!

Watch out for those hungry ghosts!

That time when it was a Fun Thing to tour morgues.

Superstitions about Thursdays.

Another Jacobin bites the dust.

Scotland and the Yule Log.

Abraham Lincoln and the murder trial.

How Joan Cuneo managed to get all women banned from auto racing.

The Winter of Death and the Snowman Invasion.

Real-life Christmas ghost stories.

The first Human Cannonball.

A brief history of dentures.

Hanukkah folklore and traditions.

Christmas in Georgian England.

London's "garrotting panic."

The Monsanto murder.

Shopping at the mall, 18th century style.

"Book-women" and the Great Fire of London.

Why it's never a good idea to marry someone who threatens to kill you.

It's usually not so swell to be Peter the Great's brother-in-law, either.

A fascinating look at what killed people in a 17th century village.  Watch out for those killer fairies!

Victorian Christmastime crimes.

When turkeys wore boots.

Using Artificial Intelligence to decipher ancient languages.

Napoleon's 1840 funeral.

Deserted families in the 19th century.

The real Pied Piper.

The real Lady Godiva.

Pro tip: Don't bother trying to drown Aleix Segura.  It won't be easy.

A possible 19th century serial killer.

Zimbabwe, land of cursed beer.

Antarctica, land of psychological hibernation.

This week in Russian Weird: the country's most advanced robot turns out to be...amazingly lifelike.

A spectral Christmas tree.

The "other" Easter Island.

The best-selling fiction of the past 100 years.  It's rather sobering how many of these books are now completely forgotten.

Old Marylebone.

An amazing story of premature birth.

And we're done for the week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a famed 18th century eccentric.  In the meantime, since we're heading into winter, here's a Latvian song honoring the season. I think I posted this last year, but so what. I love it.



1 comment:

  1. I always rather like the Georgian era. I view it as cleaner than the Victorian - as with everything, it all depends on where one is looking - simply because it strikes me as less urban. Christmas in the Georgian era would have been quite as homey as in the Victorian.

    I recall reading old bound issues of "Punch" magazine from the 1850s (they were bound in yearly volumes, big, well put-together tomes; some of the few books I would not have minded stealing for my own library. Alas, I am too honest. Or cowardly). Anyway, I came across the garroting scare in them; a serious subject but treated with gentle humour, as was "Punch"'s way then.

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