Weekend Link Dump

This week's Link Dump is hosting a slumber party!

Where the hell is Napoleon's gold?

Who the hell was the Strawberry Girl?

What the hell is the Stone Head of Salaspils?

What the hell was the first shot of the Civil War?  It may not have been what we think.

Watch out for that Magellanic Cloud!

The birth of 19th century spiritualism.

Victorians worried a lot about being cremated alive.  Possibly not without reason.

How did Alexander Hamilton get along with the first five presidents?  (Spoiler: Not well.)

Earth's magnetic field is going nuts, which may explain a lot about current events.

The battle to raise the Vasa.

The life of Mary, Countess of Elgin.

The first dentures.

A woman's life in an early 20th century circus.

A brief look at buffalo history.

Insert your favorite "I'm not saying it's aliens, but..." joke here.

The lost world of Spitalfields alleys.

You've heard of the first test tube baby?  Meet the first London Tube baby.

The fascinating world of Cornish folklore.

The weird world of 18th century wigs and beards.

The Case of the Viking Bodysnatching.

A mysterious man's mysterious death.

Edgar Cayce, Atlantis, and the blue stone.

The horrors of editing Marcel Proust.

The true work of the "cunning-folk."

A mysterious genetic disease that affects only one known family.

1000-year-old teeth give a clue about medieval manuscripts.

What it was like being a servant at Chatsworth House.

The courtesan and the abolitionist: a love story.

The death of a conspiracy theorist sparks--wait for it!-- conspiracy theories.

The power of eye contact.

The death of the world's first communist.

An inexplicable family tragedy.

Charlie Chaplin in the East End.

A new documentary dealing with Appalachian Weird.  There's quite a bit of it, evidently.

The case of the pin-swallowing child.

If you wanted to see what your neighborhood looked like 20 million years ago, have I got the map for you.

Tools of the executioner.

Seeking immortality can be the death of you.

For those of you keeping score, yes, human feet are still popping up all along the Pacific Northwest.

George Washington faces an assassination plot.

The last Royal Navy sailor hanged for sodomy.

John Power didn't hang.  Unfortunately.

A look at London's lost ice house.

Uncovering an early--very, very early--political assassination.

Mt. Penn's odd fire tower.

Philip K. Dick, call your office.

The earliest known texts dealing with the invention of writing.

This week in Russian Weird looks at the world's worst doll maker.

Why the first balloonists to cross the English Channel did so without their pants.

A mesmerizing little video of snow falling on an Alaskan sea:



Why scientists in India are dissing Einstein.

The White Lady of Greenwich Street.

The history of the Baddeley Cake.

What may be the world's most beautiful bookstore.

The tragic end of Greenpoint Jerry.

The tragic end of a lion tamer.

That's it for this week! See you on Monday, when we'll look at the strange death of a French politician. Until then, here's some vintage Linda.