"...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, September 18, 2020

Weekend Link Dump

“The Witches’ Cove,” Follower of Jan Mandijn 


This week’s Link Dump has a particularly distinguished audience!

Illustrated London News, November 1, 1996


The sort of thing that happened when you got on Ivan the Terrible's bad side.

Mrs. Stum was a useful person to have around if you happen to be dead.

A well-married woman with the glorious name of Temperance Flowerdew.

Just one of those Fortean things.  I've had this happen to me twice just this week.




The particularly creepy Babysitter Killer.

The exhumations of Highgate Cemetery.

A rare surviving slave ship log book.


Ghana's witch camps.

Plants engage in chemical warfare.

This week in Russian Weird brings us an Ice Age bear.

A Georgian era black violin prodigy.  And yes, there were two posts about him this week.  Is George planning to make a comeback?

An unsolved disappearance in the Old West.

That time Oscar Hammerstein got the bright idea to put on a show starring 300 cats.

Some of the odder moments in the history of sanitation.


An artist's odd posthumous fame.

Poland, the Knights Templar, and the Holy Grail.


Science looks at the "Mozart effect."

A suffragette's poetic toilet paper.

Ancient methods of proving your identity.

How ancient Romans got away with murder.

Minnesota's Root Beer Lady.

The life of Ada, medieval Queen of Scots.

The bizarre tragedy of Suzanne Sevakis.

A Danish naval hero.

A murder on Twelfth Street.

If you've got too much clutter, blame a Victorian.

The temporary cities of the Transcontinental Railroad.

How a Swedish soldier became a cannibal king.

Our solar system contains weird brown dwarfs.




A haunted lumber camp.

A 19th century horror at sea.

The proper ways to address unmarried ladies.



Let's talk cursed temples.


How the Civil War started in 1851.


And...that's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a 17th century woman's mysterious death.  In the meantime, here's a real oldie:


3 comments:

  1. George Bridgetower isn't the first black violinist of the period I had read about. Joseph Emidy, a freed slave in Portugal, was so admired by the famous naval officer Edward Pellew that he was impressed into the Royal Navy so he could entertain the sailors. The impressment was probably illegal and more like kidnapping, given that it didn't take place in England. Emidy was eventually discharged from the Navy, and settled in Cornwall, where he married a local woman, raised a family, and had a long and successful musical career.

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  2. Did Ivan the Terrible have a GOOD side? And the Mozart effect is simply the effect superb music has on one's health. I imagine there is a Hadyn effect, a Beethoven effect, even a Van Morrison effect. No Kanye West effect though...

    (And the cat audience... If I were a performer, I'd be afraid of receiving...cat-calls...)

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  3. A quick Googling shows much more inof on Caroline Cramachi, much ofit contradictory. you might write an entire acticle about her.It took some searchgin btu i foudn a photo of the museum exhibit of her death mask, castof her arm, hand, and foot, a rign she wore, and her shoes and stocking. her skeleton is at the sam place the Hunterian Museum in Sctoland.

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