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| "The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn |
The Strange Company HQ staff wish you a happy Easter!
Getting away with murder in Regency England.
What happened after the Mutiny on the Bounty.
So, let's talk medieval zombies and shapeshifters.
A guy who made a living eating things nobody should be eating.
Decoding ancient smells.
What ancient people thought of their ancient ruins.
Brutality at a Catholic "poor school."
The bizarre shooting of Marvin Gaye.
A brief history of Shakespeare's Juliet.
One very long spinsterhood.
Elephants may have domesticated themselves.
"The Decameron" and male underpants.
A brief history of Westminster Abbey.
An eggy corpse. I came across this story a while back, and was completely flummoxed by it. My best guess is that the burial was some sort of occult ritual--it seems like a waste of a lot of eggs otherwise--but who knows?
The possible origins of "heard it through the grapevine."
One very scandalous politician.
In which Napoleon's penis goes on tour.
The execution of murderer Mary Pearcey.
A family that barks at people, communicates through grunts, and lives in squalor. To be honest, they sound like me on most days.
If you lived 170,000 years ago, you'd be dining on roasted, supersized land snails.
The good-luck cat of the Brooklyn Robins.
A tale of disastrous paintings.
The coronation of George I.
What Antarctica looks like under all that ice.
A wife goes up for sale.
The Bank Nun Ghost.
Where the term "laundry list" came from.
Mathematicians have found a weird new shape.
Why horseshoes are considered lucky.
19th century exercises for ladies.
Native Americans utilized horses much earlier than we thought.
So maybe Stonehenge wasn't an ancient calendar.
A war over eggs in early San Francisco.
Bees are pretty damn smart.
A brave Union girl.
A vengeful (and homicidal) husband.
A murder and an attempted murder.
The "unluckiest man in the world."
A con artist turned murderer.
Yes, the crystal Aztec skulls are fakes. Sorry.
The Screaming Spectre of Farringdon Station.
2,000 years of ancient Egyptian graffiti.
Ill-fated and scandalous lovers.
The swindling wolf of Wolfe Tavern.
That's it for this week! See you on Monday, when we'll look at a mysterious death at a luxury hotel. In the meantime, here's a clip that could only have come from the 1970s.
It's interesting that in some cases later cultures in Middle America tried to impse themselves on the ruins of previous cultures, as if to claim their past authority. Rulers are rulers, no matter what their race. The story of the "Decameron" underpants is a weird one. I get the feeling I would have risked the plague rather than ten days with that crowd. As for horseshoes, I didn't know the St Dunstan legend. But one theory about the origin of iron being noxious to fairies is interesting. I'd read that fairies were derived from the original inhabitants of lands occupied by more advanced people. The former inhabitants became mysterious beings who hid from people in remote places - like fairies. The fairies' fear of iron came from the originals' having stone or just bronze weapons, while the newcomers had superior weapons made of iron. This would not apply to all cases of 'little folk' but I think it's intriguing, even so.
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