"...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, August 18, 2023

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

And more late-summer fun with the Strange Company HQ staff!



The house of Mystery Mannequins.

The town that comes to life only once a year.

The ghosts of Beachy Head.

The loss of the schooner Betsey, 1805.

The flatworm that could hold the secrets of life.

A salute to Germany's cow chapels.

One really haunted house.

A man who fled Communism, only to flee civilization as well.

The British diplomat who tried to save the Romanovs.

No, Charlemagne did not have an asbestos tablecloth.  Sorry.

Here's pirate Jean Lafitte's grave.  Maybe.

I like that there are people on the internet compiling lists of medieval towns that had sewer systems.

The lost library of Herculaneum.

I suppose I was a happier person before I learned that ancient Egyptians used crocodile dung as birth control.

What Ötzi the Iceman looked like.

Rediscovering forgotten Knights Templar graves.

The mystery of the "birthday effect."

The oldest resident at Hampton Court Palace.

The origin of the expression "double-edged sword."

The skeletons of Waterloo casualties were found in a Belgian attic.

The world is getting way too Philip K. Dick for my taste.

What may be the world's largest asteroid impact structure.

The WWII journal of an American POW.

Britain's oldest door.

The undertaker sends his condolences.

The life of a male lion is usually nasty, brutish, and short.

The disappearance of an 11-year-old girl.

British ladies and their "beautiful game," 1895.

The Osage Murders.

The world's oldest restaurant.

T.E. Lawrence and the Hashemite dynasty.

Inside the mind of Napoleon.

The ancient culture that would regularly burn down their homes.

Some famous "lost burials."

The "big freeze" that made Europe uninhabitable.

Why Richard III pardoned John Morton.

You can't always trust the science.

Chess in the Georgian/Regency era.

America's last public execution.

A 400-year-old "vampire child."

The hunt for a fugitive murderer.

A mysterious message in a bottle.

An Ice Age carving of an unknown animal.

A handy reminder that we know very little about our own world.

Historical ice cream flavors could get...unusual.

A Bloomsbury boy in the Baltic.

The only woman to be executed in New Zealand.

Vintage photos of "hopping season."

Saturn's hundred-year storms.

The time the U.S. government wanted to flood the Grand Canyon.

A really weird ancient skull.

A "horrible and mysterious murder."

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a puzzling disappearance along a hiking trail.  In the meantime, bring on the one-man bands!

I'm old enough to remember this guy.

3 comments:

  1. I like recognising names in your link dumps; they are sometimes like old friends. I have Thomas Preston's book of memoirs, "Before the Curtain" and an interesting read it is, too. For a regrettably unlikely yet fascinating theory of an attempt to rescue the Romanovs (instigated by King George V, no less), you may want to look into Michael Occleshaw's "The Romanov Conspiracies". What makes it interesting is that the same author wrote a detailed and well-researched history of British military intelligence in World War One ("Armour Against Fate"); in it he first wrote of a possible rescue mission. The pictures of the 'hopping season' are interesting; that time and activity are probably best known from H. E. Bates's novel "The Darling Buds of May". And lastly, medieval sewers: I too am glad that people know about them. According to Margaret Wood, the people who cleaned cesspits in medieval England were actually well-paid tradesmen...

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    Replies
    1. I read Occleshaw's book. The assassination of the Romanovs, and the failure of any other government to rescue them, has always been a puzzle to me. It's such a murky bit of history.

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  2. And the Strange Company HQ staff certainly have more fun on their holidays than I do...

    ReplyDelete

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