"...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, November 3, 2023

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to November's first Link Dump!

While you read, relax in Strange Company HQ's gardens.  They're looking particularly fine right now.



The Tremulous Hand of Worcester.

The latest on the search for Noah's Ark.

How King James I left his mark on history.  Usually not in a good way, IMO.

The Northeastern Blackout of 1965.

A real-life Snow White.

The most kissed man in America.

The reform of 19th century prison hulks.

A writer (maybe) solved a murder while on summer vacation.

The weirdness of the letter "R."

That time Lincoln's corpse was nearly kidnapped.

That time the U.S. Congress paid for a man's tobacco.  To be honest, they've done far worse things with taxpayer money.

The truth about medieval cats.

Public celebrations in the mid-18th century.

The Golden Age of Malay cinema.

More on "Landing the Pie."

Michelangelo's secret room.

The Chillingworth murders.

Victorian killer walls.

The magical Sator squares.

A bad haircut leads to murder.

Bowerbirds and the color blue.

Some weird rejected patents.

A Parisian All Souls' Day.

London's Paper Bag Baron.

Grandiose delusions aren't necessarily all bad. 

The disappearance of Ambrose Bierce.  (For what little it's worth, I suspect that Bierce engineered his own disappearance--that he went off to commit suicide in some remote spot where he knew he'd probably never be found.)

The Star Chamber meets conjurers and crooks.

Scotland's most infamous corpse dealers.  And corpse makers.

The legend of "Soap Sally."

A visit to a haunted London pub.

Manhattan's "Pumpkin House."

The Dead Man in Clerkenwell.

A disappearance and a mysterious cave.

A confusing tale of an infant with two mothers.

Charlotte Bronte and the supernatural.

Archaeologists and the supernatural.

Gravestones that double as recipes.

The minister and the Cemetery Thing.

An 18th century wife, mother, and radical.

The murder of a schoolgirl.

An obituary writer that helps people go out in style.

An asteroid that might be a chunk of the Moon.

The world's oldest trees.

When believing in ghosts became a class marker.

Why it's not called "siteseeing."

The world's biggest ball of twine.

A whole lot of things go missing from museums.

The life of a multi-talented Shakespearean scholar.

An "extinct" flower unexpectedly shows up.

Two men who murdered their families.

If you've ever wanted to turn Lake Superior into a loaf of bread (and who hasn't?) here's the recipe.

The afterlife and the Scole Experiment.

A murderer's last-minute confession.

An 18th century theater token...that may still be valid!

An assortment of British ghost stories.

The secret of Ulysses S. Grant's success.

How books were made in the 16th century.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll visit that ever-popular topic of Death Premonitions.  In the meantime, let's drum up some music.

6 comments:

  1. Just passing.....
    Now! This is far, far better.......
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJh9W3Gcpmo

    ReplyDelete
  2. Personally I prefer this theory https://donswaim.com/bierce-charles-fort.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. The oldest trees... There is something wonderful and venerable in such life-forms. "Sight'-seeing and not 'site', makes sense, if you think about it. No one goes to a site; they visit a sight... And as for grandiose illusions, I think I would prefer someone not based in reality not to save me; his methods may not be quite to my liking... (I do hope to visit the Strange Company gardens. They do indeed look fine.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. How terrifying it must have been for Judge Chillingworth to see his wife weighted down and drowned, knowing that he was going to suffer the same fate.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated. Because no one gets to be rude and obnoxious around here except the author of this blog.