Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to the first Link Dump of 2025!

A "possessed" woman in India.

The links between an Italian Duchess, Thomas Cromwell, and Anne Boleyn.

Some supernatural reasons not to stray off the beaten path.

Alexander the Great's charm offensive.

A map of the Big Cats of Britain.

Superstitions can be good for you.

The strange Rohonc Codex.

Some predictions about 2025 from 100 years ago.

A medical mystery in a French village.

The ghosts of the Cuban Club.

The journeys of Daniel Defoe.

A "proper New Year's gift" for your 18th century maidservant.

In which Princess Mathilde Bonaparte breaks all norms.

Past ways of predicting the future.

Some old British New Year's resolutions.

UFOs and Jimmy Carter.

A New Year's death omen.

The New England Airship Hoax.

The traditions of Plough Monday.

A "walkable" 16th century city.

The blue-eyed murderers.

We have a new "oldest book in the world."  Catchy title, too.

Using grammar to solve cold cases.

The mystery of the body in the basement of a New York club.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a road trip that ended in mysterious tragedy.  In the meantime, here's Neil Young.

Newspaper Clipping of the New Year's Day

Via Newspapers.com

Let’s kick off 2025 with a New Year’s ghost story from Tennessee.  The “Knoxville Journal,” January 1, 1935:

TULLAHOMA Jan 1 (Tuesday)—As the new year winged through Tullahoma at midnight townsmen gathered quietly in the main streets to see the Ghost of Tullahoma walk. 

For the past 62 years there have been those who have sworn that at midnight the apparition of a beautiful woman appears walking along the edge of high buildings.

The legend stretches back through the years to 1872 when two circus performers, man and wife, came to Tullahoma on their way South. They arrived on the last day of the year.

A rope was stretched across the street between two buildings, and the woman balanced her way over the road while her husband accepted contributions to pay their expenses. 

But there was an accident that fateful day in ‘72, and the woman pitched headlong to the ground. 

Townsmen buried her in the city cemetery and erected at the head of the grave a cedar board bearing this inscription: “Nina, aerial artist wife of Peter Conway 1872.”

And each New Year’s eve at midnight the legend says that Nina comes again airily walking along above the heads of revelers. 

Did Nina walk last night? 

There were many who said she did. They say that as the whistles and bells heralded the new year, she came dressed in circus clothes tripping along the tops of buildings. 

But most thought this sheer fantasy and were certain that Nina still rests in her small cemetery with the headboard.

As far as I can tell, this legend appears to have been forgotten, so perhaps poor Nina’s ghost is finally resting in peace.