"...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, July 8, 2022

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

I had to put this one together on my own.  As you can see, the Strange Company staffers are off on their summer vacation.



Where the hell is Attila the Hun buried?

A case of murder in high places.

The aftermath of the Paris Commune.

Some very old fossils turn out to be even older than we thought.

Two peacetime tragedies in the Royal Navy.

A London summer with George Cruikshank.

The history of rodeos.

A seemingly motiveless murder.

Some pioneering female astronomers.

It turns out that Latin is only a semi-dead language.

A look at the famed Berners Street Hoax.

The music of ancient rock paintings.

A London bigamist.

Ice Age cave art.

A haunted beach is being destroyed.  Not by ghosts--by humans.

A 50,000 year old needle.

The Fourth of July in 19th century Boston.

London now has an island of wet wipes.  I don't see that becoming a big tourist attraction.  Although, now that I think about it, maybe it will.  Because people are weird.  Now that I think more about it, dibs on the souvenir shop.

The ocean research that saved lives during WWII.

The oldest-known law.

A flying man, and a flying donkey.

On the origins of "stinking rich."

How NORAD began tracking Santa Claus.

A soldier decorates his own grave.

A mysterious cult older than Stonehenge.

Tudor haute couture.

The woman who gave birth to 69 babies.  

The man who spent 37 years living in a pillar.  Every time I hear this story, I wonder about what he did for, uh, bathroom breaks.  And then I realize I probably don't want to know.

The sign language of medieval Norwegian monks.

A brief history of the hard hat.

A medical student in early 19th century Cairo.

The 1950's temperance movement.

When pineapples were a status symbol.

Excavating an Iron Age burial site.

Contemporary news reports about the "year without a summer."

A "last meal" from 5,300 years ago.

A newly-discovered giant water lily.

A flash-frozen ancient grave.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a man who just didn't know when to quit his job.  In the meantime, here's a classic old folk tune.


1 comment:

  1. I never knew the origin of the NORAD/Santa Claus tradition. It turns out it could have come from a movie - and I'm surprised it hasn't been turned into one, with Tom Hanks playing the colonel, one suspects... The oldest known law code sounds like a pretty good one. Can you imagine the idea of fixed laws being given for the first time? A codified system of laws has to be one of the foundations of civilisation.

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