"...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, December 12, 2014

Weekend Link Dump


Glowing-Eyed Demon Cats:  They're not just for Halloween anymore!



The latest chapter in our ongoing compilation of The Weird:

Where the hell are Europa's geysers?

Who the hell was Maggie Wall?

Who the hell killed Ken McElroy?  Or perhaps the question is, "Who didn't?"

What the hell is visiting the Bulloo River?

How the hell was Lazarus Averbuch killed?

Why the hell is this cat green? Now we...maybe know?

Watch out for sand!

Watch out for turnip wine!

Watch out for Christmas presents!

Really watch out for UR116!

The world is really booming!

Pennygown: A beautiful and somewhat mysterious old Scottish graveyard.

Here's something you don't see every day:  a Victorian underwater ballroom.

Meet Edmund, whose books will Curll your toes.

Okay, I'll go for William Shatner as the gouty clergyman, with Jennifer Lawrence as the haphazardly married Elizabeth Smith.

The British Navy meets some Christmas Eve gun-running in 1910 Dubai.  It all worked out about as well as you'd think.

Victorian children, lost and found.

"The King's Mirror": a treasure trove of medieval weirdness.

Anthropomorphic taxidermy:  Because the Victorians never tired of finding new ways to weird us out.

Meet Zeus, an amazing-looking rescue owl.

Bribing a man to marry a pauper mother, 1849.

A really out-of-this-world lake?

Saving Wolsey's Angels.

How to celebrate St. Nicholas' Day.

A look at historic Christmas cribs.

Philippe d'Auvergne, British spymaster.

Was this the most unfortunate rescue in history?

Peculiar Historical Theory of the week:  Was Leonardo da Vinci's mother a Chinese slave?

How servants knew their place in Victorian England.

A talk with Dorothy Parker.

An old shoe store turns out to be a fashion time capsule.

Untangling the many recorded fates of the "Sea Bird."

American Gothic: the real "Little House on the Prairie."

Fanny Bertrand, the fiery Countess.

A 14th century witchcraft case that all in all, was very unfair to an unfortunate black cat.

Trolls who eat children, elfish food thieves, and killer cats.  It can only mean one thing:  Merry Icelandic Christmas!

Some rainstorms require not an umbrella, but a barbecue.

Mary Lincoln holds a seance.

Gout: a classic Georgian Era ailment.

To explain how all those Georgians got the gout, here's some Christmas pies and cakes.

2014's Top of the Pops Crop Circles.

And, finally, meet a piano-playing hedgehog.



There you go for this week. I'll be back on Monday, with a tale of love gone wrong, and gone to court. In the meantime, I've lately been watching a lot of old "Your Hit Parade" clips. I think this illustrates why it's my current go-to show for epic musical weirdness.

1 comment:

  1. An interesting story about Wolsey's angels. It's like a treasure hunt through history.

    ReplyDelete

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