Showing posts with the label England

London to Calcutta by Bus

Aug 30, 2022

For fifteen years from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, it was possible to hop on to a bus in London and travel all the way to Calcutta, I...

Hannah Beswick: The Manchester Mummy

Aug 26, 2022

Hannah Beswick had a morbid fear of being buried alive, and this dread was not entirely irrational. Her young brother John almost had his co...

Drowning in Sewage: The Sinking of Princess Alice

Aug 10, 2022

The sinking of SS Princes Alice , a British paddle steamer, on the River Thames on 3 September 1878, that resulted in the loss of more than ...

The Man Who Bought Stonehenge And Gave it Away

Aug 2, 2022

On 21 September 1915, a barrister named Cecil Chubb was sent to an auction by his wife to buy some curtains. According to some accounts, she...

Princess Caraboo: The Imposter That Fooled a Nation

Jul 19, 2022

On 3 April 1817, a mysterious woman in her mid-twenties walked into the small English village of Almondsbury in Gloucestershire. She was dre...

Grace Darling's Daring Rescue of Shipwreck Survivors

Jul 18, 2022

In 1838, a young woman pulled off a heroic rescue saving several survivors from a wrecked merchant ship off the coast of Northumberland in n...

Carlton Tavern: The Pub That Was Reborn From Rubble

Jul 2, 2022

Carlton Tavern in Kilburn, London, was the heart of the community for nearly a hundred years until it ceased to exist one spring morning in ...

Coal Gas Vehicles

Jun 20, 2022

Contrary to popular belief, vehicles run with natural gas was very common in the early 1900s in America and parts of Europe. However, this g...

The Book That Became Famous Before it Was Published

Jun 13, 2022

Fly Fishing: Memories of Angling Days is one of those books where the story behind is more interesting than the book itself. It’s not tha...

Mary Ann Bevan: The Ugliest Woman in History

May 31, 2022

Mary Ann Bevan may have made a name as the ugliest woman in the world. But in her endeavours she also became an epitome of opportunism and o...

The Shortest War in History Lasted Less Than An Hour

May 26, 2022

How do you define a war? Should both sides have a fair chance of winning? Is a coup within a protectorate justified as war? Does the conflic...

How Sin Eaters Saved The Dead & The Dying

May 25, 2022

In 18th and 19th century England and Scotland, sin eating was a profession. Beggars, destitute and those in want of a measly morsel of nutri...

Baby Cages: The Strange Practice of ‘Airing’ The Baby

May 24, 2022

It’s true—no one can go to the lengths that our parents cover for us. It’s truer that no one can go to the lengths that parents of the 20th ...

Lyveden New Bield

May 18, 2022

Lyveden New Bield is an unfinished Elizabethan summer house located in the parish of Aldwincle in North Northamptonshire, England. The Natio...

Can Tapeworms Make You Beautiful?

Apr 23, 2022

“The loveliness of a rival eats into a girl’s heart like corrosion;” says The Ugly-girl Papers: Or, Hints for the Toilet . The Victorian era...

The Hammersmith Ghost Murder Case

Apr 18, 2022

In the winter of 1803, residents of Hammersmith, which at the time was a small village on the outskirts of London, was terrorized by a ghost...

The Day BBC Had No News

Apr 18, 2022

You could be idle, but the world is still unfolding. Even in hours of boredom within the four walls of our homes, we are aware of the tremen...

The Pacific Island Where Prince Philip is God

Apr 4, 2022

At the other end of the sea from where Queen Elizabeth sits on her throne in England, photos of her husband holding a unique club rest safel...

The Great Conservatory of Chatsworth

Mar 31, 2022

Before Joseph Paxton built the magnificent edifice of glass and iron, the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851, he built an enorm...

Can You Solve The Shugborough Code?

Mar 31, 2022

From the Caesar Shift of ancient times to a Nazi coding device called the Enigma Machine, the world before us left its mark in keys and code...