"...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 24, 2015

Weekend Link Dump



This week's Link Dump is proud to be sponsored by Wang the Pirate Cat.

(More on this story can be found here.)




How the hell did Zachary Taylor die?

How the hell did this Swiss watch wind up in an ancient Chinese tomb?

Who the hell murdered Dottie and Bob Tidwell?

What the hell are these ancient gold spirals?

Where the hell is W.B. Yeats?

Watch out for those killer parties!

Watch out for those haunted mines!

Watch out for those Vile Vortices!

Toledo is really booming!

How Charles Dickens is rewriting 19th century literary history.

That time Wyatt Earp may have fixed a fight.

How cats became grimalkins.

The princess who was "fair, good, accomplished, and unhappy."

The life and times of an 18th century rogue.

Communist Party party tips!

Oh, well, aside from that...

More about Alexander Pope's Great Dane.

High strangeness in 17th century York.

A wonderful look at 18th century entertainment.

Hortense Mancini, well-traveled in life and death.

Premonitions of disaster, 1915.

18th century domestic violence ends in murder.

The Great Indonesian Chicken Church.

Sarah Belzoni, intrepid traveler.

Growing up medieval.

When Coney Island used babies as a sideshow.

The possessions of an eighteenth-century sailor.

The strange case of the Philadelphia Miracle.

The even stranger case of the Lenni-Lenapes.

The history of the pet parrot.

Well, that was fast:  A roundup of Pluto conspiracy theories.

Three things I never expected to find in the same link:  Julia Child, the CIA, and sharks.

That time the Virgin Mary appeared in Limerick.

The perils of 18th century bathing.

The original Supertramps.

The oldest known dental work.

The oldest known pictograph?

An Aboriginal cricket team tours England, 1868.

How Nikola Tesla talked to aliens.

Holding corpses for ransom.

Getting punch drunk.

One of the worst mother-daughter teams in history.

Yes, I had to include a 17th century game called "Fart in the Face."  Because I just have a nose for that kind of thing.  [There ya go, Sarah Murden!  :) ]

The Japanese got a bit weird about certain bodily functions, too.

The Case of the Murderous Metaphysician.

The rise and fall of a famed courtesan.

The mystery of the Murder Marsh.

The weirdly prophetic novels of Morgan Robertson.

Murder by nuclear reactor?

Why some sports deserve to die.

Some first-person accounts of the Siege of Lucknow.

Oh, by the way, there's a guy in Omaha who has a warp drive in his garage.

And, finally, in case you missed it, here's a link to, well, um, me.

And so ends yet another Link Dump.  See you all on Monday, when I'll be looking at a classic Edwardian murder mystery.  In the meantime, here's some words of wisdom from Tonio K.


3 comments:

  1. The article on Zachary taylor's death was very interesting. I feel sorry for Clara Rising, who had the theory of poisoning. I think it was unfair for people to criticize her as a conspiracy theorist. The evidence was there; the medical examiner, though he believed the death was from natural causes, said that it was also consistent with arsenical poisoning. Everyone from Taylor's relatives to government, at various levels, thought it was an acceptable idea to exhume the man's body. Rising was wrong. But she researched responsibly, was supported by evidence and her conclusion was reasonable, if wrong. What else should an historian do?

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    Replies
    1. Indeed. I remember the whole story about the exhumation, but I hadn't realized that Rising paid such a heavy price for what seemed like perfectly rational actions.

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  2. Wang the Pirate Cat? Man, that's why I love lost vintage sources: you can't make this sh*t up. Awesome as always.

    ReplyDelete

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