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Historian of the Strange...
Gleanings from my massive 'True-Enough Timeline of Worldwide Weirdness,' Feel free to send me your true tales...
Great Moments in Spookitude. 1649
County Clare, Ireland. While on the run from Cromwell's roundheads and staying in Lady Honora O'Brien (1638 - 1718)'s castle, Sir Richard Fanshawe (1608-1666) and his wife, Ann aka Lady Fanshawe (1625-1680) is called from her bed to the window in the middle of the night by a voice calling 'Ahone, Ahone, Ahone' and drawing back the curtain she sees a moonlit white clad red-haired woman with a 'ghastly complexion' leaning in the window casement from outside, then dissolving int
blackjax23
Jan 81 min read
Great Moments in Jurisprudence, 1645.
Hillswick, Shetland, Scotland. After failing the tried and true 'place your hands on a corpse, and if it bleeds, you're guilty' test, Marion Pardon and her husband Swene are executed for witchcraft and murder... - Samuel Hibbert (1782 - 1848), A Description of the Shetland Islands (1822).
blackjax23
Jan 81 min read
Great Moments in Food Preservation, 1626.
Pond Square, Highgate, London, Southeast England , Highgate, London, Southeast England. April 9th. Inspired by the thought of using snow to preserve meat, a 66 year old Viscount St. Alban or Francis Bacon exits his coach to buy and stuff a chicken with snow. The experiment is a success, however Bacon contracts 'a gentle fever, accidentally accompanied with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his breast, that he died by suffocation.' - William
blackjax23
Jan 81 min read
Great Moments in Loopholes, 1690s.
Lüchow-Dannenberg, Hanoverian Wendland, Hannoversches Wendland, Wendland, Lower Saxony, Germany. After Johann Parum Schultze (1677 - 1740) gives a ride to the human embodiment of the plague, and in gratitude it tells him to keep him safe from it that he's to take his pot hook, run around the outside of his home naked, then bury the hook in his doorway, but instead he runs around his village naked and buries it before the bridge leading into it, thus saving everyone there.
blackjax23
Jan 81 min read
Great Moments in Spookitude, 1893.
Berlin, Brandenburg, Germany. October 22nd. Early Morning. After an evening out with future Tutankhamun tomb expedition funder Lord Porchester aka the 5th Earl of Carnarvon George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert (June 25th, 1866 - April 5th, 1923), and now waiting for sleep in a well lit room, Prince Victor Albert Jay Duleep Singh (July 19th, 1866 - June 7th, 1918) sees the face of his father Maharaja Sir Duleep Singh (September 6th, 1838 - October 22nd, 1893) in the texture
blackjax23
Jan 81 min read
Great Moments in Technology, 1892.
Calloway County Courthouse, Murray, Calloway County, Kentucky. January 1st. In front of a crowd of spectators, farmer, fruit grower and telegraphic electrician Nathan Beverly Stubblefield (November 22nd, 1860 - March 28th, 1928) successfully demonstrates his wireless device for transmitting voices between two points to Dr. Rainey Thornton Wells (1875-1958), and later from the deck of the steamship Bartholdi on the Potomac, then Philadelphia and New York, but fearing that his
blackjax23
Jan 81 min read
Great Moments in Medicine, 1799
Mount Vernon, Alexandria, Virginia. Saturday, December 14th. After George Washington (February 22nd, 1732 -) slips this particular mortal coil, Capitol building architect, physician, and medical hobbyist William Thornton (May 20th, 1759 - March 28th, 1828) suggests that the body be thawed out before a fire, and, as bellows expand the lungs through a tracheotomy, a lamb's blood infusion would snap Washington out of his currently dead condition.
blackjax23
Jan 81 min read
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