Beardy History

Viewer discretion: The following blog post does include images of two thousand year old bog bodies - those of a delicate disposition may wish to skip this post. All over northern Europe, mysterious two thousand year old bodies have been dug up from peat bogs. These so-called bog bodies are remarkably well preserved in many cases. Disturbingly, they seem to have been victims of human sacrifice. [ 495 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2020/01/12/bog- bodies/

Did the moon landings ever happen? Not according to this movie! Since the first feature films were made by Hollywood in the early 20th century - they have been peddling conspiracy theories. All social media has done is amplify this stuff to an unparalleled degree. Whether it's faked moon landings or clones of Hitler being created in Latin America - there's a movie for every conspiracy theory you can imagine! [ 571 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/20…/…/24/co nspiracy-theory-movies/

In my collection of vintage books going back three hundred years is a leather-bound volume containing editions of The Saturday Magazine from the year 1840 - and one story carries a warning to anti-vaxxers. You may think that the movement against vaccination is a relatively modern phenomenon. But it seems that ill-founded suspicion of immunisation has existed for a long time. [ 475 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/12/21/anti -vaxxers-smallpox/

Last Friday, I was filming for the next series of Strange Evidence which will be broadcast on Discovery Science in 2020. In case you missed the last series of Strange Evidence - we look at filmed material of bizarre phenomena and test out several theories as to what is happening. Then I reveal the most likely scenario. Now - I can't give anything away of course, but it's going to be an amazing series. [ 85 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/11/24/stra nge-evidence/

For centuries the debate has raged - is The Shroud of Turin the real burial cloth in which the crucified body of Jesus was wrapped or is it a forgery? What is the Turin Shroud? In the cathedral church of Saint John the Baptist in the Italian city of Turin, you'll find a long linen cloth with the imprint of a dead man. [ 745 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/11/15/turi n-shroud/

At the start of the 19th century, a criminal hanged in London was seemingly brought back to life through an early use of electricity to re-animate the dead - something called Galvanism! It was this primitive use of electricity that inspired Mary Shelley to write the novel Frankenstein. Bringing the dead back to life in Georgian London! If you go to the Old Bailey in London today, you'll just see the Central Criminal Court and nothing much else. [ 529 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/11/12/fran kenstein-galvanism/

This is a curious and terrible story I heard about years ago and found again in an old book on London history dating from the 1870s in my library. The story goes that when King Edward I of England expelled all the Jewish people from his kingdom, one ship captain deliberately murdered a group of Jews on the river Thames in London. [ 430 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/11/06/jewi sh-people-london/

You couldn't make it up. The year was 1750 in London at England's top criminal court - the Old Bailey. Three judges were trying a group of prisoners they were fully anticipating to sentence to death. Capital punishment applied to a whole range of crimes at this time - not just murder but also theft and violent attack. Unfortunately for the judges, they were seated right in front of the dock - so that they could get a good look at the prisoners. [ 243 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/10/29/judg es-newgate-death/

If you think Brexit is making Britain more xenophobic, then you need to get a time machine and go back to Georgian London. Because two hundred years ago, a French person walking around London might not only endure abuse but come to an unfortunate end! Eighteenth century London was a dangerous place to walk around if you were French. As England was in an almost constant state of war with France, Londoners often sought out a Frenchman in the city to pick on or worse. [ 219 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/10/29/brex it-london-french/

So you think urban gangs are a modern phenomenon? Well, 18th century Georgian London was horrified by the activities of the Black Boy Alley gang who showed no mercy to their victims but came to a pretty gruesome end themselves! Let me take you back to the early 18th century and the wickedness of a group of criminals known as the Black Boy Alley gang. [ 665 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/10/29/geor gian-gang-london/

Collecting dog dung for a living has to be about the most revolting job ever created. I've been re-reading the works of a Victorian Londoner called Henry Mayhew who, in 1851, published a book describing the appalling ways in which people were forced to make a living. The scraping of "Pure" (the slang word for dog excrement) from the streets has to be the worst. [ 467 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/10/28/pure -finder-dog-dung/

Have you ever wanted to talk like a Victorian Londoner – not a posh one, but a street kid with plenty of 19th century attitude? Maybe a character in a Charles Dickens novel like the Artful Dodger! Well, I’m now going to teach you how to talk like a London urchin circa 1851. I’m using various sources but Mayhew’s London… [ 337 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/10/27/lond on-victorian-slang/

I've been visiting the shrines of some saints over the summer. The stories, legends and myths attaching to these holy people can often be rather weird. Strange tales of how they were martyred in a gruesome fashion. At the shrines, you can find their entire body or a bone or a piece of cloth. Let's look at some of the weird saints I encountered! [ 352 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/10/21/weir d-saints/

My parents both worked in psychiatric care in the 1960s and I recall one of many books they had on the subject called - The Homosexual Outlook. That book had an unintentionally hilarious chapter titled On the gayest street in town and it detailed, as if describing the mating rituals of an animal species, how gay men hook up. Two strangers approach each other gingerly and then one chap might say - 'say fellow, have you got the time?' Apparently, they would then analyse how the other person was holding their cigarette and on the basis of that decide whether to take things further! [ 437 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/…/10/21/homos exuality-psychiatric/

In the last two weeks, I finished filming for a new series of Forbidden History and for a new documentary series on the History channel that will accompany The Curse of Oak Island. There's great Templar related content on both programmes and I think you're going to have some amazing viewing in 2020. I'll tell you when those programmes appear - of course! [ 200 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/…/12/his tory-tv-tony-mcmahon/

The Name of the Rose begins tonights on the BBC - it features a cruel inquisitor called Bernardo Gui - and what do you know - he really existed! https://thetemplarknight.com/…/name-of- the-rose-bernardo-g…/

For seven hundred years, all or part of modern day Spain and Portugal was under Muslim rule. In the year 711 CE, an Arab and Muslim led army crossed the Mediterranean from Morocco to Spain and conquered a Christian kingdom advancing across Spain and up into central France before being stopped. This was in the decades immediately after the death of the Prophet Mohammed when the new Muslim religion had conquered north Africa, Arabia, the Levant, Persia and reached China and India. [ 430 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/10/10/musl im-spain/

Walking around the Catholic cathedral of Westminster in London the other day I chanced upon the weirdest saint's relic I've seen in a while. It's the dismembered body of a 17th century saint who was executed in a very gruesome way then stitched back together again! John Southworth's dismembered body is under those clothes and mask! John Southworth was born in 1592 to what was described as a "recusant" Catholic family. [ 381 more words ] https://beardyhistory.com/2019/09/08/dism embered-body-saint/