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Continue reading →: The Bad Water Myth
One persistent history myth is that in the Middle Ages people didn’t drink water because it was unsafe and instead they only drank beer, wine, and ale. I don’t know where it came from but it has entered “common” knowledge along with defending spiral staircases, horns on Viking helmets and so forth. One…
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Continue reading →: Bristol Streets
Until the early 1800s, goods were commonly moved around Bristol on horse-drawn sleds, which were used in preference to carts. Bristol grew from a medieval city and the streets had been laid out at a time when the traffic was carried on by means of packhorses and when people moved…
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Continue reading →: The Bottle Conjuror
The Bottle Conjuror was the name given to an anonymous theatrical performer, advertised to appear at the Haymarket Theatre in London, on 16 January 1749. The event was advertised in several London newspapers. “At the New Theatre in the Hay-market, on Monday next, the 16th instant, to be seen, a…
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Continue reading →: Cider, miners and an Englishman’s Castle
The Cider Bill of 1763 was a proposed measure to put a tax on the production of cider. Britain’s national debt had reached unprecedented levels during the early 1760s following the country’s involvement in the Seven Years War. The chancellor of the exchequer Sir Francis Dashwood, better known for his…
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Continue reading →: A slow news day and a mystery…
Local newspapers of the 19th Century look very different from those we are familiar with today in terms of their format and layout. The layout is much more dense with the printers using every bit of space, important when there was a tax levied on every sheet printed. As a…
“An unsystematic and untidy search through stuff…”
As the name suggests, this is a random wander though bits and pieces, often odd and unusual, that spark my interest. I haven’t turned comments on for now; if a post sparks something in you then share it with others.
Serendipity… You will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’: as their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.
Horace Walpole
“One of the great joys of life, to one who is properly constituted, is to rummage around in a bookstore.”
Publishers Weekly, 1873
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Almanac Bristol History Hoaxes Miners Myths Suspension Bridge Tax
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