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  1. Home
  2. Topics
  3. Weird and wonderful history

Weird and wonderful history

Learn all about weird, yet wonderful, events that happened in history through in-depth history articles, podcasts, video and more…

A young woman sat in front of a mirror applies lipstick, 1967
General Modern

The price of beauty: the dangerous cosmetics used until the 20th century

A kelpie, from British folklore. (Image by Getty Images)
General History

Supernatural stories: 9 unusual British folktales

A scene from the German film 'Ways to Strength and Beauty', 1925. (Ullstein Bild via Getty Images)
Second World War

Germany’s naked truth: the 19th-century nudism movements co-opted by the Nazis

Medieval

How naughty was the past? The hidden depths of the medieval church

Tudor

Hold your noses: the smells, sounds and sights of Elizabethan England

Second World War

How the roller skating craze caught Churchill

More weird and wonderful

Weird & wonderful Q&As

Historians take on questions about bizarre history…
Vampires-3-8039305
Medieval

Q&A Were vampires buried with a stake through their heart?

Language of flowers postcard
Victorian

Q&A What was floriography?

18th century French caricature satirising the fashion for enormous wigs
Georgian

Q&A Did Rococo wigs really have mice?

The capture of the pirate Blackbeard, 1718. Painting by JLG Ferris. One of history’s most notorious pirates, Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach almost certainly had a West Country twang because he was born in Bristol in around 1680. (Photo by Bettmann via Getty Images)
Stuart

Q&A Did most English pirates really talk with a West Country accent?

Hoaxes and hijinks

Frances Griffiths poses with the fairies
20th Century

Fairies, rabbit births and an ‘ancient’ tiara: what are the greatest historical hoaxes?

In 1733, as part of a plot to blow up a Protestant church, a group of Catholics claimed they were being terrorised by a poltergeist… or so the story went. (Illustration by Ben Jones for BBC History Magazine)
Georgian

5 Georgian ghost hoaxes

Henry VIII, Princess Mary and William Somers
Tudor

Playing the fool: Tudor jesters

Monsters and aliens

Black and white image showing soldiers of the Third Reich surround a huge bonfire
20th Century

Witches, werewolves and vampires: the Nazi’s quest for the supernatural

A photo which was believed to be of the Loch Ness Monster
20th Century

The quest for the Loch Ness Monster

On the evening of 13 March thousands of people in Phoenix, Arizona, and surrounding areas see a triangular formation of lights drifting above the city. Fife Symington, the governor of Arizona at the time, was one of the witnesses and he described the UFO as “otherworldly”. This image shows something similar to what was reported at the time. (Photo by Alamy)
General Modern

A brief history of UFOs: top 10 sightings & timeline

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