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Category / Obscure history

The Beatles and their 1960s Apple Store

You are looking at the Apple shop on Baker Street in London, 1967. Steve Jobs would have been twelve years old at the time and still tinkering with electronics in his family garage in San Francisco. Apple Inc would not yet even be founded for nearly another decade. Quite a coincidence wouldn’t you say?! Either…

The Tiny Scottish Village that became the Unlikely Las Vegas of the 19th Century

Ever heard of Gretna Green? Long before Las Vegas was famous for its wedding chapels and priests dressed as Elvis, this tiny village just over the Scottish border was a notorious destination for runaway lovers to elope. Even Jane Austen gave the village a mention in Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth Bennet’s rebellious 15 year-old sister brags of her elopement…

Bohemian Grove: The Secret Society Summer Camp

I just spent the morning finding out everything I can on the Bohemian Grove. For two weeks every summer, the 2,700 acre secured private camp in the Ancient Redwood Forest of Northern California, plays host to some of the most powerful men in the world. Every republican U.S. president since 1923 has been a member of club, including…

Inside the Castle in the Middle of the Death Valley Desert

On my first California road trip a few years ago, one of our stops I was looking forward to the most was Death Valley’s mysterious Scotty’s Castle, a sprawling Spanish style manor built in the middle of nowhere in the roaring twenties. We were dangerously low on gas but determined to find this isolated oasis, and to my…

The Cave-Dwelling Flamenco Dancers of Andalucia

“Gypsy” conjures up all kinds of stereotypical images of a wandering foreign community that live in caravans and vardos on the outskirts of cities. But today I fished a rare photo story out of the LIFE archives that gives us a fascinating glimpse into their lesser-known heritage. Shot by Dmitri Kessel in 1949, we’re taken inside a mid-century…

Offbeat Museum Tales: The Matron of Morbidity

“A true collector, a born collector, is an addict,” believes 80 year-old, Elinor Wrobel. The Syndey-based collector and art curator is head of the Morbid Anatomy Museum, a small and eccentric corner of the Sydney Hospital dedicated to preserving hundreds of human body parts collected from the hospital’s morgue over generations. “A former nurse, art…

Family Fun at the California Alligator Farm

A very strange collection of postcards here; early 20th century halftone photographs applied with colour depicting at the Los Angeles Alligator Farm in the early 20th century. For a 25 cents admission fee, visitors could visit the most complete reptile collection in the world in its heyday. As the postcards show, children could enjoy a piggyback…

Coco Chanel was Definitely a Nazi

That’s quite a statement isn’t it? You may have heard rumblings about this back in August 2011 when author Hal Vaughan released his book Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War. But I don’t think we’ve really heard enough about it. I don’t really think we got a firm grip on the fact that today’s most…

The Paris Horror Show

Friday night at the theatre would never be quite the same again. Down a dark Parisian alleyway, sheer horror awaited on stage… The Theatre du Grand Guignol, the smallest in Paris, was a former chapel turned theatre tucked away in the small backstreets of Pigalle, the city’s old red light district. As discretely sized and located…

That Time Donald Duck was a Nazi

Disney has its fair share of questionable cartoons in the archives and over the years, the company has been accused of everything from racism to sexism, the promotion of drug use and even pedophilia. And then there was that time that Donald Duck was a Nazi. In 1943, Walt Disney productions released the American animated…

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