This is the most bizarre story. You can't make these things up.

Via a Metafilter post, the tale of a Dracula scholar who discovered an early Icelandic translation that seems to be far more of a collaboration between Stoker and the translator than anything else. At first I wondered whether the post itself was fiction, but it clearly isn't ( Read more... )

Not new, but making the rounds:

Transcript of Surreptitiously Taped Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (August 6-7, 1945)

Thought some of you (
( Read more... )

Last night with
( Read more... )

I really shouldn't be working on this fic, and I'm not sure that I'll get anywhere with it even if I do, but I'm curious now, so here goes nothing...

Reading 1930s mystery novels offers a decent amount of information on the practice of autopsies but not so much about the context. I get the impression there was nothing unusual about an ordinary ( Read more... )

This evening
( Read more... )

Those of you who have read biographies of Mary Renault will know that she spent much of the war working as a nurse in Oxford. In her own words "doing neuro-surgery (which is mostly brains) under the late Hugh Cairns, a surgeon of the very finest kind." Hugh Cairns, who was called upon to treat (unsuccessfully, of course) T. E. Lawrence after his ( Read more... )

Following with interest the controversies over historical accuracy in two recent biopics, Selma and The Imitation Game.

When it comes to Selma the question is about the role of Lyndon Johnson in the civil rights movement. It seems that there's justifiable debate about his involvement in the protest marches - and there's an argument that focusing ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

I've been meaning to post about this for a while.
( Read more... )

Apparently Vera Brittain's brother Edward was under investigation for homosexuality when he was killed in 1918...
( Death, war, suicide? Also blockquotes. )