Hidden Histories
Histories researched and written by Mary Kay McBrayer.
Jenny Geddes strikes a pretty innocuous profile, but many revolutionaries do, at first blush.
She was a Scottish trader of fruit and vegetables in Edinburgh in the 1630s, and an attendee of Church of Scotland services at St. Giles Cathedral, an imposing and beautiful Gothic church on the Royal Mile.
Street-sellers like Jenny sat in the back of the church, sometimes on portable, three-legged stools that they had to bring into the church themselves. She might have been a “waiting woman,” paid to arrive early to save seats for their patrons. Whatever the reason why she sat on that stool, she didn’t stay seated for long. As soon as she realized the prayer books had been swapped for Anglican ones, Jenny Geddes stood up and threw her stool at the dean’s head.
I was watching Men in Kilts to prepare for my visit to Scotland like any good nerd, when one expert mentioned something that sent me deep into the research wormhole:
The Weird Sisters of Shakespeare’s Macbeth were real people.
Our story takes place in the tenth century, during the rule of Duff (or Duffus, son of Induff), King of Scots from 962-67 CE. Accounts say he was a great king. His own father had just died four years earlier while defending the Highlands against Viking invaders, and more of the same was in the offing.
f you’re like me, you probably enjoyed Ridley Scott’s new film Napoleon. But if you’re like me…we all know who’s the real star of the show: Joséphine.
Not that Napoleon isn’t interesting—he’s fascinated historians and war strategists for centuries, so that almost goes without saying, but when Joséphine came on screen, I knew right away I wouldn’t get enough of her. From her subversive fashion sense to her wry sense of humor, I needed to know, who was Joséphine? Here, I’m going to hit some of the most interesting aspects of this incredible woman’s life—not all of them, just the highlights. There are plenty of sources to mine for more information listed below.
I won’t wear low-rise pants, scrunchies, or acid washed “mom jeans” frankly because I remember when they were in style the first time.
My mother said the same thing about shoulder pads and sequined cowboy shirts in the 1980s. When I asked her once if she had an “ugly sweater” I could wear to a Christmas party, she said, “No. I do not.” And then, spitefully, “You can ask your Aunt Donna for that.”
We are also the people who love period pieces but can’t watch anything historical in which the actors are draped in synthetic fabrics. The same people who watched Mad Men and wanted to cry at the montage of nylons and girdles and bullet bras whose straps left deep indentations on Joan’s shoulders.
If you’re that person—I mean, the person who rewound the scene of Outlander where Mrs. Fitzgibbons first gets Claire into the 1740s Scottish dress just to see how they got that shape…or if you’re the person who listens with fascination to Downton Abbey reruns when the upstairs workers talk about how someone ruined His Lordship’s morning coat so he has to condescend to wear a black bow tie with his tuxedo to dinner…this list is for you.
In 1937, Orson Welles produced Macbeth in Harlem. With an all-Black cast. And set it in a fictional Caribbean island that emulated 19th-century Haiti. How did that happen? And how have we not heard about it?
Most of the folklore we see in Attachment are amulets of protection. Chana has positioned a face-down bowl under a bookshelf in Leah’s apartment to protect against demons. These “magic bowls” are a type of amulet from Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) created to protect against “difficulty in childbirth and rearing, illness, poverty… as well as supernatural and human foes” before the Islamic conquest of the region, and they’re sometimes labeled with where they should be stationed in the house, like each of its four corners or in a particular room. Typically, the script on them is written in a square, Aramaic script, starting in the center of the bowl and spiraling out clockwise on the concave surface of the bowl. Descriptions of the bowls in their contemporary texts use the verbs “to overturn” and “to press” which indicates both what is done to the bowls (placed upside down) and to the demons (overpowered).
They also often depict images of bound demons, which is the reason Chana says that she keeps in them in her apartment: “(That bowl) was hand painted by Babylonian Jews,” she tells Maja when it cracks. (For reference, there are only 2,000 of these said bowls in the world. When Maja looks stunned, she admits her joke, saying cruelly, “It’s a replica. I made it. So, it’s not valuable, just irreplaceable.” That scathing jab makes Chana the mother-in-law of my personal hell.
f you’ve heard of Queens Nefertiti and Cleopatra, but not Hatshepsut, you’re not alone. Hatshepsut was an exceptional ruler of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty, from c. 1473 to 1458 BCE. Although all three women named above were powerful, only Hatshepsut was such a great ruler that her successor was jealous of her even after her death. So much so that he defaced her temples and monuments and inscribed his own insignia on top of them.
What do people with anxiety do when presented with a stressor? We confront it because, in theory at least, the more we know about a subject, the less scary it becomes.
Americans like me often forget that there are cities older than most countries. Though their names and the territories to which they belong might have changed, people settled in the same areas—and stayed there for millennia—for specific reasons. Sometimes, they were on significant trade routes. Sometimes they were religious sites. And sometimes, they were the only fertile areas for miles around. Regardless, these are some of the oldest cities that are still inhabited today, featuring when and by whom they were founded, what they were like in ancient times, and what it’s like to visit them today.
In 19th-century Egypt, Ahmed Abdel-Rassoul stumbled upon ancient antiquities on his family’s land, which he thought his family could sell and live off the profits for generations. The Abdel-Rassouls could not have expected to be accused of stealing history only to have French and British colonizers seize the artifacts and give them away to other Western nations, but that is exactly what happened.
Between sixteen to twenty feet below the surface of a natural spring named “Weeki Wachee” in central Florida—off the side of US 19—mermaids swim. These mermaids have been there, swimming, flipping, dancing, putting on lipstick, and drinking Grapette, since 1947—when a Navy man named Newton Perry had a stroke of genius. And they are still there today.
Sometimes I beg my friend who’s still associated with a university system’s library to “just do me a quick search, Sara, please!” in the middle of the night so I can evade some particularly steep paywalls. My point is, I’m not a quitter. I have some strategies, and I don’t generally expect information to come easily.
It’s not until hunting down this particular Norse myth from Cold Earth that I’ve ever found almost nothing. And that creeps me out.
While at the hospital, Tarrare ate a meal intended for 15 German laborers, including two meat pies and four gallons of milk. When spurred by the military board that he should soon report once more for service, one doctor, M. Courville, had the idea to weaponize Tarrare’s skill. Courville had Tarrare to swallow a wooden box with a document inside. Two days later, when Tarrare returned from the latrine with both the box and the document in good condition, they decided to employ Tarrare as a spy.
Though this photograph in particular is immortalized in the popular consciousness, the Abdel-Rassoul family was famous—or rather infamous—generations before the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb, though. Sheikh was a descendent of some of the most infamous tomb robbers Egypt has ever known.
Shortly after Solomon’s coronation, he dreamed that he talked directly to God, and God said, “Ask what I shall give thee.”
In the Bible, Solomon asks for wisdom; he desires to be a great and fair ruler. Because he didn’t ask for treasure, prestige, victory over his conquests, or any of the more typical things kings asked for, God made him the wisest man in the world—in addition to making him rich and powerful.
But in other texts, Solomon received more than just wisdom. Islamic traditions agree that Sulaiman (the Arabic name of Solomon) was uncommonly wise, but he also understood the language of birds, animals, and insects. Plus, when he asked God for wisdom, God gave him another gift, too: the ring called the Seal of Solomon—purported to grant dominion over evil djinn.
In 1794 the people of Guadeloupe briefly tasted freedom. A woman named Solitude decided she’d rather die than go back into chains — but her heroism was nearly lost to history.
"The 19th-Century Nurse Who Was Secretly a Serial Killer" at Narratively
“Jolly Jane” Toppan overcame a miserable Dickensian childhood to become a medical professional patients adored. She was also slowly murdering them one by one.
