Stranger Things Have Happened

A history blog, focusing primarily on the author's research and reading in American (particularly colonial, Revolutionary, and Native American) history.

Thursday, November 27, 2025

The Cloth-Wine Context

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David Ricardo (1772-1823), in his musings on the benefits of free trade, used the relationship between Portugal and Britain to demonstrate t...

Friday, October 31, 2025

The Yellowing-Trees Month, in Brief

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What I’ve been reading : The True True Story of Raja the Gullible , by Rabih Alameddine. A biography of modern Lebanon, from the perspecti...

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Footnote of the Month

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"Yes, one has to wonder: where did they get a monkey? I can provide no answer." So wrote John Belshaw in an endnote to his boo...

Tuesday, July 01, 2025

Pushing the Limits

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Geographical facts tend (I find) to lodge quite firmly in one's mind after one teaches them to students. I've taught Native Americ...

Saturday, May 17, 2025

And When There Was No Crawdad to Be Found

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The annals of the poor may be short and simple, but they need not remain so. The methodologies of social history, pioneered by the French An...

Saturday, December 21, 2024

One or Two Bright Spots

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Some good news, courtesy of Fix the News (formerly Futurecrunch). Heaven knows we could all use some: Researchers discovered that the drug ...

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Your Trash, Our Treasure: The Salzburg Refugees

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The princely state of Salzburg, in present-day Austria, had in the early-modern era a Catholic majority and a small but visible Protestant...

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Dave Nichols

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