History: Brick By Brick

09/05/2026

COME ONE, COME ALL! 🎩✨
Step right up and step back in time! Civil War Days is happening THIS WEEKEND in Huntington Beach!
Come wander the camps, meet the characters, experience living history and be sure to seek out Ashcroft, where a bit of mystery, magic and curious wonder awaits.
History! Mystery! Magic! 🎩
September 5 & 6
Performances at 11:30 ~ 2:15 ~ 3:15
Civilian Camp / Confederate Side
Huntington Beach Central Park
Bring the family, bring your curiosity.

09/03/2026

🎩✨ COME MEET ASHCROFT IN PERSON! ✨🎩
You’ve seen the posters. You’ve read the stories. Now come meet the man of mystery himself!
Ashcroft ~ historian, magician and storyteller ~ will be appearing at Huntington Beach Civil War Days, September 5 & 6, 2026!
Step back in time and come say hello, talk history, hear a tale or two, and perhaps experience a little old-fashioned mystery and magic along the way.
If you’ve been following Ashcroft and History Brick by Brick, here’s your chance to meet him face to face!

📍 Huntington Beach Civil War Days
📅September 5 & 6, 2026
🎩 History • Magic • Mystery • Storytelling

CIVIL WAR DAYS / 5 & 6 September 2026
HB Central Park (Behind the Library)
On Gothard between Slater and Talbert
Camps open to the Public on Saturday and Sunday
Battle Times: Saturday: 1:30 and 4 PM / Sunday: 11 and 2 PM
Always Free to the Public! ​

09/02/2026

~ COLONIAL TALL TALES / The Beard Tax ~
Gentlemen, we regret to inform you that your face may now be taxable. On September 5, 1698, Russia’s Peter the Great returned from his travels through Western Europe with some very definite opinions about modernizing his country. One of them concerned beards.
Peter thought Russia looked decidedly old-fashioned compared with the clean-shaven gentlemen he had encountered in Europe. So he began encouraging Russian men to shave.
And by “encouraging,” we mean he taxed them.
Men who insisted upon keeping their beards could be required to pay for the privilege. Those who paid were issued a small metal token—essentially proof that the beard upon their face was there legally. Imagine the conversation:
“Sir, is that your beard?”
“Yes.”
“Have you paid for it?”
“...paid for my beard?”
“Your papers, please.”

Even better, Peter reportedly wasn't content simply to issue decrees. During his campaign against traditional Russian facial hair, he personally cut the beards from members of his court.
Apparently, nothing says Welcome home from Europe quite like the czar coming at you with scissors.
There were serious reasons behind the seemingly ridiculous decree. To Peter, the beard represented an older Russia he was determined to transform. To many Russians—particularly within the Orthodox tradition—the beard carried cultural and religious significance.
So what sounds like one of history's strangest taxes was actually part of a much larger battle: Tradition versus modernization.
But nearly 330 years later, we prefer to remember the important lesson. Before complaining about taxes... check to make sure nobody has started measuring your beard.

Colonial Tall Tales / Because sometimes history doesn't need embellishment.

08/28/2026

A Brief Message From the Slightly Overwhelmed People at HB3…
We know. We’ve been suspiciously quiet. Normally, that means Charles has disappeared down some historical rabbit hole involving magicians, murder, ghosts, forgotten manuscripts, or somebody who died in 1924 under highly questionable circumstances. This time? It’s us.
School started. Magic is being wielded. Proposals are being written. Houses are being torn apart. Newspapers have apparently decided to reproduce when no one is looking. And somewhere in the middle of all of that…
WE HAVE A TALE TO TELL YOU. A really good one. We simply haven't figured out how to add another six hours to the day without violating several known laws of physics. We considered giving up sleep. Then we remembered we're historians, writers and magicians... not 22. So bear with us just a little longer.
Houdini is waiting. Lovecraft is lurking. Weird Tales are getting weirder. And somewhere in Egypt, there is a story that has been waiting more than a century for us to start talking about it.
HB3 hasn't disappeared. We’re just temporarily buried under life.
And possibly a cursed manuscript.
And apparently, through all of this, Charles still found time to coordinate his socks with the magic. Priorities, people. Priorities.🎩🐇✨

08/21/2026

Next week on HB3: History Brick by Brick, follows one remarkable trail through magic, horror, spiritualism, skepticism and a mystery that waited nearly a century to resurface. And if you know Charles... you know the story probably isn't going to end where you think it does.

WHAT DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE IN COMMON?
Harry Houdini ~ H.P. Lovecraft ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ~ J.C. Henneberger` ~ C.M. Eddy Jr. and Bess Houdini.
A magician who made a career out of escaping the impossible. A horror writer fascinated by what might be lurking just beyond what we understand. The creator of Sherlock Holmes—who firmly believed the spirit world was real. A pulp magazine publisher desperately trying to save Weird Tales. A nearly forgotten writer with an interest in astral travel and parallel worlds. And the woman who spent years hoping for one final message from her dead husband. Somehow, their stories collided.
There was a magazine on the brink of failure. A wildly embellished trip to Egypt. A lost manuscript. A secret collaboration. A friendship destroyed over the supernatural. A book that was never finished. Thirty-one pages hidden away for decades. And one final séance on a Hollywood rooftop.
And somehow... Harry Houdini is at the center of all of it.

Next week on HB3: History Brick by Brick, follows one remarkable trail through magic, horror, spiritualism, skepticism and a mystery that waited nearly a century to resurface. And if you know Charles... you know the story probably isn't going to end where you think it does.

Coming next week on These Curious Times Network.

08/19/2026

Some doors don’t open very often ... But when they do, you prepare. You practice. You keep a few secrets. And you remember the date.

10.06.26

Something rather magical may be waiting on the other side. 🎩✨
Stay curious...

08/14/2026

Colonial Tall Tales / The Day Boston Hung the Taxman
There are days in history when reasonable people sit down, discuss their differences, and attempt to reach a civilized solution ….. August 14, 1765, was not one of those days.
Boston was angry. Parliament had passed the Stamp Act, which meant colonists would soon be paying a tax on newspapers, legal documents, licenses and other printed materials. The colonists considered this completely unacceptable. So naturally, they hung the taxman from a tree … sort of.
Andrew Oliver had been appointed Massachusetts' distributor of the hated stamps. On the morning of August 14, Bostonians discovered an effigy of Oliver dangling from a large elm tree. Beside it were symbols warning everyone exactly what might happen to anyone foolish enough to help enforce the new tax. The message was subtle in roughly the same way a cannonball is subtle. Authorities ordered the effigy removed. Nobody seemed particularly interested in volunteering information.
As evening arrived, the crowd grew. Oliver's unfortunate likeness was cut down and paraded through the streets. Protestors descended upon a building associated with Oliver near the waterfront and tore it apart. Apparently, that wasn’t enough. The crowd moved on to Oliver's home. Windows were broken. Property was damaged. His carriage house was attacked.
And then, because every proper colonial uprising apparently requires refreshments, the crowd discovered Oliver's wine cellar.
By the following day, Andrew Oliver had gotten the message. He resigned as stamp distributor. The elm tree where his effigy had hung soon acquired a rather famous name: The Liberty Tree.
It became a gathering place for resistance to British rule, and August 14 itself would later be commemorated beneath its branches.
Ten years before Lexington and Concord, and eleven years before the Declaration of Independence, a group of very angry Bostonians had demonstrated something Britain was going to learn repeatedly: Americans could be remarkably difficult when somebody tried to tell them what to do ~ Especially when taxes were involved. And apparently... when there was wine in the basement.

Colonial Tall Tales — where history is occasionally so ridiculous we don't have to make anything up.

08/09/2026

🏚️✨ Meanwhile… at the Villa ~ We received this rather innocent-looking message from our resident magician:“Going to do some creepy magic tonight.” ~ And then… this photo.
Candles. Cards. Mysterious little boxes. A table that looks like it has absolutely seen things. We have questions. We have concerns.
We are also completely intrigued.
Apparently, while the rest of us are going about our perfectly normal evening, was tucked away at the Villa doing whatever one does when the instructions for the night begin with “creepy magic.” ..... We’ll just assume everything is under control.
Probably.
Stay curious. 🕯️🎩👻
Charles Spratley

08/07/2026

ON THIS DAY / AUGUST 7, 1888
London’s East End was already a place of poverty, overcrowding and shadowed streets when a brutal murder added another layer of fear to Whitechapel.
On August 7, 1888, Martha Tabram was found murdered in George Yard Buildings. Her death became part of the larger series known as the Whitechapel Murders. Whether Tabram was actually a victim of the unidentified killer later called Jack the Ripper remains debated.
The five murders most commonly attributed to the Ripper ~the so-called “Canonical Five”~would begin with Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols on August 31, 1888, followed by Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.
The killer was never conclusively identified, and more than a century later, the mystery continues to inspire historians, investigators and countless theories.
August 7 marks the beginning of one of Victorian London’s darkest chapters.

Sometimes history leaves behind more questions than answers.



[1]: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/August-31/jack-the-ripper-claims-first-victim?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Jack the Ripper’s first victim murdered | August 31, 1888 | HISTORY"