Merry Christmas! Krampus traditions linking a perhaps pre-Christian hairy goat-demon with Santa got revived in Eastern European countries by the early 1900s. Krampus played the bad cop to Santa’s good guy, beating bad children with birch switches and dragging them down to hell with chains. Some traditions are best left in the past. . . .
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, almost the entire continent of Africa was taken over by various European states and business entrepreneurs. Among…
The area comprising Pine Grove Furnace, near where this photo was taken, was practically clearcut in the 19th century as the lucrative iron works industry…