Welcome to the 82nd History Carnival at The Lay Scientist | History! We've only recently branched into history blogging, and we're always on the look out for guest bloggers, so if you want to contribute anything to our fledgling site, let me know - we can't promise you money, but we do have a big, new audience for you to reach. You can follow our history RSS feed, or say hello on twitter at @mjrobbins. But enough shameless self promotion... on with the posts!

Rich Landers runs a fascinating project called Soldier's Mail, which reposts in 'real-time' letters home from U.S. Sgt Sam Avery while on the front lines of American involvement in the Great War, more than 90 years ago. The latest is here, and I'd recommend a browse through the previous posts.

Sergey Romanov writes at Holocaust Controversies, a blog that debunks the claims of denialists (he has an interesting little post comparing holocaust denial with climate denial). His guest, Kent Ford, blogs on the interesting ties between Meinl Tea and Nazi Germany.

Katrina submitted "Better Dead Than Co-Ed", from Historiann, which takes a good hard look at the history of relaxed admissions policies for male students, from a feminist perspective.

Enthusiastic Natalie sent in pretty near enough entries to run a new spin-off carnival of her own, so I'll whittle them down to two to save myself from RSI! First up, from Early Modern Whale, an account of a quite brilliant and extremely rare book from 1634 called 'Hocus Pocus', which is apparently the first known book to focus on magic as a performing art. If someone could slip me a copy I'd be very grateful...

Then we have Philobiblon's look at 'Europe’s Lost World: The Rediscovery of Doggerland', a quite fascinating account otherwise known as "Research Report No 160 Council of British Archaeology," which tells the story of a lost world of Europe, submerged with the last traces of its people under the North Sea.

Judith Weingarten explores the heavily disputed ownership of an ancient bust of Nefertiti, the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten now residing in a museum in Berlin, tracing the cultural and political tensions between Germany and Egypt back to the original discovery and through to the present. Judith's blog, Zenobia: Empress of the East is a treasure trove of insights into early history, but also the explorers, scholars and archaeologists who uncovered the ancient world.

Sharon sends in a vivid article from Georgian London, "Being a Dwarf in 18thC London", which focuses on the life of Robert Skinner and his wife Judith, each standing a little over two feet tall. They lived in comfort in London with their fourteen children, and their story provides a real insight into the attitudes of the period.

Gavin submitted a post from AirMinded which really has to be seen since any description I give you won't do it justice. It's a collection of imaginined superweapons from a WWI period magazine called the "Electrical Experiment", a magazine which seems to have been a sort of repository of fantastic contraptions. What's fascinating - as you can see from the image below - is how so many of the designs imagined incredibly new weapons, but situated them within the same trench-warfare paradigm.

Penny took joint honours with Natalie as this month's most enthusiastic contributor, with a stream of amazing posts filling my inbox, of which I'll pick two for now. Her first, from BibliOdyssey, is another in the "you really need to see it" category; a fascinating look at extreme hairstyles of the late 18th century.

Next up is a subject very close to my heart - in fact, usually sitting about a foot below it - curry. From the Wellcome Library blog comes a look at some of the earliest curry recipes in Britain! Bonus points to anyone who can make one of these and send in a picture...

Brett sends in a post by Paul Drye at Passing Strangeness, "The English Sweate." It traces the history of The Sweating Sickness, an epidemic that came to Britain in 1485, and hung about for several decades, whose identity remains the source of much speculation.

Let's end with something a little more romantic, and two entries from Scandalous Women courtesy of Elizabeth. The first concerns Elizabeth Shirland, or "Cutlass Liz", a cutlass-waving, crew-shagging lady pirate of the Spanish Main who exists in a sort of void between fantasy and reality. And finally, we have the story of a pre-Raphaelite love-triangle, John Ruskin losing his wife Effie Gray to the attentions of the artist Millais.

Well, that's it for this month. Thanks for coming, and don't forget to get your submissions in for History Carnival 83, which you can find at Westminster Wisdom on January the 3rd or 4th. Thanks for reading!