odditiesWikipedia12th century · Woolpit, England

Two green-skinned children who appeared in 12th-century England left behind one of medieval history's strangest puzzles

the gist

In the 12th century, two children with green skin reportedly appeared in the English village of Woolpit. They spoke a language nobody recognised and would eat only raw broad beans, and over time they learned English and lost their colour. The girl later said they came from a land where the sun never shone and everything was green. The only near-contemporary accounts come from two chroniclers, William of Newburgh and Ralph of Coggeshall, writing decades later. Historians split between seeing it as a folktale about another world and a real event recorded in a garbled way.

so what

The story is a rare case where a medieval account of the unexplained has survived into modern storytelling. It shows how chroniclers recorded the strange, and it inspired writers such as Herbert Read.

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Adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Image: Wikimedia Commons