From the few sources I read, thralls seemed to fare better than what we would consider a "slave" and were more akin to indentured serfs. Is that a good interpretation?

Hello "AskHistorians"!

I'm making a project that tries to connect history, business economics, and globalization into one big assignment. I was doing a bit of research on which topics I could look into that included all the focus areas in my project and suddenly stumbled upon the Dutch East India Company. When I started to read about the company, I just knew that I found just the right thing to write about. It had the historical aspect, globalization (Being the first company to issue bonds to the public), and then of course the business aspect since I could look into earnings and cost to make a financial analysis.

Even though I thought I found the best topic to write about, I hit a roadblock. I could not to save my life, find an earnings report, or anything that resembles an annual report. I am therefore writing to you guys, hoping that you could help me! I would definitely appreciate it!

I am looking for solid academic studies on the subject, not popular histories, on the causes of the dissolution of the USSR.

I also read Russian, though my Russian is rusty.

I would highly appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance!

Shingo, a small town in Aomori, Japan, has a burial mound of Jesus Christ and his similar-looking brother Isukiri.

According to the local's belief, Jesus was not crucified on Golgotha. Isukiri took his place, and Jesus took his remains when he fled to Japan. Jesus first came to Japan, aged 21, during the reign of the 11th emperor, Suinin, and he returned to Jerusalem to spread his words. Jesus returned after the persecution and lived in Japan until he was 106 years old.

Locals still celebrate festivals annually there.

My question: how did this belief develop in Shingo, Japan?

I know there were persecutions of Christians during Tokugawa shogunate, resulting in kakure kirishitan (hidden Christians). But what led to this specific burial mound in Shingo - what was Shingo's significance? Do the tombs actually bury Christian missionaries - if so, who and what was their story?

Today I had a thought, many people where I come from average in 180-190 in height and have blue eyes blonde hair (Scandinavia). My question is how would someone with those traits be seen in Nara Period Japan?

Obviously the average height was much lower back then (still is in Asia) and blue eyes blonde hair isn’t the most common thing to be seen. Would someone who looked like that be perceived as a Yokai or would they know its a foreigner? (My thought here is that Yokai were often used to explain the unexplainable, and I don’t know if there was a lot of travel between Europe and Japan at the time but I doubt it).

So how would they explain it most likely?

For a project of mine, I'm searching for the prices for armor, shields and weapons. I've already read much of the posts here on /r/AskHistorians and on worldbuilding.stackexchange, so I've found some of them. However, I still can't find any information about some armor and I can't find anything on shields.

I'm asking for the average price of (hardened) leather armor, segemented armor (lamellar, laminar or scale armor), buckler shield, round shield, kite shield, mantlet, and tower shield.

The price can come from any part of the globe (not only Europe) and from any time of the Middle Ages (I know prices have changed a lot over time, so if you have multiple prices for the same object write them all).

I have found most of the prices in pounds, so if you have any prices not in pounds I'd like you to give a coin conversion to pounds or point to one.

With "average price", I mean the price of a certain object of average quality. I have found full plate armor costing up to 40 pounds, but only because it was decorated and of prestigious quality.

For comparison, I found these prices for the following armors:

• 10 shillings for a padded jack (gambeson)
• 1 pound for mail (hauberk)
• 17 shillings for a coat of plates (brigandine)
• 8 pounds for plate armor

If you also have any different prices from what I have found, please write them in your answers.

Thank you in advance. I'm looking forward to reading your answers.

I'm referring to the incident during which APPARENTLY, due to a letter that nobunaga's daughter who was married to ieyasu's son, sent to Nobunaga, trying to frame her mother in law, ended up causing Nobunaga to have suspicions towards the Tokugawa, and things so bad that Ieyasu had to execute his wife and son to ease the tension.

Do we know, if he still resented Nobunaga afterwards ? I would hope so, but in that era you never know.

PS: I may gotten some details wrong as this affair isn't quite clear to me

In the story of Prometheus, he is chained to a rock and an eagle eats his liver everyday. Did ancient greeks have advanced enough understanding of the human body to be capable of knowing that the liver regenerates?

It’s always puzzled me how Richard got this nickname as surely Lions weren’t commonly known about in Western Europe at this time. Were Lions just seen as mythical creatures spoken about in the bible, or was there common knowledge that such an animal existed?

The official version that I have seen mentions him being killed by a bandit after the battle of Yamazaki but there is another theory suggesting that he managed to live on for much longer by being disguised as a monk, named "Tenkai". As a fun fact The video game Nioh 2 seems to follow this rumor.

Written texts were expensive during the era before the printing press, both in time and supplies. Do we know why the Icelandic monks spent a lot of time and resources to document the oral Norse tradition of the Sagas and pagan Norse mythology?

Looking for some insight into something I've noticed over the years in pop culture.

Typically in western and American culture, toxic and poisonous stuff is portrayed as bright glowy green. Think TMNT Ooze, mad science scenes, the radioactive barrels in games like Fallout, and classic Halloween slime... always bright unnaturally green.

Typically in Japanese culture poison and toxins are violet and purples. Think poison pokemon like Grimer, he is a purple ooze puddle. In One Piece the character Magellan is a poison man who turns into a purple monster, and I've seen plenty of other examples like the nasty food in Zelda BOTW being pixelated purple... etc.

I'm just curious as to what in history could have possibly influenced this odd divergence in cultural style and expression. Perhaps Japan has poisonous plants like nightshade that are purple? Is toxic waste in America actually green like in the cartoons?

I'm interested to hear what people think, and if anyone else has noticed this as well.

P.S. Bonus points if you can point out something similar in cultures or pop culture style that might go unnoticed, kinda like how western dragons are monsters and eastern dragons are helpers and good omens.

Did Lee Harvey Oswald offer any explanation during questioning (however convoluted it might have been) for shooting the President? Was there anything left in writing that offered a motive?

I know what happened. I’m less clear on why.

Japan, one of the Axis powers, had a large number if these carriers and showed their usefulness during the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Since that moment carries pushed aside Battleships for the center role of navies even to this very day. That makes me wonder why didn't Germany put greater effort into finishing the Graf Zeppelin or building another carrier?

I am looking for travel options for something I'm writing. Costs are no real impediment, and the quickest options are better. And how long it would take would also be appreciated if you have some idea. Thank you in advance!

Over the years, several states have implemented election laws to bind an elector's vote to the candidate chosen by its people or impose a fine. Were these laws in response to any votes made in bad faith? Did the lawmaker's/justice's thinking change over the years as to the original factors the founding fathers considered when drafting such laws?

I just came across a source that said corsets were only bad for you if fitted badly, but for some reason male patriarchs declared that corsets were bad and thus they fell out of fashion. How accurate is this?

"The monster under the bed" is a well known myth today in the US. Is this a relatively new myth (20th century) or does it date back further? Where did the myth originate and were their other versions in other places? Is this related to any other sleep-associated creatures, like the Sandman, for example?

I've been looking at the reigns of both Queen Hapshhepsut and Empress Wu and find some interesting similarities (both somewhat 'erased' after their death, both ruled over times of prosperity, both did things that they got vilified for that were similar to what male rules did without comment). My question is whether either of their reigns actually drove any substantive impact, other than just being a time of prosperity (which is an accomplishment that many rulers have not achieved). This is a combination of: 1. I would think for a woman to last for as long as they did, they must have been a great ruler, but I don't see any legacy to support that, 2. If they're not great is it just that they proved that women weren't better than men and so then there was no reason to have another like them?

For example, I'm a linguistic consultant working in the NLU processes of a modern search engine. I'm a tiny, miniscule cog in this colossal contraption, one of multiple thousand linguists and engineers. Only my immediate team knows almost exactly what I do. Colleagues from contiguous teams in the same NLP project will have a very broad notion but won't be able to follow any details unless I spend hours training them first. Vice versa, on both instances - it's not because I'm oh so smart, but because being ultra-specialised is the nature of the job.

Now, the above is between professionals still within the same company, same project, and same expertise of computational linguistics. Which is just one out of dozens, maybe hundreds of different technical disciplines within the broader IT/CS field. Like, my grandmother cannot even begin to understand the potential of a computer beyond "super calculator", to the point that she thinks I'm lying when I say I'm working because if I'm looking at the computer then I can't be that busy (true story lol). I can't really explain to her how a computer is able to process extremely complex data to accurately model, say, a biological structure and then run projections on it to test out improvements, because my nana cannot even conceive that it ever could. She's so far removed from it that it's effectively beyond her intelectual grasp.

So my question is... has there ever been, historically, a tool with such immense scope? With this much potential to improve human understanding, but also so complex that at the highest degree it took/takes almost hive-like levels of specialization to pull off?