Like was it a style thing or did it serve a purpose? Idk, it’s 3am and I’m bored.

I’m in my 40s and I remember hearing about violence and bombings in Northern Ireland. I’ve read and seen Angela’s Ashes and it’s a running theme throughout. Is that still the state of things there? How did England end up with Northern Ireland?

I've heard people say that people like Thomas Edison and JP Morgan had like betrayed him or screwed him over. How exactly was Nikola screwed over in his life?

Why were European kingdoms ruled by branch families with relations to the main family; instead of rotating dynasties like China or being overthrown by a powerful military leader like Tipu Sultan; and or Saladin; or collapsing like the Gupta and Mughal empires?

Since the states that would form the CSA effectively seceded (to my knowledge) over their concerns that the US government might at some point act to put an end to slavery in the South, I was rather surprised to come across the following section in their 1861 constitution:

  Article 1, Section 9, Clause(?) 1: The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.

Clause(?) 2: Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy.

I don't know whether the CSA actually acted upon this, but I'm confused as to why they would have maintained the ban on the trans-Atlantic slave trade the USA had implemented before the outbreak of the Civil War, given that access to the still-existing slave trade might have been an economic boon for Southern plantation owners. I can't imagine the ban would have been for humanitarian reasons, given the Confederate insistence on maintaining slavery itself as an institution. Were the seceding states afraid of rousing hostility from abolitionist Britain or the North?

EDIT: added second clause(?) I'm not American, so I have no idea what these are called.

So I know that at some point from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Japan had colonized and ruled over some Pacific countries and parts of East Asia including Korea and Manchuria, but I want to know what the reason behind this was. Let me know what the reason was below.

I've noticed several people have asked similar questions before over the years, but it's never really gotten an answer, so I figured I'd ask it again for reasons related to the recent election news.

What was the reaction to this? Was there a contingent in the GOP who opposed his nomination for racist reasons? Did any notable Democrats respond poorly? What was the range of thoughts among Native American leaders, especially given the Curtis Act's dissolution of communal land ownership and general badness? How big of a deal was it considered at the time?

Any good books about this topic?

I've been trying to read more into the inner workings of the Nazi regime, especially from the perspective of those who were either within it themselves or had access to people who were.

I've come across "The Goebbels Diaries", are these of historical note and do they have much insightful information in them? If not, could you please point me to some other resources that are informative, especially on Joseph Goebbels himself.

For example, if humanity was nuked and alien archeologists found an article of an election in Nevada, with comments joking about aliens in Area 51 voting, how could these historians differentiate that as humor if they know nothing else?

How do we know some aspects of history aren't a misinterpretation of what someone said as a joke?

Especially if these fictional archeologists were to conflate the term "aliens of Area 51" with other terms used, like the archaic version of alien meaning foreigner.

How do we know our understanding of words from ancient languages don't stem from people who couldn't spell or misuse words that had multiple meanings? If you were in the 1800s, alien meant foreigner. In modern times it means an entity from space. How are we so sure of even the definitions of the words we read when language changes century by century?

How do historians get around the unreliability of certain texts in these scenarios where culture shock, the liquid nature of language, and cultural quirks show up? Similarly, how can historians tell if a text is biased at all if the author is long dead and we have no way to know their personality or biases or if they are piecing together evidence that simply does not go together?

Another example is where Futurama kinda plays with these ideas where a museum has Fry's pizza place, with wildly wrong theories about how the the 20th century worked such as the pizza board being a "spanking" device, an account of a moon landing by "whalers", and other misconceptions based on memes of the past and accumulating assumptions of previous historians.

How exactly do we know we aren't just as wildly wrong? Because by logic if the very foundation of our understanding of what we see is faulty, then everything we know collapses too.

was there a tactic that a nation used at some point that was effective against Napoleon Bonaparte's army? (aka how to beat Napoleon's strategy)

The TV series Vikings portrays the two as completely ignorant of each other until the raid on Lindisfarne. But I feel that can't possible be the case, given the short distance between the two, and the fact that Saxons and Norsemen were both Germanic groups.

Or, why did people create units of currency smaller than a dollar, or the equivalent?

I've read/heard that their were schools, at least for the upper classes. With grades and instructors. Is there any truth to this?

Hey all,

I come from a scientific background, but, for better or for worse, I have found myself in a history class and I need like, 10 sources for a research paper. Now, ordinarily, this would not be a problem, but I have to use the damned Ebscohost method of acquiring sources.

I guess I just need some direction from someone MUCH better than I. Most sources seem to be...books.

I don't see how you can narrow things down if you have to rely on perusing through entire books just to find singular points or whatever.

idk, I feel lost and any input would be appreciated haha

My daughter is obsessed with the show Spirit: Riding Free. It's set in the late 19th century and about a city family that moves to the frontier. In one episode, the characters are looking through wedding magazines to find the perfect wedding dress. One of the former city dwellers says: How about sea foam green? It's the height of fashion in the city."

Do we know what wedding fashion was during this time, and did people really wear sea foam green wedding dresses?

Is there any argument for reclassifying the American revolution as the 2nd English (1st British) civil war?

In my mind it seems much more like a civil war, rather than a revolution of the kind we would see later in Latin America and around the globe.

I have a hard time believing that all of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, China, and Central Asia was coincidentally fractured and weak in the 1200s.