The Sagas describing Lief Erikson's voyage to North America were written down hundreds of years before Columbus' first voyage to the Americas. Europeans who read the Sagas must of figured Lief Erikson reached somewhere. So my question is what land did think he reached?

I was watching the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror - as one does at this time of year - and saw that bit where Homer checked his horoscope in the newspaper. I mean, we always see these broad little tidbits daily about whether you're Aquarius or Ares or whatever, but how did we get here? Did newspapers hire actual astrologers, or what?

What's the whole deal with Marie Antoinette not saying "Let them eat cake." And how exactly did that get started

I graduated from a Public History MA program about a year ago, but I still find myself struggling to master the art of crafting a quality outline. I feel that this continues to make my writing process much longer and more nerve-wracking than it has to be.

With that said, are there any folks here who can talk about their writing process and might even be willing to share a sample of an outline from a past project?

Thank you all for your time and consideration.

The statement above is a common justification for using nuclear bombs in ww2 that I see people use. How much truth is there to this statement. Was this really the reasoning at the time? Would a land invasion really have cost more lives? How would one know?

It was once one of the wealthiest countries in the world, similar to Canada or the USA in per capita wealth. But now its more of a middle income country.

Obviously this isn't universal, but, broadly speaking, from at least the 1990s forward, labrador retrievers and golden retrievers have been extremely popular among families with young kids. However, according to my parents, back in the 1950s and 1960s it was very common for families with kids to choose beagles instead.

Is there anything out there to suggest why this shift occurred? An influential dog-training book, a popular movie? I'm sure labs' great temperament plays a part, but what was the turning point that made people go, "you know what, this big easy-going dog is much better to have for the kids"?

It amazes me of how the Jewish people have been scapegoated and rejected and demonised throughout history for all sorts of reasons and this is possibly why the Jewish person is described with the stereotype of a liar or a greedy person, possibly since the Medieval period where Jews were bankers or tax collectors.

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But why the Jews were the specific human group that were ostracised, belittled, scapegoated and even threatened with death and rejection for simply being who are they or for people labelling them with certain features?

How did this labelling and scapegoating come into being and why was it passed down for generations?

Since ancient times, humans tried to find ways to explain the origins and mechanisms of the universe and the explanation and worship of many deities are one of them.

And many mythologies involve many deities or supernatural beings of many kinds - some have even more than one, benevolent, malevolent or somewhere in between.

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Some were described with eloborate physical features like having body parts that are found in other animals like Ra and his falcon head or Anibus or winged human-like bulls in Mesopotamia; or have the ability to take shape of something or are a representation of something like Osiris and his green skin or Hel whose half of her body is either dead or old.

But as mythologies and religions evolved, many religions (including ones that still exist today) shifted to the worship of deities that are either nameless or formless but also omnipotent and not exactly specific representations of a certain trait or feat like the Jewish religion, God does not have a specific name because it is too considered as too sacred; or Abramahic religions like Christianity and Islam simply call God as God or Allah with no distinctive name like in previous deities.

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So how did this shift in how religions function occur? What were reasons behind this shift?

Obviously some, like the conservative military establishment and the cossacks, had direct personal stakes in the outcome of the war, and many were pressed into service against their will, but from where did the White movement derive its popular support and what were the hot-button issues and rallying cries that led ordinary Russians to fight for the many myriad warlords and armies of the White Army?

Apart from obvious things like anachronistic fonts or other things, what, in general, should someone like me who's getting back into history need to do to try and assess a source's authenticity?

Are there methods to detect sources' authenticity?

I can't seem to find much on it, but can anyone tell me why the various European powers, especially the Russian Empire, did not use the various genocides of Armenians and other Christian groups like the Hamidian Massacres as a just cause for invasion of the Ottoman Empire?

Seeing as Russia has always needed a warm-water port for geopolitical and geostrategic reasons from the days of Peter the Great, why not seize this perfect opportunity? Further strengthened is the claim that as holding Constantinople, Russia is the next "Rome", which gives them immense soft-power in Orthdoxy and wider Christendom.

Similarly Britain, France, Germany and Italy- all of whom were competent "Christian" powers with significant colonial empires and/or ambitions. Surely this would've proved a great opportunity to pick apart a dying colossus?

I read recently that Edward I was named Edward by his father, King Henry III, after the Anglo-Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, and that the selection of an Anglo-Saxon name was highly unusual for Anglo-Norman aristocrats. This of course makes sense given that the Normans had their own culture and customs separate from those of the Anglo-Saxons. This would have been questionable were it not for the so-called Cult of Edward the Confessor in that era, who had become venerated for his piety in the generations after his death. With this, I was thinking that another early King of the Anglo-Saxons was Edward, son of Alfred the Great, the latter of whom is often recognized as being the first King of England, even if just essentially and not literally by title.

From this, it had been important for the Anglo-Normans to secure and maintain the idea that William the Conqueror’s claim was unquestionably legitimate, because if it wasn’t, then of course the reign of the Normans in England itself could be found to be completely illegitimate. Thus the Normans and the Anglo-Normans thereafter maintained the idea that William had in fact been the selected successor of Edward the Confessor, whose title was King of England. So why was the later King Edward ‘the Longshanks’ I styled as ‘the first’ if the Anglo-Normans recognized that kings like Edward the Confessor and those before him (namely Edward, son of Alfred) were kings of England too? How was any of this argued, rationalized, or justified?

was it due to the geography of Europe or an invention by the state? did it precede industrialization or was a consequence of it?

Follow-up: could it have been the cause of Europe's dominance?