Up until the 60's, tobacco (and smoking in general) was widely perceived to be harmless and sometimes even beneficial. It is only recently that people started to realise that it is harmful.

I was wondering, why did it take so long? Tobacco has been smoked for centuries, if not millennia. It shouldn't take more than a few generations to realise that your friends who smoke have worse health than your friends who don't.

And if so was there any public outrage or efforts to provide public warmth?

So I've been researching medieval ports for a project and there's a few things that I cant really wrap my head around which is the whole loading and unloading cargo at ports.

Looking at the ports themselves, I've seen that there's usually the flat, rectangle shape that's made of stone then usually having wooden walkways lining them that are lower in height where the ships would be parked against.

I'm finding hard, however, to figure out the mechanics of lifting and placing the especially heavy cargo like stone. Can there be big piece of cargo that weighs a tonne or is it split up into smaller boxes that can be picked up and moved around?

Also I know there were things such as the Treadwheel cranes that can apparently lift up to three tonnes but how does it get onto the crane in the first place? I cant find any answers that the Treadwheel can can actually spin left to right so all you would be doing is moving a bunch of heavy cargo up and down the ship. Would sailors just be lifting the cargo using the cranes to the top deck then just carrying it off the ship or use the crane for that? Also wouldn't some larger ships just have a pully system on the ships themselves for lifting cargo between decks?

If a piece of cargo can actually weigh a tonne and has be lifted down to the bottom presumably by crane how do they move it around the cargo deck from there? If its being suspended in the air by the crane it can be pushed around by crew then placed by lowering the crane but the hole that the cargo goes through is not very wide in illustrations so the method above cant really work from moving cargo too heavy to pick up to the other side of the ship. Are the cargo holes actually bigger allowing the cranes more spots to place cargo or is all heavy cargo just left in the middle of the ship?

Also this question might sound a little silly but all the illustrations and pictures of medieval ports and ships have the hole cargo gets lifted down through being small holes in the middle of the ship which would only be about 1/5 of the deck, sometimes less for wider ships, while the cranes on the piers look like they barely hang over the side of the dock, even if the crane is right on the end and it doesn't look like it will even reach the middle of the ship. Do they actually reach the middle of the ship or am I just seeing all these illustrations at weird angles?

Last question isn't too tough, the parts of the ports usually have a flat stone wall thing then the wood part lining it lower down, I'm assuming the lower ships like rowboats and small sail ships but do the larger ships park against the wooden parts or empty stone piers with no wood or both?

Sorry for the wrong terminology, I cant figure out the proper names for the different parts of the dock.

I know it sounds like a dumb question, but I'm introducing myself to the Protestant Reformation and I was curious as to what the Catholics found so heretical about it? What specific teachings were so hated by the authorities of the time?

Hello! I'm defining details for a story I'm writing. It's a serious job so I'm reading up on my own from reputable sources... however, I can't find an answer to this question, so I thought I'd come here.

The reason I can't find answers it's probably because it's not a specific notion, but more of a clarification about an idea that is forming in my head.

Let's get to it.

Many sources acknowledge the commonalities between Dionysos and Hades (not like they're the same god, of course). I won't go into it: people who can answer me already know about this.

Now I'm sliding into Roman times and I noticed that the Saturnalia have so many themes that one could attribute to Bacchus/Dionysus... I know that Saturn is a mythological transliteration of Kronos more than anything else, but the Saturnalia not only had a theme of rebirth, sacrifice and wine, but they also had a component of role reversal that I would immediately ascribe do Dionysus more than anyone else.

I guess my question is: does the figure of Saturn in Roman mythology have any common origins, crossbreeding or any other kind of contamination with Dionysus? Do the Saturnalia and Brumalia or Bacchanalia have a common origin, after which they split up to become different celebrations?

Thank you so much in advance, I know the question is a little convoluted and fantastical.

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EDIT: sorry, I was typing on pc and I didn't notice the flair was wrong...

And why were other prominent Nazis released much earlier, like in the 1960's?

Why didn't Chinese and Japanese castaways or seafarers were able to spread smallpox and other diseases to the Siberian Native tribes or the Native Americans of the Pacific Coast if we have historical evidence of Chinese/Japanese castaways in these areas?

Does anyone know the history of women and our glorious past and how our power got taken away & men became the ´leaders’

Whenever the Cuban Missile Crisis is discussed, it is in the context of the day we narrowly averted a nuclear war. Indeed, a Soviet submarine captain reported tried to fire a nuclear torpedo after depth charges were dropped on his submarine. It was undeniably a very dangerous situation. However, is it the consensus of historians that the war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would definitely have escalated to nuclear war if hostilities broke out, or is it possible that the countries might have had enough restraint to fight a conventional war?

It is understandable that US and USSR became nuclear powers given their economic strength after WW II.

What I can't compute in my mind is how India or Pakistan became to be nuclear powers given their low GDP,. industrialization.

And how oil rich countries in the middle east failed to do so when they had bigger GDP than India or Pakistan.

I guess I am asking for a TL;DR for nuclear arms race.

The basis of this question comes after watching the movie Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary spends the movie to secure the inheritance of the throne of England for her and her son after. However, in the meeting between the two queens, she [Mary] asserts that even now she holds a better claim to the throne because she is a Stuart.

So, I understand how House Stuart came before House Tudor, but the Tudor's are the current holders of the throne and are the royal house. I'm curious how this would have been resolved in medieval times when a person is from an older House while a newer House is the royal family.

Was there any planning if the “Little Boy” bomb failed to detonate? Would it self destruct to prevent the technology from being captured and studied?

Any books, pdfs, articles, lists, or wikipedia pages are welcomed, although books and pdfs are preferred.

I'd like to read about Penda of Mercia, Kings Oswiu and Oswald of Northumbria, and Cenwalh of Wessex, as well as the Battle of Maserfield, Cenwalh's exile, and the Battle of the Winwaed.

Latin, like Arabic, continued to be used as a liturgical language, but in most of formerly-Roman Europe, Latin was supplanted in everyday use by Latin-based romance languages, whereas Arabic is still spoken throughout the Muslim world today. Why is that?

Hi everyone, I was born in 1991, and so the music I was exposed to in high school (late 2000s) was mainly from the “Emo”, “Hard Rock” and “Hardcore” genres, and I thought they were rather angry and depressing, dealing with themes of violence and break ups, etc (for example, the violent lyrics in Disturbed’s “The Sickness”). However, the magic of streaming apps have introduced me to a whole sway of bands from the 1990s that are, in my opinion, even more angry, songs about violence, suicide and death, for example the band Filter’s song “Hey Man Nice Shot” which is extremely angry and is about the 1989 public suicide of a US politician. Another example is the Alice in Chains song “Man in the Box” which has anti- religious lyrics and where the singer compares himself to a beaten dog. A quick search reveals to me that most of these songs/albums came out between 1989 and 1996. Why are they so angry? What sort of social events may have occurred to make them so? It is my general opinion that, although the 1990s were a decade in transition, they were relatively happy times.

Thank you for your time in reading or answering my post.

I'd gather it couldn't have taken too long, but I wonder if there is an exact timeline from discovery to realization. Possible follow up question: is this process recorded on any document?

I feel like somebody with even a passing interest in the Aztecs quickly learns that the term that's commonly used to describe is something of a misnomer that wasn't anything like what the people themselves described themselves as (similar to the 'Byzantine Empire').

My understanding is that 'Aztec' is derived from the mythical ancestral homeland of the Mexica but they didn't describe themselves as such, and they were even directly instructed to not refer to themselves as Aztecs. In addition the conception of the empire as Aztec tends to elide the fact that it was a confederation with two other peoples.

With this kind of thing in mind, how exactly did it become normalized to refer to the Aztec empire in the way we do now in English? Why don't we call it the Triple Alliance or even something like the Mexica empire? The latter has its issues but it still seems a bit more accurate compared to the Aztec Empire.