I’m not sure if the question is perfect but if I may use an example and ask a question.

Hamilton, the play/film brought up an interesting question for me.

Assuming Eliza’s letters to Hamilton weren’t actually burned or destroyed, but simply just lost, how would you look for it?

What steps would you take to find them?

Is there a team involved for something like this or “on your own time” sort of deal?

I hope this is a question that won’t get removed by a bot!

I can see how the spellings of Peking and Beijing might both be derived from hearing the same word slightly differently. Xi'an and Chang'an, however, are drastically different, and Chiang Kai-shek and Jiang Jieshi are almost entirely different. In the latter instance, how could one romanizer possibly hear two hard k's where the other doesn't? The only consistent thing between different systems seems to be the number of syllables. Why would separate romanization systems using the same alphabet to represent the same sounds have so much variance in which letters they choose to represent those sounds?

While watching BBC's Time Team program, I’ve noticed that archaeologist Mick Aston mentions multiple times there isn’t any pottery in Dark Age England (I believe he specifically mentions the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries). Is this true? Is there really no pottery made in England during this time? If so, what leads an entire population of people to halt production of something that had been made for thousand of years before this period for multiple centuries?

If you’re familiar with the book, I’m mainly just looking to fill in the gaps that the book doesn’t really cover.

For example, I’m aware of the different orders (like Doric, Tuscan, Ionic, Corinthian, and composite) but I don’t know if the orders are only used to describe the pillars (I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a more accurate name for them) or if they extend to other parts.

Another example would be what kinds of foods would be customarily made and would the types of food eaten in a poor home versus a wealthy home versus a tavern/inn differ from each other.

Final example would be if there’s aqueduct systems in the poleis (and drainage) and how would they work?

Edit: I don’t know how to change the flair. (I’m on mobile.)

I have a letter Hoover sent to my grandfather, who was an attorney, that is dated May 1, 1972 - the day before Hoover's death from a heart attack.

I am interested generally in connecting with a Hoover expert to discuss the historical context and significance of the letter, which I realize must surely have been only one of dozens of letters and other documents Hoover would have signed that day.

That said, the lore in my family for all these years has been that this may be the "last document Hoover ever signed". I am interested in how I might go about finding evidence for or against this fact.

Thanks for any and all input and advice!

We know that native americans tamed horses that espaced to the wild.

But did native americans try to raise other old world farm animals other than the horse? Like cows, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, Etc.

Because these women are usually from the upper classes, I was wondering if their living conditions had anything to do with it? Limited physical activity, staying indoors, lack of sunlight, eating less? I read about cosmetics having toxic ingredients and a regular lack of hygiene, as well as eating less as that was considered ladylike. Working women are hardly ever depicted fainting or frail, and these factors were mostly absent in the working classes.

Edit: Some answers are mentioning corsets, and I'm aware that they have a reputation as a cause for breathing difficulties and a general hindrance. (Although I've come across people who argue that the pictorial depictions often exaggerate the effect they had, and that regularly worn corsets were not nearly as strangling as they are made out to be.)

However, I wanted to know if there were lesser known, inconspicuous factors that may have contributed to women being perceived as inherently prone to fainting/falling ill easily.

Are declassified documents (from agencies such as CIA and KGB) seen as trustworthy by history experts? My question includes both documents related to internal affairs (e.g. reports on the US by American agencies) and external intelligence (e.g. CIA reports on the Ussr, Iran, etc.). Continuing on with the latter example, would those documents for example inflate numbers of active military personnel, number of tanks and such to get extra funding from the government (and deflate the numbers regarding internal matters to make it seem like additional funding is required).

Thank you!

By the time they set to invade Dutch East Indies, there was the clear threat of USA, and to neutralise USA they conducted Pearl Harbor.

The world tension and alliance coverage was much thinner in early 30s, and Showa statism had already emerged by then. So maybe they could have gotten away with taking DEE without making the whole world their enemies.

What was the day to day drudgery of say a count living in England who has sworn fealty to some duke or a king. What was his daily routine like? How would he go about administering his piece of land? Do we have any records of those daily tasks and activities these people would engage in?

I was wondering if the historians here knew enough to comment on the historical accuracies and inaccuracies of the German series Babylon Berlin, which is set in the late 1920s during the Weimar Republic. It’d be nice to know about groups like the Red Fortress & the Black Reichswehr, characters such as Ernst Gennat & Hans Litten, & the accuracy of the political factions shown, such as the KPD (Communists), the SPD (Social Democrats), those with conservative monarchist sympathies, & the NSDAP (the Nazis).

I think this would be a fun topic to discuss for a great series!

Recently, I saw a video in which a teenage girl was putting on makeup and questioning why higher math was as focused on as it was in antiquity. She specifically mentioned the Pythagorean theorem, and then mentioned slope-intercept form, y = mx +b. I knew why Pythagoras was interested in math such that playing with squares until you find the ratios of the sides of a right triangle would be considered a worthy philosophical pursuit, but slope-intercept form stumped me. I genuinely had no idea who the first person to write y = mx + b was.

Given that Y and X are used to express points on a line, I know that it has to come post Descartes creating the field of linear algebra, and research online indicated that Euler may have been the more common mathematician to use m as a stand-in for slope. But in my research, I couldn’t find a particular attestation to a specific work by either mathematician, (or any other, for that matter) which indicated who actually figured out that a linear equation could be expressed this way. So my question is, which mathematician (of these two or beyond) first formulated the slope-intercept equation, and in what work did they formulate it?

I'm kind of assuming that if you rolled up to a tiki restaurant in the United States in your metallic mint green Cadillac, and came in past the decorative waterfall to the smooth sounds of Les Baxter and order your first mai tai, you weren't in for an authentic Polynesian cuisine experience. So what was "tiki food" like?

I just read Robert Forczyk's Case White about the invasion of Poland, he devotes a couple of paragraphs to the Polish annexation of the Czech territories of Zaolzie in 1938. Writing that since the Czech's hadn't stood up to the Germans, it made sense for the Poles to act while they had the opportunity.

I'm curious about Polish/Czech relationship before and after Munic, and if there was ever any exploration of a defence pact against German or the USSR?