Apparently it was common to dress male children in frocks and keep their hair long for some reason, why was this?

Many purportedly-straight-line east-west state boundaries were first surveyed in the period from the 1600s up until the early 19th century, such as the northern and southern boundaries of Massachusetts, the Mason-Dixon Line, the southern boundary of Virginia, and the northern and southern boundaries of Tennessee.

Many of these boundaries notoriously deviate from being straight lines. Given that surveying lines of latitude (as opposed to longitude) was a well-understood technology during that time period, and land surveying lacks many of the challenges of naval latitude reckoning, why were there so many surveying errors, and why are some of those errors so severe?

The not-always-clearly-defined group of 'founding fathers' are central to the American mythos, but when did this idea take root in American society?

I guess it's by modern standards. Not sure if consent laws existed back then?

Jefferson brought his 14 year old slave to Paris. By the time they went back she was pregnant and wouldn't return without rights to her person. DNA testing today does suggest the child was Jefferson's.

So, in 1800s standards, would a man in his 40s having sex with a teenager be considered pedophilia? Let's ignore the race element here if needed. If she was white and this occurred, how would most people react?

If Thomas Jefferson, in his 40s, wed a teenager, how would the nation react? Would he be called a pedophile? Did such labels even exist back then?

I’ve been trying to research the party realignment but it’s been hard to find a lot of information about Lincoln

So on FB today, I came across someone making this claim, " The natives from the artic to the southern most tip of south America. Can all be linked to the 8 families that crossed the land bridge from Asia to Alaska. Columbus is given credit for linking the "lost" human race. That had no other way of contacting the "known" peoples. Until Columbus made his voyage. It is true that Columbus brought diseases to the Americas. But he also brought syphilis back to Europe. ".

I've used my google fu to no avail finding any way to confirm or discredit this statement. I've never heard of this viewpoint of Columbus.

I am looking for some good books to read about the history of Georgia, as it is a place that I am enamored with and have visited about 3 years ago. I will also take any good podcasts that you know as well. Thank you!

The sea is enormous. Ships during the age of sail where really slow and you could only see like ~10km.

Mahan always writes about "lanes" which where "known" and used by ships, but he never gives a specific example - or I didnt find it yet.

How did the mechanics of finding the enemy work in tje open ocean? Where there hundreds of small ships working together in a net and relaying information to the main fleet via signals?

Maha writes ships tried to intercept the enemy at the point of departure - fe the english fleet keeping a clode Blockade of brest. But how did this work in detail? Did they sail up and down a few km out of the harbor for months - until some other ships took there post?

I can understand the operational strategy of the navies at that time, but I just csnt wrap my head sround how these things could work in practice with such slow cumversome ships without any tech like radio etc.

I'm not a historian or a scientist, so apologies if I'm completely idiotic in asking this, but does the study of history have a lower/different standard for considering something true than science?

I understand that, in science, you would normally need to be able to repeat and test a proposition to verify that it is correct, and I'd guess that generally isn't possible in history, so what do historians do when they find a document which claims a certain thing happened? How do they weigh the truth of one historical person's claim against another?

I know this is a bit of a weird question, but I'm trying to understand the way the casta was applied, particularly in Puerto Rico.

Take for example, me. My (legal) grandfather was mixed indigenous and African, thought I can't say what percentage of each. And from what I see on the casta charts, he could be anything from China cambuja, to Lobo, to Albarazado, to Barzino, or like five other things. My grandmother was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, which I take to either be Mestiza or Torna atras. My mother is completely white, though she has dark hair and dark eyes.

My father, on the other hand, is half-Italian and half-Polish. I know that the Casta was manipulated by people it ruled over by claiming to be one thing in one setting, and another in another setting (for tax or conscription benefits). If my grandparents had been born two or three centuries earlier, I'm sure they could have taken advantage of this (was that even possible in Puerto Rico?).

My question is about my European father. The casta charts all start with Españoles y Españolas. Were all Europeans subsumed under that title? Or were children of non-Spanish but European parentage something else in the casta system?

Generally, how strong was the casta system applied in Puerto Rico? The demographics of the island seems (to my cursory understanding of the island's colonial history) to change pretty dramatically, and pretty quickly. I know this is a bit of a weird question, but I find trying to understand the casta to be like trying to grab something slippery.

So I'm looking kinda an academic book to learn about the history and politics of Canada, not searching for novels or anything like that, i'd like something a bit professional, hope you guys can help me :)

My understanding had been that Jews were exiled from Israel, and some of them went to Central Europe (France/Germany) and later moved east (Germany/Poland/Russia/etc). Looking into it though, it seems there have been multiple exiles of Jews from Israel (and that there were European women that converted among the Ashkenazim but that's not relevant here), and some Jews that simply moved out of Israel, for various reasons.

So, how did the Ashkenazi Jews get to Europe? Were they exiled, and if so, in which exile? If they chose to leave, when did they leave under what circumstances?

A civil war is a war between citizens of the same country. Colonists, in large part, were British citizens and the territory they fought in was British territory.

How accurate the translators were in the ancient world, for example, did the Athenians had people who spoke Persian perfectly and vice versa for all the other languages they had to trade in and interact, or the translators were just good enough translating the core meaning from each language without very much detail. If someone from Europe at the same time period wanted to trade with very far way places in Asia, how hard communicating perfectly with them was?