Sorry if this is not the right place to ask but I was suggested maybe trying here.

I live and work in Japan and today a co-worker and I were talking about math. Through our discussion we came across the question of why English count by thousands. I get base 10 and its origins but it's the naming we were wondering about. For example we have ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands. The next number instead of being a new name becomes ten thousands. The next "new" number is a million which is a thousand thousands. After that each new number comes at the thousand place. By comparison Japan got their number system form China and while also base 10 it counts by 10,000s. Why is this?

I've read that cast-iron cookware was popular for hundreds, if not thousands, of years because it was cheap to make before civilisations got good at refining metals. I've also read that it was the most common thing used in kitchens until Teflon-coated cookware was invented in the 1950s.

But we got better at mass producing other metals way before that, so why did it take until then for cast iron to fall out of favour? Why didn't carbon steel or stainless steel take over as soon as the technology to make them was cheap enough?

I sometimes hear that there were a number of factors that conspired to degrade the reputation of the Catholic Church in large parts of Europe in the lead up to the reformation, commonly cited is the humiliating Avignon papacy and especially the Western Schism that came from it, a degradation in Church standards and discipline, but also the idea that the outbreak of the plague and its recurrent appearance over the centuries caused a loss of faith in the Church. The argument usually goes that clergy were in a bit of a Catch 22 situation, a lot of them stayed with their sick parishioners and tried to help them, but that meant that priests could be particularly vulnerable to catching the disease and dying, which would make it seem like the church did not have god's favour to allow churchmen to survive the catastrophe and were being punished as much if not more harshly than the rest of the population. Alternatively some clergy didn't have the stomach to stay in a place that they knew was being ravaged by the disease, causing them to avoid contact with their flock or even flee, which could build up resentment that many in the church were abandoning their responsibilities in a time of disaster, both situations being a bad outcome for people's opinion that the church still held god's favour.

Additionally, other arguments are that just generally the difficulty in creating a coherent, useful strategy to deal with such a disaster damaged people's faith that the Church was able to help in a serious way, as well as increasingly heavy handed actions by temporal authorities to enforce quarantines that increased their own power relative to the church (I'll admit this one confuses me since I though that quarantines were something that had a lot of Church involvement, but then I also understand that quarantines could exceptionally controversial in application and that a lot of people simply didn't, and don't, fully appreciate their importance). Finally that, in the midst of the disaster, spontaneous grassroots movements like the Flagellants started to spring up, often quite explicitly against the wishes of the Catholic hierarchy, that started to create a tradition of popular religious movements without church approval.

I don't know if this is really true, but I would be curious if the Black Death helped set in motion some of the events that helped lead to the Reformation.

I’m struggling with some research at the moment and would find it useful for some other peoples input.

I’ve been looking into this for a while now, but I keep getting conflicting points of views which seem both logical and somewhat unacceptable at the same time. Given the nature of the event it seems a struggle to find any information that is written objectively or honestly. All “evidence” and/or accounts seem to be subjective with a bias to their own argument.

Why did it take so long to stop the Holocaust? What are reliable sources on the subject?

I take into consideration that times were different then and whereas these days news can travel around the globe in a minute, I’m struggling to accept that even then without things such as the internet an operation of that scale could go unnoticed for that long, therefore I don’t believe no one knew for ages.

A few other theories include the allies were told but it seemed so unbelievable that they dismissed it as just propaganda. OK, yes what happened is so shocking and inconceivable I can see that it would be doubted or questioned for a brief moment, but then again Hitler and the Nazi’s never made a secret of their hatred towards Jews and their ideas to eliminate them, and they were already known for their practice in eugenics, so they weren’t above killing people they deemed unworthy of existence.

There are also accusations that suggest they did know but apparently didn’t want the war to be about siding with Jews as there were fears it would increase antisemitism.

Or maybe my question is when researching a moment in history that is as political and traumatic as this one, how or is it even possible to take human emotion out to come to an objective conclusion? Hindsight can be good when looking into history because it can help piece things together but I wonder if it is part of the problem as to why I am failing to see how this could have happened. Or is this one of those moments of history that will never really be concluded and always debated?

I've been writing a fantasy novel that involves a culture adjacent to Polynesia (Mostly Hawaiian and Maori culture used as reference) and one of my main characters is a sailor/navigator, though I don't know anything about actually sailing a Polynesian canoe and would like to know what exactly goes into it. Stuff like what parts of the boat are involved would be great help. I'm pretty much stuck with a few seconds from Moana and a bunch of documentaries on the Hokule'a for research.

I didn't really know the appropriate place to ask about this, so a subreddit or resource where I might find more/better information would be just as great as an answer.

So, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution abolished slavery and indentured servitude, except as punishment from a crime, and gave Congress the power to pass appropriate legislation to enforce the 13th Amendment. But, I can't imagine all the slave-owners in the South, following the Civil War, just laid down and freed all of their slaves. So, my question is, how was the 13th Amendment enforced in practice in the post-war South? How long did it take until there were no more slaves? Any examples of slavery persisting in isolated pockets after the Civil War? Thanks!

Did the French Revolution or the rise of Napoleon have anything to do with this?

A podcast I follow has recently covered the Fiume (debacle? crisis? incident?) and, while going over the League of Fiume declaration, listed among the oppressed peoples African and Asian Americans. It's not necessarily surprising as Americans were part of Gabriele d'Annunzio's (army? government? entourage?) but how would these inclusions be seen and understood by the politically engaged Italian public during this time?

After a cursory reading on Wikipedia, it seems like meat wrapped in dough and baked or fried began with the sanbusaq in Iran/Central Asia and spread throughout the world as the samosa, samsa, curry puff, empanada, calzone, pirozhki etc.

China had a lot of historical exchange with Persia, but I haven't found anything about some descendant of the sanbusaq being historically present in China (or east Asia in general for that matter). I read that uyghur kao baozi 烤包子 are a direct descendant, but I haven't found any related han dishes. Perhaps some kind of shaobing 燒餅 is considered a descent of sanbusaq?

This nation and its story have fascinated me and I find it strange that more people do not talk about it. My question regards the controversy surrounding this nation. I have heard some claims of it being a righteous hold out against communism and of it being just another apartheid, South Africa. I know the nation did have blacks serve in Rhodesian Armed Forces and yet was also under white minority rule, so I am sure the answer lies in the middle. So, what is the truth behind Rhodesia?

From "Farmers of Forty Centuries", discussing of a 1909 trip to Hong Kong by F.H. King.

It appears that this was a floating island made up of boats that would come together in the night and tie together. What were they doing out there? Why were the police so concerned with people leaving Hong Kong and going to the floating island or crossing to Kowloon? Were they trying to flee Hong Kong for China, or were these criminals trying to escape justice?

Looking backward as we left Hongkong for Canton on the cloudy evening of March 8th, the view was wonderfully beautiful. We were drawing away from three cities, one, electric-lighted Hongkong rising up the steep slopes, suggesting a section of sky set with a vast array of stars of all magnitudes up to triple Jupiters; another, old and new Kowloon on the opposite side of the harbor; and between these two, separated from either shore by wide reaches of wholly unoccupied water, lay the third, a mid-strait city of sampans, junks and coastwise craft of many kinds segregated, in obedience to police regulation, into blocks and streets with each setting sun, but only to scatter again with the coming morn. At night, after a fixed hour, no one is permitted to leave shore and cross the vacant water strip except from certain piers and with the permission of the police, who take the number of the sampan and the names of its occupants. Over the harbor three large search lights were sweeping and it was curious to see the junks and other craft suddenly burst into full blazes of light, like so many monstrous fire-flies, to disappear and reappear as the lights came and went. Thus is the mid-strait city lighted and policed and thus have steps been taken to lessen the number of cases of foul play where people have left the wharves at night for some vessel in the strait, never to be heard from again.

The size of 'Venice City' on a map is absolutely tiny. The individual islands are merely shards of glass. I don't understand how it was physically possible for such a small place to even develop an empire? I know people often say the same about Britain 'small green sliver' blah blah but Britain was still a reasonably large country at least by European standards, supported by a decent-sized population spread out across different population centres and a varied geography (moutains in some places, green fields in others) etc.

In stark contract Venice 'City' is 114 miniscule islands. It does not seem realistic that it could have developed an empire from such a tiny territory...

a) Size: a single Venetian island would struggle to even physically fit a large factory that could produce something of value. So where did the industry in Venice reside? (Murano glass? - Murano is even smaller than Venice 'City')

b) Government: did the government just govern the 114 islands? You hardly need a large bureaucracy to govern an area the size of the historical City of London? What were all these initial Venetian Doges governing then? Lording it over a few islands in the middle of the sea?

c) Army: to have a proper army or navy you'd need a proper barracks to house and train them. Again, how will you manage this on some tiny Venetian island within the city of Venice?

Are there parts of the puzzle that I'm missing? Did 'Venice' mean more than just the City but it sprawled across all the other islands like Lido, Murazzi, Chioggia, Ca Savio... ?

Thanks in advance!

From what I've read Electroshock Therapy is a wonder cure for depression. Like everyone who's had it says they're happy now. And while I understand that it's expensive I feel like it's cheaper than buying antidepressants for your whole life. If it's so great and it can fix even the most difficult cases why don't we use it like they did 100 years ago

What's the background of the mob violence that happened there?