Rudy Giuliani was enormously popular after 9/11.

He was Time’s “Person of the Year”. He had hospitals named after him. He was awarded honorary degrees. The UK awarded him an honorary knighthood. Even the Czech Republic gave him their “Medal of Heroism”.

Were there actual actions he took that made him so lauded and popular, or was it just the country and the world rallying round a representative of New York?

To what degree was Gorbachev, and his policy of perestroika responsible for the collapse of the ussr? If it wasn't for the hardline communist coup, and Yeltsin effectively saving gorbachev, could the USSR have survived longer?

I’ve been playing Crusader Kings 3 a lot (I know it’s not completely accurate) but it got me wondering if the duchy of Normandy was considered part of France after the conquest of England and what the politics were like between William and France during that period.

When looking at artistic depictions of Celts around 500 BC - 0 AD, many of them are either labelled as "Gallic", or sometimes used interchangeably with the Gauls.

However I was wondering if the other Celts (e.g. Galatians, Bretons) had similar armaments and clothing?

Thank you

Was watching a bald and bankrupt video or five last night and I kept hearing the older men and women always say that things were better before the fall of communism…is this a case of just weird nostalgia or is it rooted in something deeper? My gut feeling is that he’s talking to people who more or less were left behind when capitalism came to town but I cannot tell for sure. Someone who’s way more versed than me would know. Were times better under communism, or just the perception?

In imperial units, things always go by fractions of an inch. for some things, it makes plenty of sense: "I'll grab a 1/2" drill and a 1/4" drill. For others, not so much: "Let's use some 3/16 tube for this". Why 3/16" (0.1875") instead of 0.2"? It seems so much simpler. Perhaps this is a silly question that has the same roots as "why don't we just use metric?"

The scale of demographic loss especially amongst fighting age men in the USSR after WW2 was massive. They lost approximately 10 million soldiers killed. I was wondering, wouldn't that mean that there would be a sizeable amount of women who could simply never find a husband after the war, because there weren't enough men? If so, what happened to these women? Did they form any type of a distinct social class? How did they feel about their situations? I am interested in the social history, please, any detail or information about this question is appreciated.

Edit: In regards to my last question, the main thing I was thinking about was subjective personal accounts from people affected.

Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor of the French. My understanding as a complete layman is that this was partly because declaring himself King of France was politically untenable (the revolution having removed the king) and partly a foreign policy decision aimed at establishing himself as the equal of the Emperor of Austria and the Tsar of Russia.

However, I am curious to know why Louis XIV, whose stated ambition was absolute power and who surrounded himself with all the trappings thereof, who sought to make France the dominant military, economic and political power in Europe and wanted to expand France's influence around the world via the establishment of colonial holdings in America and India, never officially declared his realm an empire and himself an emperor.

Were there domestic or foreign policy considerations which discouraged him from doing so? Were there cultural issues (of which I am certainly ignorant) at play?

I understand roughly why the King of Spain never proclaimed himself as "Emperor of Spain", because to the best of my knowledge, during the period of the most extensive Spanish colonial expansion, the Spanish royal family were a branch of the House of Habsburg, who were the Holy Roman Emperors at this time.

But why not the Sun King?

Title. Can't find anything on the internet. What did the name 'sublime state' actually mean when it came to these two countries?

The population of modern Egypt is mostly Arabic-speaking Arabs. However, when people speak of Egyptians, they mostly think of non-Arab, Egyptian-speaking, polytheistic Egyptians. So when did these people disappear, and Arabs became the dominant peoples in Egypt?

Supposedly, the denatsate were French beggars who would disfigure themselves in hope of getting more money from begging. They would cut their mouths into a permanent smile and cut off their noses. I can’t find much information on them at all, let alone scholarly resources. The most information I can find come from Victor Hugo’s “The Man Who Laughs” and random comments on various websites.

For a long time I have sen that many last names can also be first names, like Howard, Stewart, Madison, or Hunter, and was wondering how that came to be.

In Spain, many first names can be found as last names (Juan, Esteban, Domingo), but not the other way around; you will not find someone whose first name is Sánchez, Carnicero, or Verde .

As a complete layman, it seems like technological advancements drive a lot of what we see as stratification of cultures over time, is this true for the history of the Egyptian empire?

I mean, the difference in technological abilities and scientific knowledge/application seem, to me, to drive the most meaningful differences between 2022 and 1022 or 22AD, and a hundred or a thousand years can seem pretty monolithic without this driving change.

This question was sparked by a question in another sub and seemed more suited for you.

/u/cocaflo and /u/inertiam were the original conversation. I hope I'm tagging them correctly to see the responses.

China’s chaotic era of disunity is referred as such, why not Europe?

I've heard the story before, about how Gorbachev only did the shoot because he was broke, and that the commercial was never intended for a Russian audience. However, I'm also aware that Yeltsin's economic reforms severely damaged the Russian economy and that food shortages grew worse, and that according to Wikipedia the Moscow restaurant the commercial was filmed in shut just a year later.

Could a seemingly-typical Russian (ideally Muscovite) working class or lower-middle class family as depicted in the ad have ever actually been able to afford a family meal at Pizza Hut in 1997-1998?

From Google: The scientific method is the process of objectively establishing facts through testing and experimentation.

This feels fairly intrinsic to me and I struggle to imagine life without it - but what is the earliest evidence we have of people using it?

I struggle to imagine how we could have domesticated grains or animals without it, but was it really required and is there any evidence of it's use? Does it go back further? Are there any examples of earlier species/ancestors testing things out?

The reference is in S1E3 "Dad's Girlfriend" where Blossom is complaining about how much she dislikes her dad's girlfriend. Blossom's friend Six counters that "Well, your dad seems happy." Blossom responds, "So did Kurt Waldheim when he had his picture taken with Hitler." (available to view on Hulu).

I did not understand the reference, so I asked my friend from college who majored in International Studies (I myself minored in history). It was lost on her too, so I asked my parents, thinking that maybe someone alive in 1991 (when the episode aired) would understand it. However, neither my parents, my sister, nor my friend's parents understood it either.

I of course tried to find the answer on Google, where I learned about Waldheim's service in the SA during WWII, where he was accused of war crimes. However, to be honest, I still don't totally understand the reference. It seems as if Blossom is defending Kurt Waldheim, suggesting that he was just pretending to be happy in the picture with Hitler (which I could not find online). Which would make her dad's girlfriend Hitler in this situation?

I know literacy was very poor in the past in general, but it seems to me that Islam puts great value in the Quran being written and understood in the original Arabic. I admittedly know little about this subject, and could be wrong, but did Islam encourage ownership and study of the Quran and thus literacy?