I was reading through the correspondence of an American sailor who was stationed in the Pacific in October, 1945. He was expressing a lot of resentment over the fact that he wasn't allowed to go home yet despite the end of the war, and finishes off a list of his grievances with what I've transcribed as follows:

"To top it all off Truman comes along with that shit about the Missouri. Boy he really made all of the navy men in the Pacific's shit list. I'll never vote for him if he was president for a hundred years."

I assume he's referring to the USS Missouri, where Japan signed its official capitulation in September of that year, but I don't really see what the writer would find so infuriating about that.

Admittedly, I'm not the best at transcription, and "Missouri" could possibly be another word; but either way, I'm wondering if any of you know what Truman might have done this early into his presidency to make the "shit list" of Pacific sailors.

Anybody know where I can find it? Trying to put together a biography on him.

Apologies for the confusing title! Just joined Reddit to ask this question for a project my class is doing.

I can't find much information on what the nobility/higher social classes would've done after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, except how some apparently moved to Italy/switched to Catholicism/over time lost their Hellenism. Did any remain within what was Greece back then? Like Athens, for example, or another major city?

And... what would an upper class woman's life be like in this time period? Their education? Would it be like other western countries where noble women would be taught Latin, embroidery, manners, etc. or would they receive little to no education at all?

Thank you :) x

Or is that still a working theory? Any other competing theories as to why MesoAmerican culture was uniquely, well, focused on human sacrifice, from a sheer numbers point of view?

I'm currently starting a paper for my history class but am having trouble coming up with a third claim. So I'm curious what a good topic or idea would be to research and develop my third claim.

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This is my thesis if it matters at all: The emergence of organized crime was a direct consequence of Prohibition and the subsequent Volstead Act to provide the necessary support to curtail its growth throughout America.

I really started to think about this a lot because I had a disabled friend. He has osteogenesis imperfecta (glass bones). He's a little person, wheelchair bound, and extremely low mobility. So even though he has the chair daily tasks can still be hard. He refused a common surgery for his condition where they place metal rods in your limbs so the bones grow straighter. Because he refused it as he grew his bones would break causing hims limbs to be angled and jutting at many places. Making them shorter and it even harder for him to grip things.

If he had been born in an era without a wheelchair wtf would he of done?

I saw a thread on askmorbid questions about how autistic people would of been treated in midevil times and it really made me want to start this thread. Which I think could be interesting.

I think my friend would of been completely reliant on a tribe to help him live. Someone would have to pick him up to move him around but this it's self would of been hard af because of the glass bones. Lifting him in theory could cause all his bones to break. Although he told me it had been done before.

Discuss.

I just saw a post where they bricked around the statue of David to protect him during World War II. Is this an isolated event or were precautions taken across Europe to protect art? Did the allies actively try not to bomb areas that were known to house art? Finally, does anyone know how much art was lost to the war/s?

I heard an immunologist mention that we don't really know how long viruses like the common cold or influenza have been around.

Do Ancient Greek sources mention people suffering from something that sounds like the common cold?

If I'm not mistaken, after WWI Turkey released a lot of land, which resulted in (more or less) modern day Near East. However, they still hold land in the European side of the Marmara sea. Why? Why didn't it release it to Greece, or Bulgaria, or even something else, like a Constantinople-like city state?

Hello I am a 20 year old history major. As my studies become more focused, I have avoided western history because in the US it seems that’s all you’re taught in high school.

I’m currently in a China in the 20th Century class, and I’m having a really hard time remembering all the different important figures and places. I’m a native English speaker and my brain just cannot remember who is who or where is where.

Memorization/studying is usually not this hard for me, so I’m frustrated. I had this same problem in an Ancient African History class last semester.

I know it’s a niche question but I couldn’t find anything online about it, if you have any tips please share! Thank you.

To very, very, VERY overly simpify WWII: Most countries didn’t seem to be very cool with the idea of Germany taking over half of Europe or worse, and as such they eventually attacked and defeated Germany. No more occupied countries, hurray.

So we’re in the aftermath of WWII, everyone’s happy to be not occupied again. But here comes The Soviet Union and they’re like “Hey, now that Germany is gone, how about WE go and occupy half of Europe instead?”

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And everyone is just like “okay sure go ahead”?

Why? Why was everyone cool with the USSR doing the thing which wasn’t cool when Germany was doing it like a week ago? Were they too big for other countries to say no to? Was everyone just tired of fighting? Was Eastern Europe so fucked up at the time that they kind of needed another country to lead them?

Hello folks I’m doing a VOC representative for Model UN and I’m not sure where to find information on this. In 1602 the VOC raised 6.5 million guilders in capital and then used that initial money to fund mercantile expeditions but how much did those cost? How much did a merchant ship at the time cost, and how much did a voyage cost in general? How much did the Dutch pay to colonise areas or to lease ports? What sort of goods did they buy in Europe for trading and how much did they spend on them? And what else did they spend their money on? Thanks all

The more i delve into early christian history, the more i see how really seriously they took this theological paradigm. In many other religions, beliefs were important, of course, though in this case i have the (maybe misguided) perception that they took this issue really seriously, political and economic issues aside. Is there a teleological, jungian, anthropological explanation to why the Trinity was such an emotionally compelling issue for early christians? Thanks

EDIT: i'd like to add that i'm not so much interested in problems of teological coherence, but more on an explanation about the causes explaining the reasons why this particular culture developed such a need to even conceive this teological paradigm.

Hi everyone !

(First I want to let you know that I'm not a native English speaker, thank you for understanding)

I'm a law student in Brussels and, with fellow students for a legal theory class, doing researches about Maximilien Philonenko, a lecturer of international private law in the 1940-1950's at the Free University of Brussels. Philonenko was an attorney and the mentor of several famous lawyers in Belgium. As such, he had a major influence in the development of Belgian case law and legal theory.

He was born in 1885 from an aristocratic family from Poltova and graduated from the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. We learned from hearsay that he had an active role in the Russian revolution :

- Trotsky mentionned him in his book "History of the Russian revolution" as a member of the Duma in 1919;

- All French or Belgian papers speak about him as a Russian revolutionary, linked to Kerensky and Kornilov, without more details ;

- The diary of Catherine Sayn-Wittgenstein says he was member of the VIIIth army as a member of the military staff of Kornilov.

We don't know exactly what role he had in the Revolution (if he actually had one) or the informations we find are just hearsay. In this regard, I wanted to ask you :

- have you ever read something about him by any chance?

- Do you know where I could find serious sources about the members of Kornilov's military staff ?

- Do you know where I could learn information from the Duma of 1919 ? One paper I read mentioned a Duma in Arkhangel, I don't know if it's correct.

Thanks !

Starting with a disclaimer; by "knight" I mean a fully armored elite soldier of the late medieval western european armies, I know not all soldiers of this category were knights and not all knights were this type of soldiers. By "common" soldiers I mean the less heavily armored and less well trained soldiers that made up the bulk of many armies during this period. Specifically those knights who fought on foot rather than as cavalry.

The reason I'm asking is because in re-creations (paintings, miniatures etc) I usually see "units" of all-knights and units of all common soldiers. Was this really how medieval armies organized themselves on the battlefield?

My reason for doubt is two-fold: First of all it seems like a tactical blunder, putting all of your eggs in one basket, the unit of knights will probably shred any opposition it faces, but if it's surrounded or somehow distracted then a lot of your power is lost on the battlefield. Now I know a lot of medieval battle culture wasn't all to concerned about tactics, I could fully believe knights not wanting to fight alongside commoners if that really was the case.

My second reason for doubt is the equipment used by knights in this period. As far as I understand knights usually wielded as their "main" weapon either a two-handed poleaxe, or a longsword that could be used in one hand but usually was wielded in two. From what I've read, these were the weapons of champions because they effectively allowed one man to engage several enemies. This to me speaks for that knights would fill much the same role as saxon huscarls or zwei-hander wielding doppelsöldners, i.e supporting a larger unit wielding spears or pikes. Conversly knights seem to have rarely used weapons like pikes and spears, which are typical group fighting weapons.

Is this perception correct? Do we have many sources for how "knights" actually would fight on the battlefield? And obviously, did it vary between battles and in what ways?

Thanks in advance

I'm no historian, but I know of a lot of examples when some 'nation' was somewhere and later it was somewhere else. Examples:

Turks: Central Asia -> present-day Turkey

Anglo-Saxons: Saxony -> England

Arabs: Arabia -> Iberia (and then back)

Celts: most of western Europe -> Brittany, Wales, Scotland and Ireland

Armenians: Armenian Highlands -> Cilicia

Bolgars: Volga Bulgaria -> Bulgaria

Visigoths: Central Europe -> Iberia

Magyars: somewhere in present-day Russia -> Hungary

My question is if in those cases (and others) the common people moved as well or if it was only the leaders, political system, culture and (in the case of conquests) army.

To me it seems difficult to imagine that e.g. when Arabs conquered Iberia, everyone who lived there before was expelled/killed and there was enough Arabs to resettle those areas.

Thanks for answering.

I imagine other riders have tried to examine the "big picture" and the "long view" of human history, with varying degrees of success. Is Sapiens fundamentally different from the others? Or is Zahari more likely to be an academic pop star, flying high with acclaim and celebrity this week, mocked, ridiculed and forgotten the next?

Meanwhile is he pitching an extreme interpretation of human history that is doubted by mainstream historians?

I'm a fan of Zahari's, but I don't want to get carried away too far, until I can put his work in a larger context.