Just off the top of your head, what are some jobs (censor, maid, tour guide) or lifestyles (living near a border, child of parents born abroad, etc) in former USSR & Soviet bloc areas that would have put one in contact with unapproved news, music, art, history, and people? Partly I have just always wondered how much the average person knew or suspected about revisionist history, sensationalistic claims about dire conditions in evil capitalistic countries, etc. Partly I am exploring the possibility of writing some fiction about life under a totalitarian regime, from the point of view of someone who has more of an outsider perspective. Either from being born elsewhere, or coming into contact with outside ideas or people through work, whether highly or lowly, or… I’m open to suggestions. And partly, having lived and worked and travelled extensively in the area (Slovakia, Czech, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia), with friends & family from this part of the world, I’m always trying to understand its history better. I’ve heard that some educated people were assigned to menial hard labor jobs, and vice versa, and I’m trying to explore more how people processed all this without falling apart. A related question might be, could one fake being a patriotic, unquestioning party liner without anyone digging too deep? If only a small minority of adults were Party members, why wasn’t there more freedom in society? And beyond the Stalin years, in the Eastern Bloc countries, was it actually dangerous to express opposing viewpoints, or merely bad for one’s career trajectory? I am sure that people had vastly different lived experiences across the Soviet sphere of influence; just looking for commonalities, and, as stated at the top, realistic pathways to accessing forbidden / outsider / western products & ideas & music & art & versions of history. Thanks! Спасибо!

So I’m watching the news about the forest fires in Southern France and I wonder if that happened in the past as well and how they handled it? Like did they happen during the medieval warm period

I recently learned about Eratosthenes who not only was able to figure out the earth was a sphere, but he also accurately measured the earth's circumference.

With an understanding that the earth was over 40,000km, what did they believe was outside the known Greek world?

Did they assume there were other people? Did they believe in the outside world the same way we look at the planets in far-off solar systems—that there must be life but we just don't know about it?

Or did they think that they and the other communities that they were aware of were it?

... especially given the Japanese government and public's sometimes rocky perception of the Unification Church (sometimes being labeled a "cult" or "cult-like") and its fund-raising behaviors.

What was the evidence available at the time that the Unification Church was a Korean CIA creation? What would the Korean CIA have meant to accomplish by founding a heterodox Christian Church? More broadly, what's the history of the South Korean intelligence establishment's activities in countries like Japan and the United States (where, along with South Korea, most of the church's members live)?

Thanks!

I've been reading some summaries of Chinese historical periods and listening to a podcast about Chinese history. Having listened to the History of Rome podcast and the History of Byzantium, it is strange to me that so much power was consolidated for so long in Empress Dowagers in China. While many cultures and empires have had moments where a woman might be influential of powerful, that seems to be rare in ancient history. It is also strange to me because ancient China seems pretty patriarchal because it was dominated by generals, warlords, and emperors with many concubines. The one exception seems to be the empress dowagers who wielded enormous amounts of power. Sometimes they were even responsible for choosing the next emperor.

Is China unique in the sense of handing so much power over to the former emperor's wife?

What was the British presence like in the New World before Roanoke? Did the British have scouts sent over to the “colonies” before the settlers that would found Roanoke? Did anyone seeking their fortune set out on their own before 1587? I know the Spanish were in Florida before then but what about the British or French? Do we know for a fact that the Native American tribes were the only people to set foot anywhere around the area of the colonies before the Roanoke settlers?

Thank ya.

This is probably something I should know, but what happened to the people who were released from slave owners? Where did they live? Did they have to get jobs? Pay rent? Did they have to get identification of some kind to be considered US citizens? So many questions.

It makes me wonder because today, if I was uprooted from my home, taken somewhere else for years and made no income, then was released, I'd have to either go to a homeless shelter or just live on the streets. How did local communities deal with suddenly needing homes for (hundreds? Thousands?) of people at a time?

It has been a topic I've always been extremely interested in but can hardly find good books about. Any reading material, or documentary, or scientific paper that discusses this that you can recommend would make me very happy.

History of tropical medicine/diseases that isn't necessarily related to colonialism is also very welcome. Applies to South America as well. Cheers!

I mean particularly swords and sorcery fiction. You see them everywhere from Conan to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and even superhero comics. It seems like every other evil cult from the 30's to the 60's worshipped some sort of snake deity, or deity in the form of a snake. And it feels like, since the 80's, there hasn't been a lot of them either in superhero fiction or fantasy fiction, barring traditional tabletop RPGs that draw inspiration from these earlier swords and sorcery stories.

Does this reflect something particular about the time? Or is it just because snakes are a symbol of skullduggery?

There is a' meme' in Spanish-speaking culture in which a person from Latin America tells a Spaniard to "give back the gold", although this phrase is mostly used in humorous contexts. How historically correct is it to say that "Spain stole gold from Latin America"?

In the nature of things, Lucretius repeatedly rejects the idea that the world was created by divine intervention in favour of pure atomism. Would his atheistic views have shocked his writers? Was rejection of the Imperial cult tolerated in ancient Rome?

From cursorily reading both Ceasar and Tacitus seem to make very clear distinctions not only between their own culture and the germanic people but also between the gauls and the germans.

How different were they really in their culture? Was there cultural exchange or spillover.

Also did the romanization of gaul have an effect on this?

Edit: Just to specify I mean tribes/peoples living in the border region not germanic and celtic tribes in general.

Cavalry is often considered an atrophied, useless branch of arms, given the level of mechanization, the perceived universality of trench warfare, and the ideas of technological progress at play in many popular histories of the war. Did cavalry men and officers comment on their utility? Would they agree with the hindsight of many modern armchair generals about their time on the battlefield coming to a close? Did they see themselves in a similar way as pilots, who are sometimes considered "knights of the air?"

How do historians differentiate between a cult and -- for instance -- a religion, fan club, movement, fad, regime?

Have there ever been/are there currently any serious disagreements within the field on how to characterize a particular group?

Late in the evening yesterday I was reading the Second Continental Congress's "Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms" (1775) and the first few lines caught my attention:

"If it was possible for men, who exercise their reason to believe, that the divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over others, marked out by his infinite goodness and wisdom, as the objects of a legal domination never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these colonies might at least require from the parliament of Great-Britain some evidence, that this dreadful authority over them, has been granted to that body."

Where the Declaration speaks of holding a human race as absolute property, I could not help but think not of British treatment of American colonists, but of the American colonists' treatment of Africans that had been shackled, imported and sold in America for over a hundred years. It beggars my mind, sitting as I am in the 21st century, that someone could write the above and still own literal slaves at the same time. And yet, of the five men who wrote this Declaration--Benjamin Franklin, John Rutledge, William Livingston, John Jay and Thomas Johnson--every single one bar Livingston owned slaves.

In his oration "Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death" (1775), Patrick Henry likened the struggle between the colonists and London as one between freedom and slavery:

"The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate."

And yet Henry too was a prolific slave owner, and would remain so his entire life.

All of this inspired the question I am now asking. It seems like it would take an extraordinary amount of cognitive dissonance to write perorations denouncing political slavery in one hand while holding the master's whip in the other. Did the authors of the American Revolution ever directly address this hypocrisy, and was there a movement to apply the rhetoric of the Revolution in service of the emancipation of slaves in their lifetime?

While watching game of thrones (I know, not a serious source) I noticed that people always mention if they are the first of his or her name. I guess the first King Henry of England (1100) would be an equivalent. But why is it so important to address someone with that specific title?

And was that also what Henry was called from his contemporary’s?

So I was playing assassin's Creed Odyssey a very historically "authentic" game and I'm wondering if the Parthenon as it is in real life is an optical illusion. The problem is I don't know exactly how to look at the Parthenon to see if that is indeed the case. so help? Specifically, I'm looking for what angle I should be looking at it?