Found this claim on TIL

Charles II used to pay people to dig up Irish corpses, grind their skulls to dust and them mix them into a drink for him.

Any truth in this? And if so, why?

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Medieval architecture is something gorgeous. Gothic and romanic architecture were artistic representation of a building, but when you see medieval paintings they're extremely simple, sometimes asymmetrical and (maybe) rudimentar. Why architecture, which was more complex and difficult to be executed, was more advanced than painting?

Hello, dear historians! I've been reading "Ad Urbe Condita" recently for my paper on republican mercenaries and something odd has happened. In the place of a book mentioned in the title I read this: "[P. Licinio consuli ad exercitum ciuilem socialemque petenti addita auxilia,] Ligurium duo milia, Cretenses sagitarii - incertus numerus quantum rogati (auxilia) cretenses missisent -, Numidae item equites elephantique." It is clear for me that this text can be divided in three different parts: 1. Livy tells us the exact number of ligurians; 2. Livy apologizes that the number of cretans is unknown; 3. Livy doesn't tell anything, no numbers, no apologies. I honestly think this is odd because Livy never used "incertus numerus" before and never uses again in the text. Because he doesn't use these words when he talks about numedian auxiliaries. How can he know the number of ligurians while not knowing the numbers of others? I checked and he doesn't quote nor Valerias Antias, nor Polybius in this part of a text.

Why? Who to blame? What to do? Please tell me if I go too far with this and this is just another mistake on Livy's conscience. Any kind of help will be greatly appreciated!

The very same year South Korea was invaded China invaded Tibet. With the USA believing in the policy of containment/domino theory, why was Tibet seemingly sidelined?

In today's Europe, when we hear a name, we usually don't associate it with a given meaning - it's just a name of a person. However, it's not like that everywhere in the world - even in Japan and China, we can still see names being chosen for their meaning.

Now, this is not to say we never associate names with meanings - just that most people do not do it most of the time. But we did use to - be it Marcus or Kar(i)l, names did have clear meanings.

But when did this end? Was it around the advent of widespread Christianity, when Hebrew- and Greek-origin names displaced etymologically transparent native names? Was it during the Lutheran era or secularisation of Europe, when names stopped being associated with their respective Saints? Or is it a process that was individual to each name as they were borrowed to another language where they had no inherent significance, and can't be generalised into a trend?

EDIT In this post, I mean "first names" or "given names" when talking about names.
EDIT 2 Edited out an accidental word

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An acquaintance of mine recently stated that it is "well-documented" that Stonewall Jackson was actually an abolitionist during a discussion regarding war aims of the CSA. I'm personally quite doubtful, since I'm aware of similar claims made about Robert E Lee which are based upon misrepresentations of his personal writing.

As someone with a great interest in history but lacking training in historical research or historiography, outside of a minor in history if that even counts, how would I go about informing myself more accurately and thoroughly?

I would like to be able to speak with more authority on the historical topics that interest me.

This may seem like a simple question, but at times I have found it difficult to do more than scratch the surface of an interesting topic.

Thank you all in advance.

I know that if they are ousted in the way of the french revolution they are often killed, what mean is like looking at Italy or Greece when they voted to end the monarchy what happened to them, were they able to keep their wealth and what did they do afterwards?

We are familiar with the idea that both were heavily criticized by much of the mainstream at the time for being pointless, immoral, or iconoclastic. But did these two movements see each other as working together to take music in new directions? Or did they antagonize each other?

When looking at original fascist theory made by Mussolini, fascism embraces a third positionist economic view and mentions nothing about race or religion. When and how did fascism’s tag as a far right ideology come?