I was playing Dragon Quest XI which got me thinking. What is the origin of the words "fabulous", "darling", and the like being seen as stereotypically gay? Was there some individual who acted like this and that bled into pop culture? Anybody have an idea?

So I'm deeply interested in the history of the three great American holidays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I own several history books on each holiday, but since these festivals are so old, the accuracy of the history books can by questionable at times.

One of the biggest disagreements I've notice is in regards to the Festival of Pomana, and whether or not it even existed.

Most Historians agree that Halloween can by traced back to the Gaelic Festival of Samhain. Obviously, there is a lot of misinformation about Samhain, due to the lack of written records. The most common misconception is that Samhain is the name of the Celtic god of the dead, which experts now agree is not true. Samhain just means "Summers end".

Another piece of history that might not be true is the Festival of Pomona. Almost all my Halloween history books mentions that while Samhain was being celebrated in Ireland and such, Rome had it's own Autumn Festival, dedicated to the goddess Pomona, with Apples as it's theme. And at some point in history, these two ancient Festival mixed with each other, possibly through Roman invasion. [Although, I don't think the Romans ever invaded Ireland]

Well, in my most recent Halloween book, "Trick or Treat" from 2012, the author Lisa Morton dispute the claim of Pomona, saying that the November Festival of Pomona didn't exist, or at least there is no evidence of it. She says in her book that "November was the dullest month in the Roman calendar".

While her claim that the Festival of Pomona wasn't a real festival celebrated in ancient times is an interesting twist to the Halloween mythos, I haven't found anyone to back up her claim that it wasn't real, or anyone with evidence that it was a real holiday.

Hancock says that due to weathering patterns and other evidence, it is likely the Sphinx and or Great Pyramids are thousands of years older than the currently accepted dating. What are people like him missing or ignoring that point to them being wrong?

On the flip side how did prostitutes, either female or male, conduct business if they themselves were part of the LGBT community? When most people think of westerns they automatically think of the "hooker with a heart of gold" image hanging around the saloon but I find it hard to believe that there weren't prostitutes within the community. If a same sex client went up requesting services would they be given or turned away? Were there establishments exclusively for lesbians or gay men? What if a client, either male or female, was simply "curious" to see the other side etc.

Sorry if this is the wrong spot for this kind of thing.

What's the best book out there on propaganda, the history of it, theory of it, if it associates to present day examples all the better.

Audiobooks preferred.

My background is former Soviet bloc so Soviet propaganda interests as does the work of Goebbels

I’m just wondering if pre-capitalist nations also experienced boom and bust cycles. From what I’ve heard is that it sorta referenced in Hammurabi’s law but I haven’t yet been able to find any info to back that up. But I imagine they would have gone through periods of huge growth and heavy contraction no?

It always seemed to me that various elements of the Titanomachy work pretty well as metaphors for sociopolitical phenomena. Chronus devouring his children works as a reference to the self cannibalizing nature of dynastic struggles, autocracy or power politics in general (an analogy Danton and Goya both directly made). The treatment of the Hecatoncheires seems reminiscent of the way people harness popular resentment and mob violence in their quest for power, only to turn around and violent suppress them once they've actually achieved it. And I do wonder if this wasn't explicit/intentional.

And the timing of this would work out fairly well. Ancient Greek city states were prone to bouts of social unrest in the 8th-6th centuries as old aristocracies were replaced by new oligarchies, tyrannies, democracies etc. vis-a-vis popular agitation. This is especially true if the contemporaneous "Hoplite revolution" in warfare really was making the citizen-soldier infantry so key to everything. And as it happens, this was also the period of time when Hesiod would have been compiling the Titanomachy. It seems very easy to believe he, and the extant myths he was drawing on, would take inspiration from the real world political phenomena going on at the time.

I think it is widely known that Soviet Union underwent some notable internal changes with the adoption of the new 1936 constitution. I think the two most important provisions in the new constitution were the affirmation that the Bolshevik party (AUCP(b)) is the leading and the only legal party in the Soviet Union, despite the fact that this was already the real situation since the end of 1930's, and the other important provision was vast territorial changes, mostly at the expense of Russian SFSR. Why, and what prompted the creation of new Soviet Republics, like the Kazakh SSR?

It is often heard that the fall of Western Empire wasn't sudden, revolutionary change for most of people living then. But the Western Empire had also its army. What happened to it? Did it exist for some time after abdication of the last emperor? I assume of course that there wasn't any official dissolution of it. So when did the legions cease to exist in the west?

I can't find a contemporary source and don't even know where to start. Where do we look to confirm and debunk this tale?

I've recently gotten into linguistic history, and I learned about the Indo-European language family, even more interesting to me was that there are entire branches that have just vanished over time like the Anatolian branch, and Tocharian.

I'm curious what exactly happened to this far Eastern Indo-European group. There doesn't seem to be a major Tocharian ethnic group in today's world, how recently were Tocharians attested as being around still by other cultures in the region? Is there any record to indicate why they aren't around anymore? How did they even wind up so much further north and east relative to the other major Indo European groups to be in modern day China?

It seems to me that Frederick II (simultaneously King of Sicily and Germanic Emperor) represented perfectly the kind of universal monarch Dante wanted. Plus he was also the founder of an Italian poetry tradition that greatly influenced Dante. Why would Dante put him in hell?

I am a academically trained historian with a special interest in the cultural and social history of the Medieval and early modern era and I am firmly grounded in the theoretical approach of authors like Bloch, Duby, Brunner, Peter Burke etc. But since I am working in a bookstore right now I am in a lot of contacts with the popular books and as a historian I was of course drawned towards the works of Yuval Noah Harari and Jared Diamond, which seemed to approach the history from quite a different angle than your typical academic historians. I am of course very much aware by the use of geography by Braudel for example, but both Harari and Diamond go higher in their use of natural sciencies than probably all of the other academic historians.

I have therefore read Sapiens by Harari and Collapse by Jared Diamond and I definitely like their originality in their approach, specially by paying a Great deal of attention to the biology and the environment, which are definitely both many Times dismissed in the traditional historiography, where topics which came more to prominence are structures vs individuals vs mentalities for example, which are of course very, very important as historiography is of course mostly concerned with humans and their activity. I have also liked the fact that Diamond threat the native Americans pretty much objectively and avoid the trap mentioned by Žižek, when well meaning people idealize native people so much that they robb them of their essential humanity.

However, I do agree with many of their critiques. About geographical determinism, obsession with biology, perhaps even a scientism if I should use that term and the great avoidance of the use of political theory, philosophy and sociology for example.

I want to ask the students and academic historians, how is your view on this two author and how are views of your academic staff. I must say that in my experience they werent even mentioned during my studies.

I guess Caesar had to debunk lots of myths circulating in Rome about Britain + he also reported about the actual facts regarding the island and its inhabitants. So basically, what did Romans discover from Caesar as a result of his two expeditions to Britain?

For example, in his description of Britain, Caesar says that he measured how time passed in Britain because some thought it passed differently.

Russian fiancée and I have searched without luck. History major myself and suddenly wondered what happened to the train? Is it in a museum somewhere? Destroyed, scrapped? One of the small things that are now annoying me, will bug me, until I know.

I was reading that the crew of a Russian ship in 1741 were the first Europeans to arrive in Northwestern North America, almost 250 years after Columbus sailed to the New World. While I know many explorers crossed the Atlantic looking for a northwest passage to Asia, were there other notable persons or journeys that tried going the other way, beyond Asia?

For my next school assignment I’m creating an argument that relates to the Ptolemaic period. It could be anything, where be it culture, economy, religion, pharaonic power or whatever. As long as it’s Egypt from 305 - 30 BC.

I’m struggling to find any points of contention worth pursuing and wondering if anyone had any ideas. Thank you :)

I'm considering getting a tattoo of a few feminists, and one of the women I'd like to get is Boudicca - but I'm not sure what kind of clothes she would have worn for the time (and looked like!) - Google comes back with a bunch of different images.

Thanks!

As the biggest economy, it's no surprise that the USA is the most dominant in music, and South Korea's success is due to a deliberate strategy. Yet the UK has more top-selling artists internationally than S.Korea, and way more than Germany, France, China, and other large economies.

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Queen, Bowie, even today you've got artists like Adele and Ed Sheeran known all over the world. There are big names in rap and grime, and while Britain's metal scene isn't that big anymore, original metal bands like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and a bit later Iron Maiden are British.

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I'm sure language is a factor, but Indian singers speak English yet don't have the same success per capita. And Despacito became a huge hit despite being in Spanish. My Japanese students love classic British bands like Queen and the Beatles, regardless of how much they can understand the words.

When I was lecturing on British Culture in China, it was fairly easy to explain why Britain's music industry was so much more successful than China's; disposable income, Christianity (a far more musical religion than Chinese religious traditions), counter-culture rebel images, more free time for students so they can form bands as a hobby, pubs having local bands as entertainment.

But don't all these things apply to France, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc, as well? Why are the countries of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven so much less successful in music today than the country of... Elgar, I guess? 19th century Britain was hardly famed as a centre of music.

Where is the logic in that defending one small mountain pass would block off the access to an entire landmass? From the Persian perspective, I see no reason why they couldn't simply have marched around the Spartan army (which they eventually did too) because it would be reasonable to assume many other paths would be available – regardless of whether someone would share such information with them or not.

Furthermore, with such overwhelming numbers, why couldn't the Persian army simply land their fleet someone else, closer to the cities they intended to attack?