I have seen some truly bizarre recipes in cookbooks from the 1970s and before with salads encased in jello, bananas and hollandaise with ham, and many other recipes that just seem bizarre and unpleasant from their conception. Have tastes really changed that much? Recipes from that era like tuna noodle casserole are still around but these bizarre concoctions, did people actually enjoy eating them or were many of them just attractive ways of using up leftovers?

One time I got into an argument with a former friend, we had got into an argument about the Jewish treatment in ww2 and concentration camps. My argument was that the Nazis rounded up Jewish people to execute them, using the treatment of Native Americans as an example.

They claimed that a lot of Jewish people died due to bombing of supplies and a kind of bug that I can only recall was similar to bed bugs or a flea.

My question is: Is there any historical possibility for this to be true?

During the middle ages, northern Italy was usually under the control of Germans or Franks with the exceptions of Venice. Southern Italy (and Sicily) was under the control of various groups such as Byzantines, Normans, Muslims, etc. Why couldn't the Italians fight off invaders?

To quote /u/cthulhushrugged:

... the Tang - which is still criminally underreported as the first “foreign” dynasty of China, those crafty Li Gökturks!

This is the first time I heard of such claims, and online searches only yield academic papers that are behind paid wall, so I wonder what's prompting historians to have such a conclusion.

I watched midsommar last night, and it is full of nordic tropes. What I've been wanting to know is if anyone has information about the torture method known as the blood eagle.

"The victim’s hands and legs were tied to prevent escape or sudden movements. Then, the person seeking vengeance stabbed the victim by his tailbone and up towards the rib cage. Each rib was then meticulously separated from the backbone with an ax, which left the victim’s internal organs on full display."

Was this a real thing?

I know there is the city of Koln in Germany that was a Roman colony. but what was the level of relationship? the Romans were influencing the Germanic people beyond its borders? if so, how far did this influence go? Is it possible to say that the Germanic kingdoms at some point were buffer states of Rome?

and a little out of the question, Viking incursions in the "Viking age" can be included as the same "movement" (I don't know the right word here) as of the Germanic peoples in previous centuries, such as the Goths, Geats, Suebians, Saxons. and Franks?

sorry for my bad english, this really is not my first language.

I just recently learned that there was a revolutionary navigational technique used by the Nazis which was using two radio signals converging over a target used to guide Nazi bombers during night bombing of Britain, and a subsequent British countermeasure, called the "Battle of the Beams" during WWII. Can anyone expand on that topic? How effective was it? How long was it used before Britain discovered it? I know they first discovered it over the Rolls Royce airplane engine factory, but how did they discover it? How did they disrupt the German radio signals? And so on.

Interesting/funny side note: the British code named the German technology "headache", and their countermeasure was code named "aspirin". You've got to admire the British sense of humor in the face of horrendous events!

Title.

It seems unusual, living in the Detroit area, that the US seems to absolutely lack any museum on the scale of Bovington, Kubinka or the Panzermuseum. We produced a tremendous variety and number of armored vehicles, and very few of them still exist. Either in metal, or on display.

When the US Army Ordnance Museum did exist, it was an outdoor, largely untended facility it seemed. And post WWII it ended up either losing or straight up destroying a large number of artifacts.

What happened to bring about this absolute disinterest in AFVs versus aircraft and the like? There are at least 3 major government museums dedicated to aircraft, but none seem dedicated to armor. The Patton Museums collection was moved somewhere, and the USAOM had the same happen.

I was listening to The History of English podcast and it noted that some middle english scribes did experiment with accent marks in order to represent 20+ vowel sounds with just A E I O U and Y and it never caught on widely, but did not explain why. Can someone here provide some insight?

I want to start by acknowledging that this is a sensitive subject for many people and to say that in no way do I want to trivialize the abuse of enslaved people. History books frequently mention female slaves being "brought up to the Master's room" as though it were a commonly accepted practice at the time. Are there records of how the wives of the owners reacted to this?

Nowadays, the study of history and its associated academic branches seem to be mostly about figuring out what actually happened, when, and where. The speculation on "why" then comes afterwards, after the facts have been established.

But that doesn't seem to have always been the case. Tacitus, writing about Boudicca, seemed to tell a story suspiciously close to the Rape of Lucretia. Victorian historians and artists depicted vikings with horned helmets. Our current knowledge brings both of those stories in to a lot of doubt, and suggests that the authors were more concerned about telling a particular story than the literal truth.

Was there a paradigm shift at some point? Or has the study of history become gradually more "formalised" over time?

And where might they have come from?

In Dirty Wars: a Century of counter-insurgency, Simon Innes-Robbins comments that, although there were some exceptions, during the 1960/70s, Portuguese counterinsurgency tactics (especially in Mozambique) were often ill-thought out with e.g. many units tending to operate in platoon strength (or larger) rather than more nimble smaller units/patrols.

He also states that potential changes/reforms to unit rotations and the possibility of permanent basing in-theatre were never really undertaken and that this was a major strain (particularity for younger officers), contributed to discontent etc and ultimately helped to lay some of the ground work for the carnation revolution (as well as issues with regard to status between regular and reserve officers etc)...

Were smaller units and reforms to unit rotations (and basing etc) ever seriously considered and did Lisbon ever realise how serious the threat was (e.g. did they anticipate anything like the Carnation revolution or was it a bolt from the blue) ?

Thanks for reading.

Hello there. I love learning history and I'm very interested in the ww2 period. Recently I came across a book you might be familiar with: " Hitler – Propos intimes et politiques (1941-1942), tome I, Nouveau Monde Éditions, 2016 ". And I don't know what to think about it; there are some many books and so little time, so I can't really read every ww2 books that I come across, but seeing one that entitles itself being Hitler's personal and politic memoirs automatically caught my fancy. Still, I'm on the fence regarding it. Also, there isn't much written online about this book, the author seems legit enough.

So, here comes my question, sorry to drag this thing so long:

did Hitler leave any memoirs/journals/diaries whatsoever?

Besides those obvious fakes that you can find on wikipedia. I was actually under the impression that he didn't. So, if you could please shed some light on this matter, I'd be in your debt. Cheers!

Hello Historians, as the title says I would like to know about pre-christian Germanic funeral & burial customs from around the years 500 to 1000, specifically Norse, Continental, and Anglo-Saxon customs. I am a reconstructivist Norse Pagan, so the Pagan rites of the past are of particular interest to me. In particular, I would like to know about commoner vs noble burials, mound burials (specifically the mechanics of making sure the person buried inside would not be exposed via erosion), grave goods, funeral rites, and rune stones.

I do have some preconceived notions about this topic, which may or may not be true. From what I understand, nobles would be buried in their own mounds, commonly with weapons, armour, and ships, while commoners might be buried in familial mounds with some of their possessions. Rune stones may be raised around where the person was buried or on other family property, especially for richer families.

That's basically it, I look forward to reading your responses.

Like the title said, did anyone ever compose something like a piece of jazz or funk on a piano or trumpet in those times?

I hope this is the right place to ask. I’m currently reading Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s book The Conquest of New Spain. Is there anything comparable (or better) from the Aztec perspective?

In The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution, David Wootton describes how, prior to Columbus's discovery of the New World, Europeans believed that there was no new knowledge to be gained and that the ancient Greeks already knew everything. They knew the earth was round but many assumed their was only one landmass consisting of Europe, Asia, and Africa. (Paraphrasing and somewhat oversimplifying his argument.)

However, they should have known that Eratosthenes had calculated the circumference of the Earth. (We know now that it had an error of about 10-15%, but Columbus and his contemporaries wouldn't have known that.) Asia is much closer to Europe when traveling west to east. Why, then, would they have thought that it might be easier or faster to reach Asia by sailing west?

So this is a brief question but why didn't the British use slaves in the mainland U.K during and before the industrial revolution with all the lax regulations around their use?