I read that in the US, during segregation times. Interracial couples had to move to another state such as California for the marriage. Do non-Whites in Soviet Union face those things? Or totally none?

Hello all you beautiful historians out there!

I'm currently taking a course in History of Science and Technology and our research project can be on ANYTHING. I was going to do my project on Lobotomy (I'm a psych major) but researching that has actually made me very curious about the history of mental institutions/asylums/where ever they would put the mentally ill. I've found a couple things here and there, but nothing that dates back any earlier than 100 years ago.

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Obviously I know that history has not been kind for those with mental illness, as they were usually just killed right away or exiled. But I'm wondering where and when did the first asylums start popping up? Anything earlier than a 100 years ago? If anyone has any knowledge on the subject and/or any sources to share, that would be great!

Jane Austen often refers to girls schools in her novels, either directly (as in Emma) or with references to her characters having attended one or another for a time. And Jane and her sister went to a boarding school briefly. What do we know about the development of girls' schools, both for the gentry and for the lower classes?

Hi! What book can you recommend someone who finally overcomes his absent minded attitude about history and starts to be interested? It really can be world history from A - Z, the most relevant stuff.

Books that include pictures, timelines, graphics, maps.. are welcome!

I appreciate your answers.

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Suppose a slave in the antebellum south is allowed by their master to earn a “personal” income by working during their free time. Legally, could the master simply seize that property without any legal recourse on the part of the slave?

Was this uniform across the south or did it change over time and place?

Would someone like Cleopatra have had designated people whose sole job it was to uncover and study artifacts from (even more) ancient Egyptians? Is there any evidence that ancient cultures cared about the study of ancestors in the same way we do in modern times?

Two things about the HBO series kind of intrigued me in how a town situated next to Chernobyl reacted to it exploding.

The first was the obvious one. How long until a mass evacuation is ordered.

The second one might not be so obvious. There's a scene where a charge nurse is discussing with a doctor how many iodine tablets or IV's they have and how it's not going to be anywhere close to enough.

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So these two things got me thinking. Obviously after the meltdown it changed the way how nuclear plants all over the world upgraded safety features and whatnot. But did towns all over the world next to these power plants change at all. Where there mass exodus of their citizens to "safer" towns farther away? Did hospitals and emergency services change anything?

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How did Chernobyl change these towns?

I also asked this question in a mathematics group, but a historian of mathematics might be better suited. (Also inb4 "group theory still is the study of symmetries!")

How did the Ottoman Empire feel when the new world was discovered? As far as I know they had no aspirations on colonialism but having rival powers gain great amounts of resources and territory is never good for an Empire. Did they try to find a way to profit off of it? Did it change how they interacted with those gaining territory? Did it encourage them to expand into other regions to compete? Was there any plans of spreading Islam to the new world?

I've just always wondered this. I know very little science, idk if this questions should be more in a science thread but I'm just curious.

First-time reddit-er! I'm looking for trustworthy historical resources, whether it's an online database or maybe I just need to get a library card. Not interested in opinion pieces or random articles. I want things I can cite. Specifically having to do with the history of witchcraft, shamanism, and folk medicine across continents. TIA!

I am currently reading a book 'The War Of Troy: A Pelasgian and Illyrian War'. This book implicitly states that Illyrians, anscetoral tribe of the Albanian people, should be considered as warrior of Troy just as much as the ancient Greeks. In summary the author states that the Phrygians (Trojans) descended from a tribe called the Encheleian Brigas, that lived in what is now Albania, emigrated to Troy.

Does anyone know where the is an archive of early BIA or Department of Interior maps of California? I know there is one available at the Bancroft Library at Berkeley but they are backed up and cannot get me a high rez version for 45 days. Thanks in advance!

Sounds like a stupid question, but historically there must have been women that struggled with breastfeeding, who couldn't afford a wetnurse, or died before a child could be weaned. There had to be some intermediary foodstuff between breastmilk and baby food in the historical diet before some slick operator marked baby formula to an unsuspecting world. So...what was it?

I’ve seen a lot of mixed and divisive commentary on this. I’ve seen comments that Stalin always planned to break the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and invade Nazi Germany while their forces were engaged in World War II and overtake Germany in 1942-1943. I’ve read commentary that a major reason Nazi Germany invaded Russia in 1941 was to pre-empt Stalin.

On the other hand, I’ve seen some writers suggest the above is straight up Nazi revisionism and that this idea is groundless and was birthed to justify Hitler’s greatest miscalculation in World War II. While some others haven’t taken the position that the above is Nazi revisionism, they’ve posited that Stalin was so confident that Nazi Germany wouldn’t break the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact that he ignored obvious signs that Hitler was planning to invade. This was also why Germany was able to have so much success with their initial invasion. The implication of the latter analysis is that clearly Stalin wasn’t planning on engaging Nazi Germany if he was so confident they’d never engage him.

So, which is it? As a teacher I’ve been interested in finding documentation on this subject for a while, as a few of my students asked about it last year (and had all been told by previous teachers that Stalin was planning an invasion of Germany). However, if that hypothesis is groundless, or at worst, Nazi revisionism, I’d love to be able to clarify that in my instruction.

Ever since first learning about President Wilson in school, I’ve been captivated by his time in office and his push for the ratification for the League of Nations and have developed, what some would say, an unhealthy obsession with him [see username]. Although he failed in his main goal of establishing The League of Nations, I’ve always believed what he tried to do for the world was honorable and inspiring. But whenever I bring up my interest in President Wilson online, it always seems to get shut down/ downvoted.

The main two points I see for why he was a “bad” president were that a) he caused WWII by making Germany pay large war reparations and b) he was a racist. I personally don’t feel as if these points justify him as being a bad president. For point A, Wilson was essentially forced into punishing Germany by Britain and France and was compromising so he could pass the treaty and establish the League of Nations. For point B, if you call Woodrow Wilson a racist and say that makes him a bad president, then by that logic a majority of our founding fathers and 90% of presidents preceding Wilson are “bad presidents” because they are “racist”. That was just the way the majority of society thought back then.

By no means am I a historian so please let me know if any of this is miserably wrong. I just believe what Wilson did, touring the nation and literally killing him self in the process just to push something he believed in and that he believed would befit the world, is one of the most inspiring stories I’ve ever heard. Although we’ll never know how the League of Nations would have worked in a post WWI world, I feel like what President Wilson was pushing for would have been a positive organization in a world that had just been torn by war.

Was there anything else in Wilson’s term that I’m missing? Is this just completely off? Please just let me know before I start going through the streets yelling “Wilson is the best”. Thanks.

After Afro-Eurasians came to the America's, it's said the vast majority of the local population died from the diseases they brought.

Wouldn't the Japanese and Aboriginal Australians have been affected the same way? Or do we just not hear about how it did?

Yesterday I came across a rather unfortunate situation where a question was posed that was invalid and later removed by moderators ("Are there examples of..." type question) that had been provided with a well written, sources response incl. several quotes. When the question was removed, the response was also deleted. Given the length and quality of the response, I felt it is a real shame that the response is lost. My assumptions it that it was removed because of the invalid question, not because the response itself did not meet quality standards.

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This makes me wonder: how common is this? I there value in thinking about "preserving" responses that meet the high standards of AskHistorians but have the unfortunate flaw of having answered a question that will be removed. Maybe lock the thread instead of blanking it out?

What happened to the people who live in western rome teritory after the fall of rome? What change happened in the society and how their life affected?

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