The full title of Riddell's book is "Death in Ten Minutes: The Forgotten Life of Radical Suffragette Kitty Marion". The martyrdom she's speaking of is that of Emily Wilding Davison, who died in her pursuit of women's rights in the UK. I'm not asking specifically about the effects of her death, but about martyrdom in general. Has it actually changed opinions / the course of movements?

Wouldn't having only Russian leaders be in their interest. Couldn't leaders from other soviet republics potentially be dangerous as they might want to break up the USSR?

Were there external factors, like the weakness of the Church due to unpopular policies (i.e. indulgences)? Maybe internal ones, like a more successful strategy?

I would imagine that the Nuremberg trials were as far away from a standard trial as could be, so what should I imagine them as? Did the defendants have extensive legal teams? Were there cases of non-Nazi defense attorneys or even public defenders?

Talking here about the Early Medieval West 500-1000.

Obviously Latin (but will I also need Greek even if I stay away from Byzantine topics?)

And what about research languages? I’m thinking German and French? - as I would like to do some work on Early Medieval Britanny.

There have been a plethora of missing treasures reported in the past, and for many of these people have gone looking for them. Buried pirate gold, El Dorado and others have all been searched for by many different people. Of course plenty of historical artefacts have been found before, but nearly all of these seem to have been found by chance, by accident or by excavation of already known locations. My question is, has there ever been a successful treasure hunt? A treasure hunt of the stereotypical/cliché kind, where the exact location of the treasure is unknown and people have to search for it.

Did they believe the purpose was to give private citizens the right to own guns, or was the purpose to allow states to form militias?

I know technically it's a long occurring flavour which didn't get isolated until relatively recently, but still you'd think it'd have been known (or at least marketed) under some other term than just a plain chemical description.

Both sex selective infanticide targeting girls and polygamy was practised in China.

This must mean a huge population of men that never married. What was the status of these men and how were they treated?

Is 500 years too many years of change for the English Language?

We are all aware of the trope of having to sit still for what would feel like forever for a person in the victorian age, but when and how did that shorten? A saw a photograph of a cat cited as being from the 1870s to 80s, and the cat was not sitting still. I know the old daguerreotypes took tens of seconds of exposure, and that throughout the century that time did shorten, but which development allowed for a photo to be taken of an object in motion without it blurring into a streak, and when?

Basically, when were we able to just take a snapshot of someone without them having to hold a pose?

The most common calendars today have 365 days in a year. But many calendars in the past had 360 days or something else. If I wanted to find out the exact day something happened on an old calendar, how could I do that. Wouldn’t the missing five days accumulate and something that was on September 6, 2022 in 365 day calendar appear as September 1, in a 360 day calendar?

Because of luck, i ended up discovering a version of the poem of Gilgamesh, and being a writer, interested in the history and mythologies that different humans have given to themselves with the pass of time, i couldn't restrain from trying to read it...

First of all... The introduction of the poem dates Gilgamesh as a king who reigned over uruk 2.700 years ago, so the first question is... 2.700 years ago or 2.700 years before christ? Because 2.700 years ago was the times of plato almost, not really that much ancient. And I'm not gonna get into "was it real?" Because I'm used to debates like this about el mio çid campeador or Roldan etc. Who the hell knows, i just wanna know what's a coherent estimation of the time in which he would have reigned over uruk.

Second of all... The poem, subtlety suggests in a way some kind of link between raw force of the individual's body and their ability to be king while not making much mention to intelligence or wisdom regarding Gilgamesh. I may habe skipped that part without being aware, I'm not perfect, but what I've read at least yet was a long list of how the guy was this kind of superman with "muscles of stone" and took away the sons of the fathers to make them pulp and took the daughters from their mothers in order to "own them" (We talking about no economic transaction here, i guess...). I wanna know if this is reflective of a concrete social mindset or just a literary trope.

And now, third of all and most interesting... Why... God why... Why a nun masturbating in the middle of the forest and fucking him during 7 days "in which he remained erect" (I'm quoting the book i swear) would give him the ability of reason, the ability to talk, and the ability to be civilized?

There was a wide spread myth/urban legend (at least in the 1980s) that you could pay to see a woman copulating with a donkey in Tijuana. As someone who grew up near the border in the 80s, I’m 99% positive this is BS. But how did this myth get spread? Was it known in other parts of the US or just areas bordering on Mexico? I’m interested in how something like this could firmly entrench itself into an urban myth.

Eating insects is a common behavior in a great deal of cultures but only in recent years has it gained any popularity in Western Europe and descended cultures. It's theorized that humans evolved eating insects, so when and how did this European taboo against it begin?

I mean Russia lost a lot of territory (if we're considering the USSR to be basically "Russia" which I think is accurate) but that can't be it...territory does not a superpower make. So...why did they decline in power and influence so greatly?

I started reading The City of God recently. Augustine spends a lot of time (Ch. 16-28) in the first book arguing that women who were raped during the Fall of Rome should not commit suicide. It feels like an excessive amount of argument for an obvious point. But when something in a classic seems obvious, maybe we should read the history of philosophy backwards and try to figure out what society was like that made it necessary to argue this point.

Did Augustine invent rape?

The act of rape clearly predates Augustine. I'm referring to the idea of rape, as something morally distinct from adultery. The way we understand rape is: If someone does not consent, then rape does not impact their virtue. They are blameless, just as virtuous as they were before, and should not be punished.

In one of the several supporting arguments, Augustine cites some Roman poets talking about the rape of Lucretia: "There were two, but the adultery was only committed by one." Lucretia then committed suicide because of her shame. This is part of the idea of rape: she is considered blameless. But I don't think it's the entire idea: her virtue/honor is tainted by the rape and the poets celebrate her suicide.

Was Augustine the first person to articulate our understanding of rape?

[I also asked this in r/askphilosophy and they suggested I post it here.]

The episode is "Amok Time", season 2 episode 1 (by release order, not production order).

Nowadays this is such a common contrivance that it's been mostly dropped I think for being pretty cliché. It's in the Marvel movies; it's in the Metal Gear franchise; it's in Chuck. I've always assumed it was a relatively recent (say, the last thirty years) development in Hollywood storytelling. It's dramatic, it's convenient, it's fantastical. It feels like a product of contemporary blockbuster writing.

And yet, here it is in 1967. Was this one of its debut uses in fictional writing? If not, what was the earliest identifiable use? And (most interestingly) can we trace a sort of lineage from an "original" use through copycats and copycats of copycats up to today? Or is it more likely that this is just a case of parallel thought?

edit, thank you to the literally more than 100 people who messaged me telling me about Romeo and Juliet. The first message came through not ten minutes after I posted. Most of them were really nice so thank you :) I get it now lol :)

Thank you also to the mods for deleting all the comments to that effect and ensuring that my inbox is absolutely wrecked for days to come.

To answer the questions: yes, I read it in university. Yes, I forgot. Sorry?

In any case, if anyone has anything else to add in terms of earlier uses and/or tracing a lineage from an "original use" onwards that would be awesome.

edit 2: the answers that haven't been deleted have done a magnificent job of tracing the early roots of the trope. What about its reemergence? Has it more or less always been in use since the 16th century? If not, what's the story of its rise to ubiquity in contemporary blockbuster screenwriting?

Today, missing persons are a point of interest and criminal investigations. Whether leaving of their own volition or dying under mysterious circumstances, we generally seek to find people who are no longer around, often waiting weeks, years, or even decades for word of a body or a sighting.

Naturally, at various dates and times in the medieval world, there was threat of death from bandits, passing armies, or simple accidents, if not murder. At the same time, communities were very localized and travel for most was rare.

Would there be a similar level of interest in people who have gone missing? Search parties formed, etc?