I have always had a borderline obsessive interest in History. At age 18 I went to college with a plan to study archaeology. This was something I had dreamed of my entire life & never really questioned if it was practical or if I’d be good at it. I just really wanted to do it and at one point was going to just go for it. Unfortunately I did miserably that year. After turning 13 I just sucked at school and I don’t know why I thought I could do well in college back then. I ended up dropping out, never went to class. My anxiety kind of took over everything that year. That bad year was related to issues with mental health and maturity, and I was too nervous to go back on to a real campus for many years after that. I just started working right away after dropping out and the bills started comin in. I got so sick of doing call-center jobs by age 21 that I ended up going back to a local tech school for something I felt was practical, paralegal studies. I did very well and on paper I still have a 3.9 GPA. I quit again after 1 year around age 23 when I discovered I didn’t actually even need a degree in my state to be a paralegal AND I was already making more money than the average paralegal in my state. It had been intended to be a career creating money move.

Now I’m 27 & have been working in property management for a few years and it’s honestly a shit show. I felt it was practical & honest work when I started. I keep telling people I love my job, but I think I just love having some sense of stability & purpose right now (I had a rough time between ages 23 and 25 with a bad breakup and gaining weight and all sorts of self inflicted garbage where I would quit a job after 3-6 months and then be unemployed for 2 months at a time). I’m scared the lack of structure and organization at my current company is making me stupid, honestly. I’m scared it’s killing my work ethic and turning me into a bad worker for the long run. I don’t feel I’m gaining anything besides a paycheck.

I’m still doing much better with taking care of myself but I still feel like I’m missing out. I’ve spent most of my twenties fucking around/up & I’ve never pursued anything I’m passionate about. Even in my early twenties I’d go “well by the time I’m done I’ll be almost 30”. I’ve accepted that working hard doesn’t automatically mean you’re not poor. And for as hard as I work, I want to give myself one more chance at doing what I did @ age 18 with pursuing something that is probably impractical simply because I think it could make me happy.

I don’t know that I want to do archaeology again. There was a lot more digging and math involved than I realized before that 1 year at college haha. But I think what always appealed to me was being at these places I’d read about and seeing and examining items and trash and whatever from cultures and people I’ve learned about. What are some careers/paths I could look into that would let me do this, if it’s even a possibility? I don’t care so much about the amount of money I’d be making. Eating and having a roof over my head would be nice but being rich is something I’m not too concerned with right now. I’d love to end up studying or living in other parts of the world someday if I could. Any insight or advice would be very appreciated.

When the public viewer Macbeth did they see it as a fantasy play or were witches considered “real” enough for it to be considered a regular drama taking place in the real world?

“It is extraordinary to think that under the Roman/Byzantine empire, the city of Constantinople kept the candle of learning alight for a thousand years, and that under Ottoman rule, the first printing press was not seen in Istanbul until the middle of the nineteenth century. Something caused them to be literally centuries behind.” A quote from a Boris Johnson essay from 2007. I am wondering, is this actually true, and if so, what were the reasons behind it?

I've recently been wanting to make a play/musical. Nothing like Hamilton obviously, but just a small one that I can perform at my high school with a few friends.

So I wanted to make it over The Manhattan Project. I find physics fascinating and aspire to be a physicist one day, so I already knew about it but not much. I started looking into it a bit and I figured I could make a good play out of it.

So, I was wondering if there was any books or anything I should check out to get it as accurate as possible. Obviously I'll include Oppenheimer and his "luminaries", however I wanted to find out what other scientists roles were, such as Feynmans. A biography, autobiography maybe?

If it helps close the gap, I want to base the play on how the scientists felt as they were creating a atomic bomb, albeit not knowing that it would be as destructive as it turned out. How they interacted with each other, daily lives, stuff like that.

Sorry if I said something ignorant, I'm young and inexperienced. Thanks in advance.

The word England translates to "Land of the Angles". Why was this chosen as the name of the Kingdom established by King Aethlastan in 927 AD. Him being the Saxon King of Wessex. Would it not be more befitting to name the land or kingdom after the Saxons being that it was a Saxon kingdom to unite them all and a Saxon king that ruled over them?

Good evening,

Next year i want to study to become a history teacher. And i talked to a former teacher of me who told me, that it can be a problem for some teachers if you get a translated piece of text. And i was wondering how big of a deal is that? Im from Europe And i can only speak English and Dutch, will this be a issue during my study? And what besides form learning more languages can i do to make it less of a problem?

Thanks in advance. (Sorry my English isnt perfect. Feel free to call me out on mistakes.)

Factors I would like for you to consider are readability/listenability for a layman (me), and scope. I listened to Shelby Foote's entire "Narrative History of the Civil War" and thoroughly enjoyed it. The scope was vast, detail was granular, and portrayals seemed balanced. I would like something similar for Napoleanics. Many thanks.

Who was the ruler (King or Queen) of England when Alan Turing's punishment was carried out? Albert Frederick Arthur George died on February 6, 1952, leaving the throne to his daughter Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor; and I've read many sources saying Turing was castrated in 1952, but I can't find any sources on the day of exaction. Queen Elizabeth pardoned him in 2013, so did she pardon him from a punishment that her father's government inflicted or the one she just inherited?

I recently finished reading McCullough’s “John Adams” where one of the charges frequently leveled against Adams was that he wanted to establish an American monarchy. I have also heard that George Washington was asked to be a king, and I have heard that Alexander Hamilton wanted to establish an American monarchy as well. So I was curious as to the sentiment regarding monarchy in the Americas, particularly from 1776-1800. Were the new Americans anti-monarchy or merely against King George III? Would a King Washington (or Hamilton, or Adams, or etc etc) have been able to gain and/or maintain power? Or was republican sentiment simply too strong by that point?

Many timelines of the Boxer Rebellion that you can find online provide this piece of information:

July 16, 1900: London Daily Mail publishes a report that all legation besieged had been massacred, including mercy killing of women and children, Russians boiled to death in oil, etc. The story was false, fabricated by a reporter in Shanghai.

However, I can’t find information about this story anywhere else.

Did this fabrication actually happen? When, how, and by whom did the reportedly false story become exposed?

I am familiar with many of the fake stories about China and the boxer uprising that were published in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but have never heard of this specific one.

I was reading the diary of my grandfather who served in the Army Air Corps in WWII, and he mentions one of his subordinates (an Lt.) being tried and convicted, but there's not much detail about the actual charges (something financial related).

Is there any way to find out what the actual offense was?

I have the name of the officer charged, the date of arrest and trial, names of the prosecutor, defense counsel, and the summary court-martial officer. Just no details about the crime!

Hi,

I'm writing a fictional story, of which I have pretty much the entire story in terms of the events that take place, but I'm really struggling with the setting. It is a historical setting, but not being an expert in history, I'm struggling with an exact location and time period to set the story in. If I may outline the requirements I need from the setting in order for the story to work, and if anyone can help point me to a location and time period in history that best suits these requirements I would really appreciate it!

the story centres around street gangs, so I need a city big enough for street gangs to operate, thieving, racketeering etc, and for these gangs to be able to operate and essentially control goings on in large parts of the city.

I'd like these gangs to have knives or swords as their weapons, so basically it needs to be a time before guns were used or at least used by gangs in this context.

the story involves prostitutes and so this must be legal and commonplace.

also involved in the story is a rival gang that have tracked someone they are after who has money that he stole from them, from another city/area to the main city that the story takes place in.

This rival gang need to be a scary proposition to the central gangs.

I've thought about london, but I dont know which time period is best for essentially one main street gang to be able to control a large area of such a big city, and I'm unsure of where the rival gang can originate from that they would travel to london and be a scary proposition to the gangs of london.

Again, if anyone can help with suggestions, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you!

My textbook for AP World History contained a section on the Punic Wars, and I remember it saying that the Phoenicians Colonized much of the Western Mediterranean and along the coast of West Africa. Upon conducting further research into the topic of Phoenician colonization, I failed to find anything related to colonies along the Coast of West Africa/Gold Coast.

I'm honestly really curious to whether or not these colonies even existed, and if they did, what ever happened to them after loosing contact with Carthage?

Dear Redditors,

I have a cousin who is absolutely in love with world history. For his upcoming birthday, I would like to buy him a book on world history. Since he is already well-read, I am looking for something more like a textbook/encyclopedia with an in-depth and thorough documentation of world history.

I am wondering whether such a textbook exists, and if so, which would you recommend?

Thank you!

Hi,

I've always heard about all the Christianization attempts of the colonial empires, and although that was prominently in the earlier colonial empires (i.e the Portuguese and Spanish), I've wondered, were there Jesuits, or European missionaries, who traveled through India to secure converts, like in Africa, Japan, China, and the Americas, or was there too much of a societal and cultural pressure to allow for even a small number of converts to found a Christian community in Indo-Pakistan?

By "main" civilization I mean the ones that are taught at school.

I'm reading a book on history, I don't know much history because at school the class never caught my attention, but now that I've graduated I really want to learn about our past.

The book I'm reading says the following in a chapter about Mesopotamia:

- The first civilization, Sumeria, developed in around 4000 BCE (I'm aware they often round dates a lot, this book is intended for teenagers)

- Akkadia was led by King Sargon I around 2300 BC. The Sumerian city-states Sargon I united fell to Babylonia around 1900 BCE

- Babylon was led by Hammurabi to create the Babylonian Empire around 1800 BCE. His empire was conquered and destroyed around 1500 BCE.

- The kingdom of Assyria rose around 1400 BCE, and the Assyrians were defeated by the Medes, Persians and Scythians in 612 BCE.

​

Here's the problem: at the end of the chapter, they give me a mnemonic device to remember the order of the mesopotamian civilizations in order, which is the following:

- Sumerians > Assyrians > Akkadians > Babylonians.

So now I'm either mixing up the terms civilization, kingdom and empire or the book has a problem. With the information I first gave, wouldn't the order be:

- Sumerians > Akkadians > Babylonians > Assyrians

Because how can the Assyrians predate Babylonians in the book order if the Assyrian kingdom rose around 1400 BCE, while the Babylonian Empire was already there 400 years before, in 1800 BCE?

I'd appreciate it if someone could give me some answers. I know the book is incomplete in terms of information, you can't possibly fit all of history in one 400-page book. I'm reading this one aimed at teenagers so I can get the big picture, so that then I can move on to more detailed and complicated information on specific moments of history.

I know the British Flag has a combination of Scotland and England on the flag, but why not Wales? It's supposed to represent all three, isnt it?