*Repost due to Title Clarifications

When the 20th century began the U.S. was involved in one of the darkest chapters that involved hideous crimes and very cruel bloodshed. A period in which the U.S. has hidden the actual truth and publication in U.S history.

This war was not a war of self-defense, but a war of conquest. The U.S. and its military and Leaders, has costs the Philippines and its native indengenous people thousands and possibly millions of lives due to to the nature of western colonialism.

THE ISSUE:  The Philippine-American War is arguably our country's least-known war, yet until 2016 it held the record for being the longest, single, combat war in all of U.S. history. 

I mean for more than a century, publicy funded high school level books on U.S. history have consistently diminished, distorted or omitted the entirely of telling of the Philippine-American War. Typically, we've heard of a FOUR month war (the Spanish American War) but, not of THIS 14-YEAR war!

Greetings!

Over the last year I have been planning to replicate the outfit of a mid 13th century French (lesser) nobleman and then from there assemble a suit of armor one might find a knight wearing in the Maciejowski/Morgan Bible. I decided on 13th century because 15th century is way too expensive and 14th century armor is kinda ugly to me (bascinets for days).

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For clothing I’ve decided on:

-white linen undershirt

-white linen braies

-forest green wool hose

-mustard yellow wool cote without lining

White linen 2 piece coif

-brown turnshoes

-brown belt that hangs down to the knees

And for armor:

-Padded arming cap (3 layers)

-Heraldic heater shield

-Suit of maille with integrated mittens

-Maille coif with squared bottom + side ventail

-Maciejowski helmet

-Mail chausses

-Padded cuisses

-heraldic surcoat

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Now besides spending nearly a year off and on doing research, I find myself still with tons of questions; I want to be sure before making any large purchases (already made a tiny mistake buying my first sword with a black leather grip). Any help would be greatly appreciated (and I’m not entirely sure if this is the right sub-reddit. If not, my apologies)

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1. I see a lot of conflicting information regarding undertunic/cote length. According to The Medieval Tailor Assistant, nobility would wear their cotes/undershirts to their ankles, but I don’t see how someone could fight with your clothes all the way down to your ankles. Plus, all the effigies and manuscripts I could find show the heraldic surcoat by the knees with no sign of clothing underneath. I’m leaning towards buying a woolen replica of the Bocksten tunic, but that reproduction only goes mid calf.

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2. I struggled to find a historically accurate type of headwear besides a coif worn by men mid 13th century. Looking at the Maciejowski Bible, none of the nobility/knights are wearing any kind of hats, only serfs and one Jew. Researching headgear fashion in this time period revealed tons of documentation on women’s hats but nothing for men. I know about the bycocket, but I haven’t found any evidence of it existing mid 13th century.

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3. How much space should I account for when looking for a helmet? I have a rather fat head at over 24 inches circumference, and with having a thinly padded arming cap and maille coif, a custom helmet is the only option. And by the looks of it, outfit4events is the only one that sells custom Maciejowski helmets without spending a months’ worth of salary.

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4. Do I HAVE to wear a secret helmet? Going off of my last question, I’m going to look like a bobblehead with how fat my head is, and I’ve read that in this time period, knights who wore greathelms forwent secret helmets. It also cuts down on costs for me….

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5. Another point of contention: integrated vs separated maille coifs. I know that rectangular shaped coifs became a thing mid 13th century, but I’ve seen some insist that separate coifs were more common than integrated, as coifs were tucked under surcoats for aesthetic reasons. However, looking at the Maciejowski Bible, there’s knights with no surcoat and no sign of a separate coif in the entire collection.

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6. Finally, any suggestions on custom maille coif sellers? I'm afraid of buying a coif and then realizing my head won't fit. None of the sellers I've found show dimensions.

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Again, thank you for your time. I realize some of this may be better suiting for a reenactment subreddit (especially #6 and #3), but I thought I would give this board a shot first for historical hurdles.

`What were the protesters in Tiananmen Square actually hoping to achieve 30 years ago? Were there detailed demands? Western reporting and writing on the event often seems to describe the movement in familiar terms to Western audiences, with progressive students facing off against a conservative authoritarian government, but this seems to sit awkwardly with the general portrayal of Deng Xiaoping as a great reformer and moderniser.

I've occasionally read that the student protesters were calling for the CCP to abandon the push for economic liberalism and return to older Marxist-Leninist-Maoist values, in what quickly becomes a messy story that doesn't easily fit within Western preconceptions regarding anti-government protests. In hindsight, how accurately did contemporaneous international reporting convey the goals and and demands of the movement?

EDIT: For anyone coming to this late, there have been some great responses on the topic of the demands of the protesters but not much said about Western media portrayals of the movement. If anyone is still in the mood for writing I'd love to hear more on the second part of the question.

I'm writing a book set in this time/place and want to include as much diversity as possible. Albany isn't set in stone; another town in the southern Catskill-region counties would work, as long as it isn't more than half a day's journey from NYC.

On a surface level, there doesn't seem to be much room in the Cold War-era intelligence community for women -- the very narrow sectors of it I've read about sound like a full-on boys' club, with connections made through all-male venues and agents positioned in gender-restricted career roles. Were there roles performed primarily by women, or in which women were active? (If so, how were women recruited for these roles?) Did the nominal gender equality in Soviet countries impact the gender balance in countries like the USSR?

Now that's it's over I have so many questions. I'm pretty conflicted about the ending information and the overall death toll, especially. When I think of the event at Chernobyl, I think of tens of thousands of people dying as a result of it, but the official death toll is said to be only 31. it portrayed allegedly hundreds of thousands of people being ordered into the contamination zone to do various duties, what happened to them? What happened to the people living in the city at the time of the explosion?

It was mentioned that there was a spike in cancer. About how long after the explosion did the spike occur? And how significant was it?

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I was for some week in a German museum where the boat of Nydam is exhibited. This boat from the 4th century has already some features of the later viking ships, but had no sail and was much shorter. The sudden arrival of sails according to many sources doesn't let me sleep. Trade existed since the neolithic age (Denmark's flint stones were in demand) and Swedish archeologists have the assumptions the picturing of boats on stones in the bronze age were made by traders. At least trade must have been a factor. Which regions in northern Europe knew before the 8th century sailing?

I took a US History course in college about five years back, and the Professor told us that the Pilgrims were not actually fleeing, but rather the King sent them here to both get rid of their influence and to colonize the New Land. Yet, I can't find any information to verify that now as everything keeps telling me what I was taught in grade school. Can someone clear this up or point me in the right direction?

I had just finished watching Chernobyl, and Dyatlov was sentenced to 10 years hard labour. However the USSR fell before the end of the 10 years. While Dyatlov himself got released before he fall, what about everyone else sentenced to hard labour? Did Russia have them continue hard labour to finish their sentences, or were the moved to prison to complete them?

Just wondering who was protecting the airborne C47s, and in what kind of fighters. Were there any instances of German fighters engaging the transports? Also, did any have to ditch in the Channel on the way over?

According to Wikipedia - "Ovations were granted when war was not declared between enemies on the level of nations or states; when an enemy was considered basely inferior (e.g., slaves, pirates); or when the general conflict was resolved with little or no danger to the army itself."

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Was Carthage not considered a State? Did the Romans see them as basely inferior or was the battle not deemed dangerous at the time? I find it curious that today this battle is widely considered to be one of the most important in the entire war, some historians even going as far as calling it THE turning point of the second Punic war and yet at the time the Romans didn't think the leading general deserved an ovation.

I was talking with some chinese friends about Tianan Square, the concentration camps, censorship and all those things we in the west don't like about modern China, and we arrived at an interesting observation: it all comes back to Plato and Confucius.

In "The Dialogs" Plato writes about Socrates having endless discussions with his friends and students. Socrates is framed as being wise, and everyone else as learning from him, and yet, they argue with him, they contradict him, sometimes it even seems like they are insulting him or at least teasing each other (Gorgias comes to mind).

This has formed the western idea that it doesn't matter if this is the wisest man ever, you can still argue with him, he has to listen to your arguments, and he has to defend his own.

Confucius in the other hand just taught his maxims and they were written down, you don't ever hear of anyone contradicting Confucius, all the stories about him are about people learning from him, and he never had to justify himself, he was the master, and that was reason enough to obey him.

This in turn shaped the eastern view of authority as unquestionable.

Now, that all sounds very nice, but I wonder if our observation is actually true or if it just seems to be true.

Been reading about it in history class and online but could not find a concrete answer, could someone help?