I just finished watching the movie, The Assassin. In it, there is a guy whose job seems to be travelling between villages, polishing mirrors. It seems to be a pretty superfluous occupation, since I can't imagine polishing a mirror would be that specialized, especially for rural villages. Were there actually professional mirror-polishers at any time in ancient China, what exactly made their services desirable, and was that usually their only occupation?

In the movies it's usually outlaw bikers that prefer them but in real life it's a popular design choice for many biker helmets. Does anyone know the origins of this?

Edit: Spelling.

So i know it's not known for sure where Bacon's resting place is. But i have an interesting story for anyone that cares. I grew up in the northern part of Gloucester. My neighbors house was built in 1647. The guy living there now descends from the slaves that lived and worked on the property, the house was left to them around 1880. Ive done over 200 hours researching the property with little success. He said his family has passed down the story that the original owner of the house was a loyal friend to Bacon, possibly Thomas Pate. There's roughly 20 tombstones on my neighbors property and many more unmarked graves. A family story is that Nathaniel Bacon's body was brought there after his unexpected death. The grave sight was kept secret as his supporters feared the body would be desecrated. I have yet to search and record the graveyard, as new owners purchased it. Theres no information about the graveyard that i can find.

Does anyone have info on this subject? Or possibly any info about Thomas Pate?

Sorry to bother everyone with such a personal question, but I've really been struggling with the organizational piece on my research paper and desperately needed a little advice. Basically, our assignment is to create a historical argument using primary sources with a unique topic to argue a thesis. It's a huge assignment and many students fail it every year.

For my topic, essentially, I'm trying to set up an argument that the popularity of Monopoly (the game) was a reaction to the frustration of Americans during the Depression and New Deal. I'm struggling, though, with the setup as far as how to best structure my argument. I've considered first establishing the context for the Depression/New Deal era, then moving into the contrast between its effects on the rich and the poor, then introducing Monopoly. I would start with its Georgist origins before pivoting to the changes made prior to the Parker Bros. release. From there, I would discuss its rise, and how the role of the winning Monopoly player paralleled the role of the "winning" upper class. I also considered maybe moving into interpretations of how that reflected the class tensions of the time. Do you think that structure would work? If so, is there any crucial element that you'd include that I seem to be missing? It seems like looking for some form of reaction from Americans to the game could be helpful, but what form that could take is a mystery to me. Again, any and all feedback would be incredibly appreciated. I'm also REALLY struggling with sources to back my claim, so any ideas for where to look for that would be lifesaving. Thank you all so much in advance!

Me and my friend are having a disagreement on whether or not ancient Egyptians actually had their own language. He says there was no complete language, but a group of what he called broken languages that people used and if you couldn’t speak those you couldn’t communicate. I disagreed and said that the Egyptians had a language and it wasn’t just other languages such as Greek spoken together. I could only find something saying they spoke a language called Coptic and he said that the people who came to Egypt after ancient times said they needed a language there and created Coptic so they would have a language

As far as I know, there is no Persian Thucydides or Herodotus. I have had it implied to me that history writing was a uniquely Greek literary genre but I find it hard to believe that we would not have any texts which even allude to current events in a way helpful to historians. Any book recommendations on the topic of transmission would be appreciated too.

They were called Huaxia at the time of their ethnogenesis (as well as other names at different points in history) AFAIK, but they're still the same people in question.

So which region of China did Hans originate?

Hi, sorry if this is inappropriate for this sub or anything, but I've always been fascinated with Iran. I have been reading mostly about the Achaemenid and Safavid periods. I tried scouring the internet and my university library for texts on the post-Alexander Seleucid period, up to the rise of Arsaces I and the re-establishment of an Iranian state, and later Ardeshir Babakan and the rise of the Sassanians.

Thanks for your help guys!

I recently learned about how many fleeing Hitler’s oppressive regime were not able to afford much in terms of emigration, with only few being able to get to America, and most of Europe completely shutting their doors to Jews. However, Shanghai was apparently a very frequent destination for these immigrants. What I want to know is, what was their fate after the fall of Hitler and the rise of Mao?

I've kept the question in here to keep from spoiling the film for others, anyway, in the film, a Spitfire pilot loses engine power as the reserve fuel depletes. Since he can't return home from sea without power, he decides to land on the beach at Dunkirk but not before shooting down a German bomber attempting to strike oil-filled water. Once he glided to a smooth landing, he set the Spitfire ablaze before he was captured by the German forces.

Was this sequence written for the film, or was it inspired by true events?

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I'm 17 years old (almost 18) and I'm coursing my sophomore year of high school, and it seems education in Brazil doesn't cover much regarding Middle East politics and history. I want trustworthy reference for studying both regimes of the Arab world. What books, films, documentaries, etc can I study to know what were their governments all about?

Reading about it but i don't have access (nor the patience to read them) to accademic books, from what i've read on wikipedia and various shady, probably tankie, internet websites it looks more like an administrative failure rather than a voluntary genocide and it kinda feels wrong to consider the USSR as wicked as Germany and the Ottoman government for this

I live near Westville, Indiana which has the intersection of US Highway 6 & Indiana state road 2, or the 1913 route of the Lincoln Highway. I have always been told that during the 1930's this was for a time the busiest intersection in America.

Is there any truth to this?

Apologies for the awkward phrasing; I'm not a linguist so I'm not really sure how to phrase it. Also apologies if this would be more appropriate for r/linguistics, but I'm more interested in the historical context of the development.

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To clarify: there's a trend in English where you can, for instance, replace the word "you" with "your ass," such as with sentences like "That guy got his ass beat," or "Your dumb ass is gonna lose a few teeth." The synedoche (listen I don't get a lot of chances to use that word and dammit I'm gonna ride this train as far as it takes me) feels very intuitive to use, but out of context it feels odd. If somebody's hindquarters have teeth, I don't want to know about it. On top of that, it feels somewhat strange as a whole in that it practically feels like a pronoun unto itself. "Your ass," as a replacement for "you" feels like it doesn't place that much emphasis on the buttocks as symbolic of that person. "The White House" as a replacement for "the president," by contrast, feels like it blends in the building, the office, and the person to a much greater extent.

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I think it's generally more of a grammatical trend in AAVE, but I've also seen it used in the context of media set in the American South and/or the military (in a drill-sergeant, "get your sorry ass over here, maggot" kind of way), and the linguistic lines between those three settings feel a bit ambiguous at times, so it's difficult to pin down. Where and when do we start seeing this trend take off and get more widespread?

Hey all,

Recently bought a Bible from the year 1777 in Germany. It was printed in London and has supposedly been in the US from then until the 1960's when it was given as a gift to the man I bought it from, who then took it back to germany.

My question is this : this bible was printed in 1777, when the Revolutionary War was going on.

Could it possibly be that a Bible printed in London at that time even made its way to America? I would think Britain wouldn't send the colonists any goods. I also know that it wasn't until 1780(?) that bibles were even officially printed in the US

I am skeptical as to if this bible spent its whole life basically in the US.

Any thoughts?