In Naomi Klein's 'Shock Doctrine's she suggests that the Tiananmen Square events in 1989 were primarily a reaction against attempts at neoliberal reform by Deng Xiaoping and others. I was interested to learn that workers were often as involved in the protests alongside students. This was a surprise to me as an interpretation, so I was wondering if it is a tenable if heterodox explanation of what happened? Or were anti-capitalist motives not so important?

Films and games have led me to believe there was a lot of effort put into the occult and supernatural programs from the Nazi’s, is this true?

Why is it that the lead black character is hired and respectfully treated as a distinguished lead act in certain states... but yet the hosts politely refuse him access to the house toilet, or even a seat at the restaurant?

It's not like they were hiring a clown - they knew he was a respected pianist and were spending big money. But nope! Can't sit and eat with us despite us adoring your talent.

I simply don't understand how their thinking worked during these times.

Its clearly a pretty popular thing right now, but no one I talk to seems to agree when exactly it started or what exactly counts as steampunk. I know this may sound like more of a literature question, but I'm more interested in the history behind it. I always figured Jules Verne would be some of the original, do we have authors in that time period talking about it like a new genre? Did they think of it as something 'new'?

It seems that the South Korean government initially had a lot of the same weaknesses that the South Vietnamese one did. Why was the US capable of ensuring the former's survival but not the latter's?

It's generally known that during the renasicanse there was a return to form and progress in arts such as sculpting and painting. To the degree it led to many of the classical household names of today. My question is how much political sway an artist akin to the Michelangelo would've had with regards to policy among the ruling classes in their prime. During the the 15th to 17 centuries for instance.

Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead, a McGill University student, is attributed with sucker-punching Houdini which (possibly) led to Harry's death a week later. Did Whitehead ever give any statements? I couldn't imagine he'd be able to not say anything after (possibly) killing one of the most popular entertainers of the time.

Particularly the old maps of the Americas for instance. Did people literally sail on ships along the coast and use a compass to map every directional change as they sailed? It was there a bit of artistic license going on?

So recently I’ve heard a lot of people from my town talking about how Pembroke was one of the first towns in states to stop paying taxes to the English as a way of rebelling. I’m not sure if there’s any validity to this and can’t find much on google. Just wondering if any historians could shine a light on the role my town played (or didn’t) in the start of the war. Thanks!

[deleted]

I know that this is as much a biology and prehistory question as a historical one, but presumably there are some records out there about the spread of dairy diets into the historical periods or issues of lactose intolerance.

The genes for lactose tolerance in humans seem to have arisen fairly recently, just before the start of the historical period and likely leaving many archaeological remains and historical traces. How do we construct the way that lactose tolerance/intolerance has worked as these genes and the concomitant cultural and dietary practices have made their way throughout the human species?

I know it's a nebulous question, but how much well native peoples understand the breadth of the land they inhabited? Would Plains cultures know about the coasts? Would Northeastern First Nations know about the ocean to the west? Would Mesoamerican cultures have interacted with any of the above?

Maybe I'm a shopkeeper in ancient Thebes or a potter in ancient Athens or a paper maker in Louyang; I have the same problem that I'm living in this city and as a person living in society I generate trash and I can't just have it pile up in my house so I look like a total slob, and the city can't just have it pile up in the streets waiting for a fire to start, and there's no such thing as a garbage truck. So how do I deal with this giant pile of broken pottery and old food waste and this embarassing collection of poetry I wrote when I was going through my cringey teenager phase?