[deleted]

[deleted]

I see many people claiming that the famine in Ukraine was deliberate or used to crush "Ukrainian nationalism". However, I don't know if this is true. Was it an accident?

[deleted]

I'm pretty sure in 1975 both Vietnam and Cambodia were communist states as well as Vietnam coming out from a nasty war with the US so why would Vietnam "help" the US by invading Cambodia other than for land and toppling the Khmer Rogue to try and put a stop to the genocide that was happening?

Bonus question: Since land ownership was a big controversy at this time due to the Gracchi brothers, would the policy on who seizes the land next matter if I died before or after their tribunal?

The idea of something like this happening anywhere else in the world, even in 1851, seems insane.

How did a Chinese man convince millions of people he was the sibling of Jesus and son of God, and to take up arms against the chinese Emperor?

Was this a case of people already looking to rebel merely backing the first cause that had appeared, or did so many people truly believe he was who he claimed to be?

Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!

If you are:

• a long-time reader, lurker, or inquirer who has always felt too nervous to contribute an answer
• new to /r/AskHistorians and getting a feel for the community
• Looking for feedback on how well you answer
• polishing up a flair application
• one of our amazing flairs

this thread is for you ALL!

Come share the cool stuff you love about the past! Please don’t just write a phrase or a sentence—explain the thing, get us interested in it! Include sources especially if you think other people might be interested in them.

AskHistorians requires that answers be supported by published research. We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: What was it like to be your era’s version of a historian and/or scientist?

Whether that’s someone in a university office, telling stories around a stove, using the stars to navigate—what was it like to be them, or what was a particular day like, or tell us a little about a historian or scientist (for expansive meanings of the terms) we don’t usually hear much about!

Next Time: At home during the war—what was it like to live in a country that was at war, but not on your own terrain?

Whenever I'm watching footage of battle in the pacific, I often see planes being followed into the sea with anti-aircraft fire...to the point that when they hit the water, you can see the lines of shells hitting the water behind them as gunners keep tracking them all the way down.

Given the number of men that covered them, I have to imagine that this would be a real problem to other ships in the group (granted, much less than a kamikaze or bomb/torpedo) as they'd be hit by their sister ships while following said planes.

I assume that most of the "ak-ak" fire would be limited to the outer ships in the group, in order to prevent this, but you still see video of ships being "in the firing line" of the other ships while fighting off incoming planes.

Are there any/many reports of friendly casualties (ship or human) due to this misdirected fire?

Considering I have a fantasy world which resembles 1250s Europe, how big should the field army and the total military strength of a high-lord be, in both campaigning and non-campaigning sessions? And how would they be armed and armored?

In school I was taught about McCarthyism as a way to show how politics and political figures can fail us in search of personal gains and agenda. Recently though, I've read and seen a couple of things here and there that showed that maybe McCarthy wasn't as wrong as he was made out to be. So I want to know about the accuracy of his statements.

I'm wondering if there was some kind of an exploration fever that led some to believe that there could be another "undiscovered" land mass in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Especially considering Earth was known to be round and the circumference estimated to a reasonable level of certainty..."there's a lot of room for something else."

I recently saw a post where a character states that a shovel “has the highest kill ratio in the trenches during the first Great War”. Obviously this is isn’t factual, but it made me wonder just how much common tools like shovels and hoes were when it came to combat.

Most people nowadays have a rough idea of what everyday life was like in the kingdoms of medieval Europe. Popular media and folk tales, have painted a picture, though sometimes an inaccurate one, of what the daily life of nobility and knights or townsmen and peasants was like in the post-Carolignian feudal states. However, the life of commoners(peasants, merchants, etc.) in the Byzantine Empire during the same period is largely a mystery to many laymen, including myself. So my question to you, historians of reddit, is: How was life for the common people in the medieval Eastern Roman Empire and how was their way of life different than that of the people in European kingdoms.

How did they do it? The whole boat is made of wood and burnable materials, and they needed some heating for preparing food also. I'm thinking about boats like the one Colombus used for his journey.

where did they live? what did they eat? how did hygiene work? did they have education? what where the maners? did the nobility go out in wars? ext..

[deleted]

We see pictures from the 60s of people in Iran wearing what hippies in America wore. We saw pictures of the Bin Laden family (with Osama before he became a fundamentalist and murderous terrorist) wearing jeans and T-shirts. When did this all change, and why?

My grandmother was born in 1925 in the Netherlands. In 1944 she got engaged to a German soldier stationed in The Hague, who was sent to the Eastern front not long after. He was wounded there and sent to a hospital in Munich. My grandmother desperately tried to find a way to visit him and ended up joining a "fog batallion" (Nebelabteilung). According to my source this batallion was part of the Luftwaffe but online I can only find references to SS-Nebelabteilungen. She did receive her salary through the Fürsorgekommando des Höheren SS- und Polizeiführers Nordwest - so was she a member of the SS?

From 24 December 1944 until about a month later she was stationed in Christianstadt/Bober (present-day Krzystkowice, Poland). In this town the Christianstadt concentration camp was located. This was a satellite camp of KZ Groß-Rosen where women were forced to work for a chemical factory.

My grandmother never spoke about her experiences during the war and died in 1998. She was arrested after the war but not sentenced to any jail time - maybe she wasn't put on trial at all. Her court records show she went to Germany but not what she actually did there.

So my question is: Is there any change my grandmother worked at the Christianstadt concentration camp? If so, what did she do there? If not, what did she do in Christianstadt?

Edit: spelling.