A poster on AskReddit claimed “people with my specific brand of color blindness were roped into the Air Force in WW2 because they could distinguish German camouflage from the skies”. Could someone tell me more about this?

How is this related to the people in WW2 who had eye surgery to see into the ultraviolet?

I know gingerbread for a long time was made any time of year as kind of a show that you could afford the spices, but somewhere it morphed into a Christmas thing. I'm sure the same thing happened to peppermint/candy canes and plenty of other foods and flavors. I'd love to hear about anything you know about I haven't mentioned, too.

I've heard a bit about Zomia, a huge mass of territory where apparently hundreds of millions of people lived outside the influence of states. But a lot of the territory it covers did seem to have states entirely within it even some time in the past. From the top of my head I can name Lan Xang, Tibet, and Dali, which seems to contradict the idea of Zomia.

I like to think that I am moderately well educated on the Bronze Age but in the time I have spent researching this era, I still cannot find an exact name or origin for the sea fairing people that caused the Bronze Age collapse. If anyone could give me a hand and site their sources that would be very appreciated.

Hi, i think we all know the story of the german battleship Bismarck, but what happened to her sister ship Tirpitz?

[deleted]

[deleted]

I know for a fact that there are more detailed descriptions of hostilities between the Finns and the Norse, such as the Battle at Herdaler, but were there any more, lets say, amiable relations between the peoples before the period of swedish rule in the 1200s?

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
• 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.

All other rules still apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s take on Disastrous Decisions (you maybe should have seen coming)! What is the “invade Russia in the winter” of your era, or, how did your people especially mess up invading actual Russia in the actual winter?

Also just generally curious about daily operations being disrupted in hotter zones. People generally don't acknowledge how vital Post is to keeping a nation ticking along, especially in the pre-digital age.

This question can also apply to Europeans making contact with the people of the New World and other such first encounters.

I've been listening to the History or Rome and History of Byzantium podcasts and whenever the Romans would first meet a new tribe/kingdom it seems that they were able to communicate with them fairly easily. Were their languages similar enough to barely understand each other or was it extremely hard with a lot of miscommunication, and as a result consequences, due to the language barrier?

I mean this in the sense that aboriginal is an adjective meaning indigenous, so you can have North American aboriginal people, Asian aboriginal people...

Were there tribes with individual names or a name the people used to refer to themselves themselves like Lakota, Ute, Maori, Sami etc?

I was looking at the weather forecast and it’s chances for rain, and it’s stated in percents. Made me wonder about the illiterate. Follow up, does whatever your answer hold true today?

So from what I've learned the gregorian calendar was introdused in the 16th century by some pope, but how did they determine that Jesus was born x years ago?

Can someone please explain me what Fascism is? I don't know a lot about it so if you could post a extensive comment it wpuld really help me! (Please don't blame me on my English)

My wife and I have been watching alot of the history channel show "Vikings" and we love it. We often find ourselves asking, how the heck do these guys fighting on the front lines know who to hit next? Typically, in shows/movies like this you see two massive armies rushing towards each other. Initially when they make first contact, I can understand they know who they are fighting. But 5 minutes passes and how do you know who to hit at this point? Certainly not all armies had uniforms or some sort of visible markings on each soldier of their faction. Just something we found interesting..