Basically, how many generations had to walk this godforsaken earth without the comfort of garlic 🍞?

I was only nine years old whenever Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991, and while I’ve watched several recaps on the lead-up to Desert Shield/Storm, I’ve never heard one question definitively answered - what caused Saddam Hussein to order an invasion of Kuwait? Did he think GHWB didn’t have the resolve to involve American military might? Did he count on the rest of the Arab states backing him up? Any light that can be shed would be helpful. Thanks.

I've occasionally opened a post, seen a couple long, seemingly-sourced answers, and read them. Then I come back to the post the next day, and one of the answers I read is gone.

Am I alone in wondering what it is I learned that is incorrect? I read the post, internalized the details, but clearly something about it merited it's deletion.

It bothers me on some level to know that I've read something not-quite-correct, especially since there are numerous facts and figures in a typical answer, and maybe some of that information is still correct.

Hi r/AskHistorians!

I am working on a group of skeletons who were buried inside a church in France. They’re dated to around 1390CE and this site was a monastery at that time. I posted before about why I would see women included in these burials.

Now I have to ask, why would children be here? Did monasteries frequently bury children?

I’ve heard of elite burials inside monasteries but every individual I have examined shows signs of extremely hard labour, which discounts the likelihood that these burials are family graves for the elite. It’s more likely the adults were pilgrims or monks themselves, but this does not explain the presence of children. Did monasteries take care of orphaned or abandoned children during this time?

I am looking for a solid book detailing the history of Poland. I’ve seen several formidable options but I just wanted to check to see if anyone had read/heard of any books like this. Thanks!

I'm currently writing an assignment where my topic deals with the criticism that Chopin received at the time, which caused "The Awakening" to fall into obscurity, and from what I've researched so far, it seems the turning point in its comeback was Per Seyersted's 1969 book, but I've had trouble finding any more information on that.

Well water and water sources were often contaminated in Medieval Europe, so European peoples would turn their water into a low alcohol content ale or beer to make their water safer. Since alcohol was forbidden in Islam, what did peoples of the Islamic regions do to purify their water sources if at all?

Was there a particular reason? Did his Christian upbringing never sink into him? I've heard that St. Basil or another church father who knew him personally growing up found him immensely proud and vain, and that this was the reason for his rejection of Christian belief. But did Julian ever write out a specific reason?

Was it similar to modern boot camp? How long did it last? What were the typical days like? How did they differ in the US and CS armies?

My Uncle is a holocaust survivor and asked me why Jews didn't return to Israel after the fall of Rome since they were persecuted. I didn't have a great answer, but I guessed it was because Jews had made their lives elsewhere and the Byzantine empire still controlled the area until the latter half of the 600s. After that I had no idea because Islamic Caliphates tolerated Jews like Maimonides. I suppose Jews who had lived elsewhere for generations never felt a pressing need to ever return. Travel was probably relatively expensive and dangerous, but I feel like I'm missing something.

Men have been shaving their beards for a few centuries, sure. But what about chests, legs, underarms, genitalia? How did body hair removal come into fashion, and is it the first time the world has seen this trend?

I read somewhere that the Sea Peoples were possibly Greek and the thought of bands of Greeks bouncing around the Mediterranean instantly reminded me of Odyssey. The only dates of Homer's life that I can find place him living around 850 b.c., which would put him anywhere from one to several centuries removed from the Sea Peoples, which is enough time to skew a not too distant historical event.

Goths were a branch of Germanic peoples and had traditional Germanic customs, near as I can tell. So when did that become affiliated with white makeup, dyed black hair..ect?

Or was it just segregating whites and blacks?

When a town or city creates a wall, aren't they 'locking' themselves in a set area? How did historical settlements especially in ancient Rome grow as they created more walls? Did they simply just build outside the wall? Was this a common practice?

Last year Malcolm Gladwell's "Revisionist History" podcast had an episode where he quite convincingly argued that Churchill's racism caused him to refuse to provide assistance to the Bengal famine, indirectly causing the deaths of up to 3 million people. Gladwell stated that grain shipments from Australia could easily have been diverted and that the British food supply was secure by this stage in the war so there was no reason not to do so. He even quoted from contemporary accounts which directly compared Churchill's view of Indians to Hitler's of Jews.

This week the historian Andrew Roberts in an interview on the BBC "history extra" podcast stated that Churchill bore no responsibilty for failing to mitigate the famine. He stated that Japanese naval power would have made aid shipments impossible, that it was the local government and civil service (largely made up of Indians) that allowed food to continue to be shipped out of Bengal that was most guilty of exacerbating the problem and that Churchill did in fact request assistance from the Americans. His view was that while Churchill was undoubtedly racist by modern standards, he had a paternalistic and largely benign attitude towards the non-European parts of the British empire.

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I was struck by how these two completely opposing views of such a well known figure could both exist in fairly mainstream media. Which of these views is closest to the mainstream historical consensus?