So, I recently re-watched Cracked's "Why The Persians Should Be The Good Guys In '300" and wanted to ask these subreddit if their argument in the video has basis or not for their argument.

I know that they’re just tales, but I’m curious as to what time they were meant to take place in. I know that part of the Mabinogion mentions Cassivellaunus, but I always assumed that the tales were earlier than the Iron Age in origin. How possible is it that Cassivellaunus was just added in as a contemporary king?

This may be totally bullshit, but I have heard that before the definition of homosapien had been changed, Australian Aboriginals did not have the right shape of skull to be considered human, therefore allowing other Australians to kill them with no consequences. Is this true?

In "Enlightenment Now" Steven Pinker writes that, due to general IQ increases over the 20th and 21st centuries, "an average person of 1910, if he or she had entered a time machine and materialized today, would be borderline retarded by our standards, while if Joe and Jane Average made the reverse journey, they would outsmart 98 percent of the befrocked and bewhiskered Edwardians who greeted them as they emerged." Were typical people of the 19th and early 20th century much more simple minded than typical people today?

Hello, I'm a long term lurker, first time poster here, so I hope I have followed all of the guidelines. I enjoy the well curated and civilized discussions that occur here in this sub. Quick background, this past year, I got my first job teaching high school math at a small Catholic High School in the southern United States. As it is a small school, there are not a lot of teachers or resources so I was drafted into teaching the AP US History course. The majority of my students come from conservative religious educational backgrounds and as a result, the history they've learned is incomplete for lack of a better term. To be clear, I'm not here to debate this issue, just looking for an answer and guidance.

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When we first started our class, we began by discussing Christopher Columbus and his voyages, but in our discussions, it became clear that they had really only learned the hero side of Columbus and the myth that seems to have formed around him. None of my students were familiar with the Norse colonization of North America in the 10th century.

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We've just started the American Revolution and we were discussing George Washington, particularly the story of him cutting down his father's cherry tree. From what I was able to gather, the myth was created later by one of Washington's biographers, a man named Mason Locke Weems. I recognize that there are a lot of historical inaccuracies that have permeated history education, so what I am trying to learn is was it an organized effort to do so? Was it a specific period of historians who interpreted events to fit a hero narrative or was it more like the cherry tree example, in that it was isolated cases that snowballed throughout time? If it was an organized effort, was the goal to make money selling books or tell a specific narrative?

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Teaching a US History class is not what I expected to be doing this year and while I've taken enough courses in college and read enough to be comfortable with the material, I want to make sure that I am not doing my students a disservice by leaving out important details or presenting a "curated" view of American history. I firmly believe that they need to fully understand the history of the US in order to be informed citizens and I want to make sure that I am doing all that I can in order to prepare them for such.

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This community is, I'm sure, full of other educators so any guidance you can offer about avoiding future pitfalls in the curriculum would also be really useful if that would be allowed in this sub. Thank you for your time and all that you do here!

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Edit: I want to make sure that it is clear that I am not criticizing any particular form of education. All of them have their own particular strengths and weaknesses, I am merely sharing my situation to provide context.

I'm watching The Help and I see that a lot of the African American maids would also watch and take care of their bosses kids.

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and typically right wing ones at that.

I was reading about the Occitan language, and the enclaves of Guardia Piemontese and the Occitan Valleys and it made me curious. My first thought was maybe it has something to do with the time period when the Crown of Aragon controlled southern Italy, but I would think any "Aragonese" merchants would have largely been Catalan speakers, which is just an assumption based on most of the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands speaking Catalan. So what's the story? Who moved where, and when?

There were many dynasties throughout Roman history that ruled over prosperous periods, but they were all cut short. What did the Palaiologos' do differently that allowed them to maintain power for so long?

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When I’ve looked at books on 19th Century and earlier jewelry, I’ve noticed that ear clips seemed to have been considerably more common than earrings for pierced ears. When were costume, fine and high jewelry ear clips overtaken in popularity by pierced-ear earrings?

Earlier today I saw a post about wheat pennies which brought me to a search about other wheat pennies. I found a collection that looked like it had a silver pennies and found out that they are made of steel. I was hoping some people could clarify why there were steal pennies and if it had anything to do with WWII? (Just a guess based on the timing).

“You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting, that I will never cease, while I know how to do any thing.”

-- Lincoln to his friend Joshua Speed

"Cold in my professions, warm in [my] friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it m[ight] be in my power, by action rather than words, [to] convince you that I love you. I shall only tell you that 'till you bade us Adieu, I hardly knew the value you had taught my heart to set upon you. Indeed, my friend, it was not well done. You know the opinion I entertain of mankind, and how much it is my desire to preserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent on the caprice of others. You sh[ould] not have taken advantage of my sensibility to ste[al] into my affections without my consent. But as you have done it and as we are generally indulgent to those we love, I shall not scruple to pardon the fraud you have committed, on condition that for my sake, if not for your own, you will always continue to merit the partiality, which you have so artfully instilled into [me]."

-- Hamilton to John Laurens

I don't think I'm making a leap by asserting that these kinds of sentiments are no longer common (except among the extremely inebriated). Yet, they're not rare at all in the history of letters -- men would write super emotional, sentimental letters to their best friends, certainly in the 19th century but also before. I know that it was also common for good friends to share the same bed (Ben Franklin and John Adams), hold hands, and even sit on each other's laps to display affection.

So what exactly changed in the West between the 19th century and the 21st century that made male friendship so much more restrictive?