If I were a dignified aristocratic woman of some fashionability living at the court in Versailles and I needed to "use the restroom" what would this entail? I've got not only layers and layers of clothing on, but have to walk sideways between some doors, was there a signal to let my maids know that now was the time and it cannot wait? How quickly would I be able to go and where would I go?

I'm a writer by profession, and am currently working on a project that's partly set in Jamaica in the 1790s. I'm having no problem finding sources about life on the sugar plantations from the perspective of the slave owners; those guys liked to write. However I'm struggling to find any comprehensive, reliable texts about life on a sugar plantation from the perspective of the slaves.

Would anyone be kind enough to hit me up with some recommendations? I'm particularly interested in the music, religion and customs that slaves had when they were away from the planation owners. Obviously slaves in a plantation would have mostly come from different African tribes so the culture they developed in Jamaica is proving a slippery thing to get my head around. All help would be very, very welcome. Thanks!

I'm counting northern Europe as the Scandinavian countries, The British Isles, Iceland, The Baltic's, Outer Russia and what is now Normandy.

And I'm counting "Before the rise of Catholicism" as before the reign of Diocletian (284-286), who I'm counting as the Roman emperor when Christianity came to Britannia.

Today, tell us about celebrities from your era--people famous in their own time for things besides politics and war. You can think local celebrities as well as national or international ones! What were they famous for, how do we know they were famous, who were their fans, did they have detractors?

Heck, what did it even mean to be "famous"?

Basically, let's make AH a gossip magazine for a day.

This seems like a really dumb question, but I can’t find an answer for it. Would the other consul take over? Would they have a re-election? What would happen?

Here's the specific quote, discussing how the Scottish armies would not let the defeated King of Norway bury his men until he paid $10,000. What are these dollars?

DUNCAN

Great happiness!

ROSS

That now / Sweno, the Norways' king, craves composition. / Nor would we deign him burial of his men / Till he disbursed at Saint Colme’s Inch / Ten thousand dollars to our general use.

Why don’t we have the World’s Fair anymore? When did it start and when was the last one?

Surely working as a publicity/advertising executive wasn't really his style? Why not work for Hugo Boss, or one of the other Nazi surviving businesses.

Were monks generally allowed to study any books they chose? Was there some system of control or prioritization for which books should be copied first? Were monks censured if they did not appear to be glorifying God enough through their work?

In the book, the librarian's tight control is partly motivated by how extensive the fictional library is, containing lots of books that would surely not be approved of by the Church. Is this based on or remotely accurate to any specific historical abbey libraries?

Upvote what you liked, submit what you liked and don't see here!

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In this period, the Genoese crushed the Pisans, the Venetians lost to the Genoese and the Byzantines, the Aragonese destroyed every fleet the French and Agevian Sicily sent against them. At the same time the Sicilians were fighting each other, and the Aragonese were replacing the Bey of Tunis. The Pope calls a crusade against Aragon, which ends up killing the king of France and destroying his army.

AND the whole dispute over Sicily in the first place is an extension of the Ghelf Ghibelline conflict between the Papacy and the house of Staufen.

I know all these threads have to fit together somehow, but I have no idea how these pieces fit. Help?

Recently I have seen almost meme-like references to aspic being popular with old people or back in the days (I believe somewhere in the middle of the 20th century). My question is: Was this just a fad, or how did aspic become popular in these days? Were aspic dishes somehow prestigious (requiring maybe a refridgerator), or just convenient for the housewife to prepare a day in advance before the dinner party?

I'm going to be a little bit more specific if needed. We send soldiers over seas to places like Iraq, Afghanistan for 9 or so months. How would deployments be organized?

How would this work for nations like Nazi Germany, Italy, the USSR etc.

What the title says. Assuming they actually did trust in the guard, I'm asking from a point of relative ignorance. I feel like this has been asked before, perhaps in some form in the recent past, sorry if that's the case.