Days, months, and years all seem pretty natural, so I'd have to imagine all cultures used those. But did all cultures have a concept of seconds, minutes, and hours?

I saw a reference of Baldwin needing to be carried on a knight’s Back during a failed raid. Did this require the burning of the clothing and the boiling of the armor?

Hello folks, I was wondering if there were any scholarly books about the russian revolution that talk about the people at the top pre and post holding power. Interested to see how much power changed political leaders and idealists. I guess if I really get down to it I would like to know if the people at the top were always bad/good people or if they grew into something else after holding significant power? I suppose the book doesnt have to be about the Russian Revolution but I figure that period is chock full of leadership changes.

It's crazy that with the lights off, tiny little volts of electricity can literally illuminate the bedroom wall for very brief moments when moving your legs under the blankets creating static shocks. What did people of the past think static electricity was and are there any superstitious explanations of it from ancient history?

Watching the World Cup, Argentina has no dark skinned players whilst countries such as Brazil and Costa Rica seem to have a large contingent of players who appear to be of African descent, Is there a historic reason for this. Also, is there a reason there are so many Italian sounding names in the Argentine squad?

Hi /r/AskHistorians !

I am wondering about the relationship between Hitler's 3rd Reich and the major religions during WW2.

I was taught that the Catholic Church's position was not very clear during that period, and I wonder we have enough evidence to support that claim.

Also, how did the Jewish authorities react to the antisemitic actions of the Reich, if they ever did ?

Finally, what was Hitler's view on muslims, and did he ever try to interact with their authorities ?

Thank you for answering !

The various declarations of secession, the Cornerstone Speech, etc made it clear that slavery was the main driving point for the Confederate leadership's decision to secede. Combined with the Confederate Conscription Act which made eligible men who owned 20 or more slaves exempt, why did the common non-slave owning Southerner buy into the Confederate cause? From hindsight, it looks like non-wealthy Southerners were fighting on behalf of wealthy Southerners will no real benefit to themselves.

1: Did the ancient Chinese Han state and empire, have anything to do with the terminological of "Han Chinese"?

2: Also, throughout Chinese history, these are many state names that are repeated (Chu, Jin, Qi etc) Are these states as their previous counter part? So are they all named by their geographical position?

3: Did all of these states with the same name share any similarity except for their name?

as late as Victorian times, children worked in mills, mines, and chimneys. What triggered the realization that such practices were appalling? Was it driven by politics, morality, religion, some kind of mixture of the three, or smething else?

Did the likes of the Greeks and Romans have ideas about what future technology would be able to accomplish, in the same way that we discuss possibilities like holograms, flying cars etc?

Or was it just a case of someone using the current technology would come up with an idea of how to improve/invent something?

This question obviously covers a very broad time period; unfortunately I don't know much about the Yijing, but I have a vague understanding that Mao's cultural revolution would likely have destroyed a lot of the scholarship surrounding it, I'm just not sure to what degree. I'm sure I remember reading about a famous pre-20th century Chinese Library burning down, but I might be mistaken.

As well as hints about lost information, I'd be very interested to hear about obscure or esoteric arrangements, uses, and texts surrounding the 64 symbols. I'm aware of two or three arrangements - are there more?

The Zhou Yi is magnificent, but for some reason very little attention is paid to anything else. Is this because of a lack of information, my not knowing where to look, or was the Zhou Yi really pretty much it?

During the Arab Revolt, Mecca was lost to the Arabs fairly early in 1916. As the holiest city in Islam, you would think that the religious legitimacy of the Ottoman sultan as Caliph would depend on them maintaining control of the city. However, it seems that the Ottoman plans for late in the war and post-war took a more pan-Turkic route rather than a pan-Islamic one, especially after the capitulation of Russia. Was there a plan in place to re-establish Ottoman control over cities like Mecca, and to a lesser extent Jerusalem and Baghdad, or were they considered essentially lost to the British and the Arabs?

Early Modern English scholars like Laurence Nowell and Sir Robert Bruce Cotton seem to have studied or at the very least had an interest in Anglo-Saxon literature (as evidenced by their ownership of the only manuscript of Beowulf). Was this interest in old Germanic literature paralleled in other Early Modern European literary circles? For example, did Scandinavian scholars of the 16th and 17th centuries study the Sagas? Did their French and Imperial counterparts study old Frankish literature?

Would solders fighting in WW2 eat canned rations front the start of their service all the way through till the end of the war or would their be other types of food or actual cooked meals given to them from time to time?

I understand they deprecated the genders into different camps. But where these camps identical? What differences were there in the types of labor?

I know nothing of duelling, but I imagine it fulfilled an important legal role in some societies. What were some duelling laws, was it as simple as a public declaration of intent to murder, and that made it less illegal?

Hinduism has always been a very confusing religion for me. Having been to Nepal (a very Hindu country) I found it strange that people would talk about the many different Hindu gods and yet would also frequently make reference to "God" in a seemingly monotheistic sense.

I later learned that Hinduism in fact has many different "schools" with wildly-differing philosophies. All are based on the Vedas, but some are monotheistic, others polytheistic and others agnostic or atheistic. I don't know how much influence these schools have over your average lay Hindu, but it is strange that such contradictory philosophies are supposedly part of the same religion. So how did these different schools develop and why are they all considered part of Hinduism while the Buddhists and Jains (who are also related) are not?

I don't personally believe them to be so, but just for argument's sake.