In the recent megathread regarding abortion it was mentioned in a response that Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940) and West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) are an example of the Supreme Court explicitly overturning itself only three years after issuing an opinion, with three of the same justices switching sides. The issue was the government's ability to compel students to salute the flag in the face of a freedom of religion challenge.

What was the historical and/or social and/or political background that informed these decisions? Purely speculating, I'm wondering if America's entry into World War 2 and therefore the global struggle against fascism / nationalist totalitarian governments played a role?

What happened the whole 194,000 years before that?

I have a cousin who was imprisoned as a traitor for being a leader in the fight for Sicilian independence from Italy. The family story is that his home town rallied to elect him senator therefore his life was saved and he was released.

As an American this makes no sense. What was the origin and purpose of this law?

Thank you.

What made him so special in this matter?

Or any other historical figure of the time for that matter? I know the years we think of them as having lived in, in BC. But did they have a concept of BC even? How did they record time?

For example, some sources say it starts around 1100 BC with the Greek Dark Ages, others say it starts 776 BC with the start of the Ancient Olympic Games. And some say it ends when Greece was conquered by Rome in 146BC, others say it ends around 500 BC. That's a pretty big difference, and some other sources have other dates also.

On the other hand, Ancient Rome has a pretty concrete timeline spanning from 753 BC-476 AD. (Start of Kingdom, to the fall of the Western Empire)

What I think is the answer is that there was no unified entity of "Greece" like there was one of Rome, so the concept of Ancient Greece is basically a loosely tied civilization of Greek-speaking communities, so it would make sense that it's exact emergence isn't concrete.

Correct me if I'm wrong, this is just something interesting I have obsversed.

hi, looking for a book that's a survey of christian denominations in america and is not political. hope this sub is appropriate? thank you

Hey ya’ll, first time posting here.

In my first year of med school, we had a nice grandpa of a professor (He is currently 98 and still rocking it) that taught us a bit about medical history.

During one of his lectures, he said something about the fact that during the communist regime no new pharmaceutical drugs were invented/discovered, while in the same time a boom of drugs came out in the west.

I tried to investigate this by myself but couldn’t find anything about it online. So i have 2 questions:

1. Is that fact indeed correct? That no drugs were invented during the USSR reign?
2. If that is true, was there specific reasons for it? I know that a lot of technological advancements were made in the USSR, so I was wondering if there was some specific policy/attitude about the study/creation of medicine?

Thank you all and I hope you have a amazing weekend!

More specifically do we know how many years ago did recorded history start? Or the approximate year BCE?

Originally, the symbol was a representation of God's divine providence and is found in several instances of religious christian art going back to at least the Renaissance, even finding it's way into the US 1 dollar note.

In more recent days though the symbol is associated mainly with conspiracy theories about evil (sometimes even demonic) secret societies and the like, namely the Illuminati, who as far as I'm aware never used the symbol.

When did this happen ? And how did the symbol go from divine to demonic in the public mind ?

So nowadays, I guess we can all agree that suits tend to have higher price tags than more casual clothes. However, it seems like almost every man back then in Western countries wore suits, even just for casual daily activities. I feel like even working class men wore suits quite often, so suits were accessible to men at almost every social class.

So I guess that suits were cheaper back then? Or has been there some sort of suit price inflation?

I'm reading selections from Inks and Paints of the Middle East: A Handbook of Abbasid Arts Technology by Joumana Medlej, which goes into great detail about the materials and techniques used to make paints during the Abbasid period. The focus is almost always on reconstructing how things were done at the time. Towards the beginning, however, there's a very sensible warning that many of these are toxic or harmful if inhaled, and you should take precautions like looking at an SDS and wearing a dust mask and gloves. This is the one section where the author doesn't give us any indication of how this relates to historical practice. Do we know anything about how artists and illuminators protected themselves from the risks associated with their craft?

Stan Lee, Sir Christopher Lee, plus a lot more first and/or middle names of "Lee".

Are these related to the Chinese surname in some way or is it pure coincidence?