Yesterday, a (generally highly educated and intellectual) friend of mine repeated the claim that the Chinese invented gunpowder but only used it for entertainment purposes like fireworks (that is, not as weaponry), and that it wasn't until Europeans got ahold of it that it was used for war. At that moment I was dimly aware that the claim might be false, having heard something about that at some vague point in the past; so I checked on Wikipedia to find that, yes, the Chinese used gunpowder for weaponry almost immediately after inventing it, and for centuries before it made its way west.

I've been hearing this claim since I was a kid, but I would be unsurprised to find that historians knew this wasn't true even back when I was being taught it in elementary school. How did this myth start? Did historians always know it was bunk, or was there at some point a widespread belief among historians (or perhaps historians from Western cultures; I know historians are not a monolith) that the myth was true?

I know that David Duke is mentioned in the episode in passing as a joke about just how extreme the Paramount Theater speaker is (since even David Duke denounces him as too extreme, despite having pretty much the same ideology), but was there anything beyond Duke's Republican presidential primary campaign that would have made neo-nazis topical for the writers and viewers of Seinfeld in early 1992?

I often see this alluded to but never elucidated on. The sorts of folks saying these things tend to have strong opinions about Police. I was hoping someone who actually knows the history could help me get some clarity.

How did they respond to the first nuclear bomb before they were hit with the second one?

It seems to be a rather common trope in a lot of fantasy stories set in psuedo Middle Ages Western Europe that the heroes travel through some caves while following a road to their destination, or exploring the world. How common was this, were caves often part of road networks in this period? Are there any examples of them being used this way?

I've put the dialogue in question below for context, which takes place at the 50th anniversary dinner of Jerry's relatives Manya and Isaac. I've bolded the quote from Manya that implies that pony ownership was somewhat common, at least in her village. Furthermore, Larry David, the Seinfeld creator and the writer of this episode, has said that the episode was based on a real remark he made. David is of Polish Jewish heritage on his mother's side.

HELEN: (Changing subject) So, did you hear Claire's getting married?

MANYA: Yeah, yeah..

HELEN: I hear the fella owns a couple of racehorses. You know, trotters, like at Yonkers.

JERRY: Horses. They're like big riding dogs.

ELAINE: What about ponies? What kind of abnormal animal is that? And those kids who had their own ponies..

JERRY: I know, I hated those kids. In fact, I hate anyone that ever had a pony when they were growing up.

MANYA: ..I had a pony.

(The room is dead quiet)

JERRY: ..Well, I didn't really mean a pony, per se.

MANYA: (Angry) When I was a little girl in Poland, we all had ponies. My sister had pony, my cousin had pony... So, what's wrong with that?

JERRY: Nothing. Nothing at all. I was just merely expressing..

HELEN: Should we have coffee? Who's having coffee?

MANYA: He was a beautiful pony! And I loved him.

JERRY: Well, I'm sure you did. Who wouldn't love a pony? Who wouldn't love a person that had a pony?

MANYA: You! You said so!

JERRY: No, see, we didn't have ponies. I'm sure at the time in Poland, they were very common. They were probably like compact cars..

MANYA: That's it! I've had enough! (She leaves the room)

ISAAC: Have your coffee, everyone. She's a little upset. It's been an emotional day.

(Isaac leaves, everyone looks at Jerry)

JERRY: I didn't know she had a pony. How was I to know she had a pony? Who figures an immigrant's going to have a pony? Do you know what the odds are on that? I mean, in all the pictures I saw of immigrants on boats coming into New York harbor, I never saw one of them sitting on a pony. Why would anybody come here if they had a pony? Who leaves a country packed with ponies to come to a non-pony country? It doesn't make sense.. am I wrong?

Assuming you believe that the historical figure existed, and also factoring in the Jewish family system of the time, how likely is it that perhaps the Carpenter had children. Perhaps there are offspring of Yeshua roaming the earth as we speak and we don’t even know!

Roussillion was a region in north-eastern Catalonia that was ceded to France in the Treaty of the Pyrenees. But I can't seem to find anything on whether or not Spain attempted to take the province back. You'd think that at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 that Spain would attempt to push for the province to return to Spain, but it doesn't seem like that was the case, but I 100% could be wrong on this. Nor can I find anything about Franco wanting the region back as condition for joining the Axis in WW2. He, in all likelyhood in bad faith, pushed to gain all of Morocco, Cameroon and Gibraltar in exchange for joining the war, but wouldn't Roussillon be a natural addition as well?

The answer that I'm assuming to be most likely, is simply that Catalonia was not seen as a part of "Spain" proper and thus the Spanish weren't that interested in enlarging the province again. But that's just my guess, and I can't seem to find any definitive answers on this.

Thanks for any replies!

I've had a question on the back of my mind for a while, and I really want it answered. Can human history as a whole be made into one giant simulator that's run by an advanced AI? I am not going to argue about the plausibility of such a simulator to exist since I know next to nothing about coding or deep machine learning.

But if let's say we can simulate history, is it possible to simulate it in a way that stays true to the actual historical events that happened in human history?

I was looking at a map of France back when Henry the eighth was the king of England and there's a small piece of land in France which isn't labelled within France. The land is near Marseilles. I was wondering why was this the case. Do any of y'all have an answer?

As an English speaker, it's pretty easy to find extensively detailed accounts of most European's experiences of the Rennaissance. Everything from the political (like the plagues and decline of Serfdom) to the mundane (clothing, diet, customs and religious beleifs.)

When googling the Ottoman experience, however, I'm mostly getting broad, shallow overviews that simply collapse these details in summary, covering the 14th to 19th century in one go.

I'd love to find some sources or research material on what the average Ottoman lower-class person experienced. The more granular the better, covering food, clothing, family strucutre.

The summaries often portray a mostly positive experience, reflecting on the broader religious tolerance of the Empire, and the larger leniency for conquered people to keep their customs and language. I was curious if that broader tolerance also translated to other areas of life. Were women as policed on modesty? Did men have more class mobility? Did the Ottoman empire also see a lot of lower-class workers transition away from agrarian agriculture and move to tradelabor within cities?

In general, I'd love to learn more about the day to day life in the Ottoman empire. But I understand that unless I search for more academic and vetted sources, I'm likely to encounter stuff that's breif, and potentially a little rose-colored or marred by orientalism. Are there books to seek, and books to avoid?

Thanks in advance.

Hi everyone,

I'm really struggling to find information on where the Norman's settled after their invasion of England. Hastings seems to be the starting point but can't find much information past that.

Does anyone know where I can find what I seek?

Thank you!

I assume people named it after the fact it looks like what we all know it as. But I've never heard of a "Dipper" required for cooking something, nor gave I ever heard of a colonial era or earlier person cooking on a Dipper.

William was the Duke of Normandy before he conquered England, hence he was a vassal of King Philip I. of France and the Duchy of Normandy was part of the Kingdom of France. I know the english Kings kept it, but did the Duchy legally become part of the Kingdom of England and did the French try to take/get it back?

I was talking recently about the famous autopsy of Charles II and checked the internet to find the full text, but couldn’t find it. And the more I looked, the more I started noticing the telltale signs of apocrypha: it makes for a great fun fact, most people use almost the exact same wording for things, and the few people who are citing sources seem to be citing just a few papers written very recently (relative to the actual event). But while I couldn’t find primary sources for the autopsy, I also couldn’t find people talking about how the story isn’t actually true and it was made up.

So I suspect that this story is made up, but I don’t have any guidance for that from people who actually study history. Thus, my problem: my process for finding primary sources is usually to find experts who know how to find them, and checking their sources. But that obviously can’t help me here. I want to be able to say one way or the other that this autopsy report is real or fake, but I don’t have any clue how to check that for myself. I recognize that my question kind of boils down to “how do you do research,” but I was hoping I could get some kind of guidance.

Hey folks, I'm writing a paper for uni right now about the United States' motivations to invite Russia to the ISS program.. For that I would need to find official documents that point to some of those reasons. The best doc I found so far is the house report on the ISS authorization act, but I need more... Do you guys know if the nasa administrator's correspondence (with congress, the president etc) is archived somewhere? Or other useful sources?

On the same note, I often heard (and it's part of my hypothesis) that NASA wanted to prevent Russia's experts from leaving the country and possibly work for other nations, but I haven't seen anything official about that concern... Any ideas?

Thank you in advance for your answers!

As far as i know, Zoroastrianism has universalist tradition such as spreading of Asha(truth) to vanquish Druj(falsehood) and preaching against the followers of the daeva(false gods/demons), yet Zoroastrianism didn't seem to spread in meaningful way all that much, there is no greek Zoroastrians as far as i know. So how does the kings deal with religions that were in contradiction with Zoroastrianism?.