There's been a lot of talk about Marco Polo in this sub but not this question.

Reading his book there are things that are obviously true, who ruled where, who won which battles, what people sell and produce in different cities, the customs and superstitious may be exaggerated or misunderstood but one can trust them.

Then there are things which are obviously not true, like everything he says about Prester John, this are things that he probably added to make the book more enticing I guess.

Then there are things that aren't true but Marco didn't know, for example he mentions that Mogadishu is in an island but it is in the coast of Somalia, or the relationship between Nayan and Kublai. I give him a pass with those, information was very hard to verify in the 1300 and he was telling all this from memory.

The problem are the things that are feasible enough to be true, or exaggerations of truths, but that is hard to be certain.

For example, he mentions that in Hangzhou there were no beggars, because homeless people were given houses and food, was that true?, is there some truth to it?, another example is he mentions cannibalism in Japan of war prisoners, if that happened it probably was due to the Mongols destroying crops and food supplies, and probably didn't happen again, but it could have happened.

And there are a thousand more things like that in the book which I am skeptical of and don't know if I should trust or not.

I was taught in school that Adolf Hitler committed suicide with his new wife in his bunker April 30, 1945. Do you believe Hitler actually committed suicide in his bunker or do you believe that he escaped and went to Argentina? Please support your argument with links.

In many of the war's famous amphibious landings (Normandy, Iwo Jima, Okinawa), allied Naval vessels launched heavy bombardments upon entrenched defenders, only for the attacking troops to be cut down in waves once they reached the beaches. Are these instances atypical for the time period or was there simply a limit as to how effective these pre-invasion bombardments could be?

How did the Royal family announce it to the public? Was there any anger towards the monarchy either for being of German decent or changing it the first place?

Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the second Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt, married his full-blooded sister Arsinoë II. What were the Greek views regarding brother-sister marriage during this period? Was there a great scandal over the marriage in Egypt with the Greeks living there, or in the broader Hellenistic world?

Hello fellow history-lovers;

I’m looking for special sheet protectors to preserve ancient documents! As you may know the ones available on the normal market destroy paper over time because of softeners and acids.

I tried to search for « melinex milar polyester protectors » on google but without luck...

I know that there is a firm in the UK that creates them and sells them to museums around the world but I forgot its name. I would be very thankful if someone knows the name of that firm so I can contact them!

Thank you!

For a good chunk of history, at least according to maps I’ve seen, they mark down the geographical area now known as the Czech Republic as Bohemia. However, after Austria-Hungary disbanded, this area becomes part of Czechoslovakia and then eventually after that, becomes what we now know today as the Czech Republic.

So I guess my question is are Czechs and ‘Bohemians’ essentially the same people/ethnic group but then at one point just decided to change their name? Or did they always refer to themselves as Czechs and Bohemian was just an outsiders way of referring to Czech people?

He was a tail gunner on a B-17 and flew 90 missions in the 9th Air Force unit, His name was George A. Yount. I know a few of his stories from my dad but my grandfather died long before I was born and I’d like to learn more about him and his time in the service, is there any resources that I could use to find information?

I should be clear that i'm specifically talking about the American hippie culture. Across the threads discussing his death, a common thought that's expressed everywhere is that his actions somehow contributed to the end of the Hippie movement and the culture that goes with it.

Is it true that it was really a contributing factor and if so, how could it impact a whole cultural movement on such a level? Isn't it a bit much to credit this event over other, more directly impactful factors?

[deleted]

Greece gained independence from the Ottomans in 1832

Romania gained independence from the Ottomans in 1878

Both countries have had conflicts with the Ottomans spanning multiple centuries.

Yet if you look at today's relations Romania has a pretty normal (almost friendly) relationship with Turkey while Greece remained in an adversarial (almost hostile) relationship.

I would have expected the opposite since Romania gained independence half a century after Greece. It is true that Romania was never under direct pashalik control with a pasa and mostly remained a tributary state but there's still a bloody history between Turks and Romanians.

I'm watching the movie Downfall and so many documents are being destroyed. Does anyone have any ideas about what such documents contained?

I know that the Royalists tried to prop up his legacy after his execution and Pope Pius tried to canonize him, but I'm looking for the positive perceptions of Louis after his death rather than the typical negative associations following the Revolution.

I understand protestors believed it was an unjust war, but they had to know the majority of those kids coming home from war never wanted to be there and probably felt the same, if not more angry, about the war than the protestors.

I'd like to be able to remember dates and even the names of certain historical figures, but no matter how hard I study or try to remember, I only have a hazy understanding of history. This is not good because history is the only subject I like and I was hoping to pursue a career in history, but this will be difficult if I can't remember a single thing! In fact, I can read a whole biography of Woodrow Wilson, and not even be able to tell you where he was born, the name of his wife or even what number president he was. How can I have a better understanding/memory of history?