I got the files emailed to me moments ago, and I’m eager to look at them! Any suggestions on where to begin?

Every one knows that purple was an extremely expensive dye to produce up in ancient times. When did people finally come up with a different recipe for it, and how come no one put together blue and red before then?

First of all, I don't wish to offend any Australians- I know that it's not all desert and poisonous stuff. I'm just thinking from an explorer's perspective. If I were a European settler, the very last place I'd want to settle in- especially without modern conveniences- would be a vast desert that's easy to get lost in, far from Europe, and filled with dangerous animals. Even if the distance wasn't an issue, it seems like the Philippines and the various islands in the Indian Ocean would've been a better place to settle, similar to how the Europeans settled in certain areas of Africa.

What exactly motivated settlers to go there? Was it the minerals? Political reasons?

So recently I learned that in places like Lapland you can receive a full 24 hours of daylight at some points of the year, what did people in the middle ages think of this?

If you look at the cuisines of places like India, Thailand, Korea, Mexico and others, spicy food based on the chili pepper became so popular that those cuisines are kinda synonymous with hot, spicy food.

My question is why didn't this similarly happen with European cuisine? From what I can tell, Spicy food never took off in Japan either, at least not the extent it has in nearby Korea.

I've been on a real Byzantine rabbit hole the last day or so and I still can't wrap my head around what exactly what the theme system was. Was it is sorta of like having a state national guard in each region, whereas citizen soldiers were given land in exchange for service/training and a cut on their salary during campaigns? Was this advanced/better for its time and I'm wondering how it affected the quality of their military in comparison to others who didn't adopt such practices.

So I'm as curious about the pending release of the JFK assassination records as anyone, and on a lark I downloaded the nearly four thousand files that were released back in July. I wasn't expecting it to be an easy task, especially since I don't have a particular interest in anything specific, but it became very apparent very quickly that this is not something you simply dive head-first into without knowing how to research.

So I'm asking a methodologies question: how does someone approach such a massive collection of files, especially when they aren't categorized or indexed in any particular fashion? And if it happens that you don't have a set research goal in mind, but you're just going through them to see what you find - searching through an entire field of haystacks just to see if you happen across a needle - there surely has to be a more efficient way than just starting at one end of a pile of unorganized files and going through them individually...?

I don’t know exactly what I want to go into, but I want to major in something history related. I live in TX and do not want to go too far from the state. Of course I’ve looked it up, but I’m interested in Reddit’s opinions. Thank you!

The thing that I don't understand about the Bosnian Crisis of 1908 is that both territories had already been under Imperial occupation and administration for decades. While I understand the outrage the other Great Powers had over the secret diplomacy conducted prior to the annexation (which happened without their knowledge or consent), wasn't Austria-Hungary's control over the area already an accomplished fact?

In a similar vein, why was the annexation seen as a blow to Serbian ambitions in the area? I understand the nationalist desire to unite the Slavic peoples in the Balkans under one state, but given that both territories were firmly under Austro-Hungarian control prior to the annexation I have difficulty understanding why the annexation was seen as such a blow towards plans for a Greater Serbia.

For instance if a poor coal miner decided to challenge the king of England to a duel then presumably there would be no expectation for him to respond, but where exactly would the cutoff lie? Would the Duke of Wellington be able to force the prince of Wales into a duel like in the Blackadder series?

I am wondering what different terms were used other than "Holocaust."

What were the names the victims used, after and during the war, but prior to the term "Holocaust."

What terms did non-victims of the Nazis use?

I know that there is another modern day school of thought which prefers the term, "Shoah." I would also be interested to know when that term began to gain favor.

Were people blindly shooting hoping to hit some one or was it more duck and cover while waiting for an opportunity? Was it less of a showdown in the middle of town and more of someone was insulted and came back gunning the person down as they came out of a saloon?

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Say it's me and a couple dozen of my buddies, and we're lugging around stuff in crates too. We're super rich and we need to cross the country ASAP. I assume their isn't a railway that links the two cities, so would we have to alternate between rails and stagecoaches and boats and horses and stuff? PS I get that the Civil War is around the corner, but for the sake of argument let's say nobody bothers us for the duration.