So obviously today the classic ghost costume is a sheet with eye holes cut out, and cartoonish Halloween decorations depict ghosts in a similar way, but my question is where did this ideal come from?

Did we start by making ghosts look like white blobs in illustrations that resembled people wearing sheets, or did people start wearing sheets as ghost costumes and that image transferred into modern Halloween aesthetics?

I know it would be very dificult that those ideas had any impact on the pre-socratic and socratic philosophers (maybe Aristotle), but I find many similarities in thoughts and ideas between buddah, epicurus and maybe the stoics.

I've been reading about WWII, specifically about the buildup to D Day and the interactions between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin. Through it all Stalin keeps complaining about how he is doing the bulk of the fighting, and Churchill and Roosevelt are very concerned with drawing Axis units away from Russia.

Strategically this makes sense as the situation is much better if there are two fronts than one, but at the same time Stalin played a large role in letting Hitler run rampant. Did everyone essentially put up with Stalin because they had to, or were there instances of people at the very least call in him out on siding with Hitler in the first place?

From my understanding, Mao implemented his infamously unsuccessful commune idea after seeing how successful the farming cooperatives were earlier. A couple questions:

1. Were these cooperatives the same as the cooperatives in modern business as we know today? Workers "owning" the means of production, and making their own decision.

2. What were the fundamental differences between cooperatives and communes? What made the former so successful, and the latter an utter failure?

bronze-age? copper-age?

In Ian Kershaw's excellent monograph, The End: Hitler's Germany 1944-45 he mentions the presence of German forces in Italy at the war's end (and the protracted surrender negotiations):

[In early April 1945], German forces in Italy, [totalled] around 600,000 men (including 160,000 Italian troops).^1

At capitulation in Norway, meanwhile, Germany still had 400,000 soldiers stationed there.

What purpose did fighting in/over Italy (and Norway) serve the Germans? Surely these forces would have been better deployed in the Alps (more easily defensible) or, indeed, re-deployed along the Eastern Front to slow the Soviet advance.

Was the sole reason for maintaining forces in Norway/Italy because of Hitler's insistence that no inch be ceded to his "Bolshevik" enemies? If not, were there other reasons?

^1 Ian Kershaw, The End: Germany 1944-45 (London: Penguin, 2012), p. 364

Specifically about what the Maya peoples were doing and any info about their practices/habits and their interactions with others like the Mexica, etc.

I searched through the booklist, but it seems to solely focus on classical Maya. Thanks!

I imagine wealthy individuals have there servants wake them up, but how did the poorer members of society wake up for things on time?

Did women see active combat during the Revolution and after, for example?

Who was King William of Orange to the N. Irish Orangemen (Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland), and how did they come to claim the Dutch national color of bright Orange as the symbol of a movement to remain unified with Britain?

I've spent time in both N. Ireland and the Netherlands but haven't been succesful in sussing out the historical sentiment that links the Dutch national / royal color 'oranje' (oh-rahn-ye) to N. Irish unionist movement (advocating for remaining unified with Britain and politically separate from the Republic of Ireland), beyond factual statements about it having to do with William of Orange.

But who was William of Orange to the unionists that they chose the symbolic color of a different country than Britain whom they wanted to remain with? What is/was the sentiment? And how did the Dutch feel about it, if at all?

I'm new to podcasts in general, so I'm not familiar with what's out there, especially regarding educational podcasts. Basically, I'm looking for a podcast that just delivers information (no dramatization, no interviews with authors, no roundtable discussions) about any ancient civilization (ancient Greeks, romans, ancient Egyptians, Vikings, mongols, etc.). I guess I'm looking for what is essentially the audiobook version of a history textbook. Any suggestions are appreciated!

Was there an emphasis in World War I artillery doctrine to target the opposing artillery and attempt to take them out?

Were there specialists who focused on that aspect as their primary role?

How effective was counter battery fire in World War I if/when it did occur.

Thanks!

TAINOS**

I came across this passage: "Despite women being seemingly independent in Taíno society, coming into the era of contact Spaniards took Taíno women as an exchange item, putting them in a non-autonomous position. Dr. Chanca, a physician who traveled with Christopher Columbus, reported in a letter that Spaniards took as many women as they possibly could and kept them as concubines. Some sources report that, despite women being free and powerful before the contact era, they became the first commodities up for Spaniards to trade, or often steal. This marked the beginning of a lifetime of theft and abuse of Taíno women."

I wrote right after it that in my opinion Columbus and his people were horrible.

A friend responded: That would be in accordance to today's standards and ideals. You can't really judge the past by the ethics of today. You can only judge them if they knew of better ways to live, which they didn't back then. They did exactly what was acceptable at the time: conquer. It's something all ancestors of all civilizations and societies share. Was it right? No. But they learned to do better as things progress. They did what was normal to them at the time. It's like condemning a full grown adult for the violence they did as a child when they didn't know any better.

We should take the examples as ways not to be, not harbor hatred for a past that cannot change. Every "great" person has their darkness just like everyone else in the world. And every civilization has a bloodstained past. Learn from it and put those lessons towards progress. Harboring a grudge won't get anyone anywhere."

Do you think that it is a valid response to say that history cannot be criticized because they people 'simply did not know better' especially in the context of European conquest in the Americas?

Could it be that this holiday and traditions associated with it reflect a vestige of a mindset from an earlier age where goblins, ghosts, witches, demons and faeries were thought to be real and lurking in the dark corners of the world at any time of year?

Did feudalism in Japan ever develop representative institutions similar to parliaments in Europe, even if they were suppressed by the Shogunate later?

The passage is "The Pope acts most rightly in granting remission to souls, not by the power of the keys (which is of no avail in this case) but by the way of suffrage"

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