I'm wondering if military aircraft are so incredibly expensive now that they are bound to generate controversy. In WW1 WW2 they were much simpler so I assume much cheaper at the time.

I was talking to my friend about economies and political structures, and we started talking about the differences between medieval kings and ancient kings.

I know kings in the medieval period formed vassal relationships, but I have no idea what relations ancient kings made.

I'd also like to hear how non-european kingdoms operated in contrast to the more well known european kingdoms.

Since "history" indeed meant in Ancient Greece "inquiry", it means that your curiosity being answered and satisfied was "history" but not as the record of facts but as the record of plausible (in their minds) but non-demonstrable by other witnesses facts.

So I wanted to know, what is the oldest recorded act in the history of what we know as Ancient Greece that we can state as fact?

Seriously, what is it? that there was a war between Eretria and Chalcis? It certainly got exaggerated beyond plausibility for different literary motifs (like Thukydides wanting to put an analogue to the Peloponnesian war as the Median War was analogue to the supposed Troian War)

The First sacred war is nuts. Beyond impossible given that neither Herodotos nor Thukydides spoke of it.

The rebellion of Kylon in Athens? The "First" Olympic Games? The founding of the earliest colonies in Italy and Sikilia? Which one is that you kind and excellent historians can state without any doubt as fact? I start to feel even if it is something, some fact or event, stated by both Herodotos and Thukydides, it would not mean they would not be cheated by the sources. Certainly Herodotos heard too much crap of Persia to be truthful (Rest in Peace even if also in Pieces Darius noble and poorly framed son of Xerxes I, and fuck you Artaxerxes I, even the second brother had to go because of you)

As I understand it, French morale in the Great War was absolutely tanked. What will be the significance of the records being released? What use is the number of deserters to historians? What sort of social commentary can we expect?

Hi /r/askhistorians I love lurking around here. I hope you can help.

I'm writing a fictional novel set in Las Vegas at the start of the testing at the NTS dealing with atomic parties and general atomic culture in the US.

I am trying to find out when people first saw actual footage of the atomic bombs from Nagasaki and Hiroshima like on the television news or a real picture of a mushroom cloud in the newspaper, not just text descriptions of it so that I can get a feel for what context they may have had seeing them live from Vegas/how novel it really was.

Most all of the images and video I have seen don't make it clear when they were released to the public just when they were taken, regarding Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the newspaper articles I have found from that time tend not to include photographs which tells me people probably weren't seeing much.

There was definitely a shift from keeping nuclear explosions secret to using them as propaganda about patriotism and using the tests to stoke fear and obedience and whatnot as we went through the 50s. I also know there was lots of purposeful and some accidental disinformation on fallout and safety and such.

Additionally, I know that Ranger Charlie was the first televised bomb test and Ranger Easy was the first LIVE broadcast televised bomb test, but I wondered if there were any resources on viewers reactions to seeing the tests on TV (not people at the NTS site, I have read many accounts from people present at News Nob and such). I found one account that said television viewers were not impressed because the TVs at the time didn't really convey the power of the bomb and they couldn't figure what they were looking at, but that's it.

I just want to know to what extent everyday people had been exposed to actual real images of the bombings in Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the dawn of testing at the NTS. Like, what would the general citizen have seen up to 1951?

Thanks!

I've often heard, and understood, that often numbers of soldiers were often heavily exaggerated, being the number of the soldiers as well as the number of camp followers I've heard that the army Frederick Barbarossa amassed for the third crusade, was mainly comprised of camp followers such as the soldiers and knights' wives, prostitutes, children, squires, etc. and this held true even in the Renaissance and beyond.

So I'm curious, was this true of the Roman Legions as well? I understand the German bands during the age of migrations did this, but they were roaming clans. So I'm just curious if the professional Roman Army practiced this as well. I suppose this heavily depends on time period though, but I'd love to hear what you guys can say on the matter!

I just read an article that stated disease could have wiped out upwards of 90% of some native populations in the Americas. I was curious why it wouldn’t have spread in African populations, as well. Or slave populations for that matter. If it did have an equally devastating impact on native Africans, why don’t we hear about it?

I don't know German so preferably I need some primary sources that have English translations alongside the originals. As you probably can guess, this is for a History term paper. I've been fascinated with this topic and I'm hoping to show how Nazi Germany's early euthanasia and eugenics policies helped to foster the mindset that would eventually lead to the Final Solution. Of course my thesis may change or modify as I interact with both primary and secondary sources.

Many thanks.

I wanted to know what is and isn't true when it came to samurai fighting each other and ashigaru foot-soliders.

I really just want the timeline for the name of WW1

At what point in the war was it finally considered a "World War" ? Was there a more technical term prior to this? European Conflict of 1914?

Was it named a "World War" during the war? Or did they wait till after to give it such a grandiose name?

And then in relation to WW2, at what point did they consider WW2 a big enough conflict to not only call it a "World War" but to also rename The Great War to World War 1?

Was it during? After? What is the history on this?

I've been reading about Jack the Ripper suspects on Wikipedia and Francis Tumblety seems to fit almost every qualification and piece of evidence perfectly while the others seem much more circumstantial.

• Tumblety was known to be an outspoken misogynist with a particular hatred for prostitutes. At one time he showed off a collection of preserved female uteruses in a jar -- one of the Ripper's victims Mary Ann Nichols had her uterus removed.

• Tumblety was an itinerant quack doctor who was accused of causing the death of one of his patients. The Ripper's removal of organs from the victims shows some medical knowledge.

• Tumblety was Irish and the "From Hell" letter is thought to have been written by someone with an Irish accent. Also the shopkeeper who likely received the letter described the man who gave it to her as Irish and tall with a dark mustache, like Tumblety.

• Tumblety was in London for only a brief period during which the murders occurred after which he fled to the United States. He was arrested on an unrelated charge two days before the final murder attributed to Jack the Ripper, but the murder of Mary Jane Kelly doesn't fit the usual Ripper profile in a number of ways such as occurring in November while the other four were all in September and the end of August, Kelly was in her 20s while the others were all in their 40s, and her body was found indoors while the others were all found outdoors.

Hi AskHistorians! I'm currently in the process of writing a movie script that centers around William the Conqueror's invasion of England in 1066 and I want to be as historically accurate as possible. I'm looking for the most historically accurate drawings or recreations of the various forces that fought. I would also like to understand how the different armies fought and what that might've looked like. I appreciate any and all answers.

Not really anything to expand upon, I certainly support a universal pitch standard for modern western instruments, I just can’t find any reason as to why the Treaty of Versailles specifically included such a thing. I study late Renaissance and Early Baroque woodwind organology so I’m aware of the hilarious (to me anyways) history of tuning! I just want this one “why” question answered.

In the show, only the king of West Seaxe seems to know about the Roman Empire and he keeps his personal library of Roman books and writings secret from all but a trusted friend. I find this hard to swallow as England was not isolated in terms of trade and diplomacy. I get that what constituted common knowledge would be different for each social class, so what would a noble, or merchant, or peasant know about history?

Maybe my thoughts are inaccurate because I’m basing this off movies and and documentaries, but the amphibious landing vehicles had a front folding door allowing all soldiers to be slaughtered by targeted machine guns. Pre-944 Amphibious landlings in the pacific canpaign that had vehicles with armor plated stationary machine guns and soldiers exited from the side of the vehicle requiring Japanese machine gun nests to rotate their aiming instead of stationary fire down soldiers directly facing them in a single line.

Also why couldn’t they all just be dropped directly behind the beach heads? I know they did (Band of Brothers). But why not also right behind the beach heads? Anti air guns I assume but maybe at night using gliders?

The chapter that I read (in translation) particularly involved the heroes coming to a land ruled by women where all of the men wear women's clothing. They are told that they must be women since they have beards. The hottest of the heroes is then kidnapped and taken away to a harem where he is put into perfume and make-up, his ears are pierced for jewellery, and his feet are bound against his will. The violence, coercion and indignity of certain gender roles seems to be very strongly argued.

I was surprised by how modern the approach to gender seemed and how much it seemed to be constructing the idea that gender was a social construct.

Did the novel make a big impact at the time and did it reflect a larger social movement? Was gender equality as we now understand it a contemporary debate in China? Or was this novel a one off oddity that was only really noticed later on for its critique of gender?