A friend is vacationing in Japan right now and went to the (a?) Meiji shrine. He snapped a picture of a plaque that credits the Emperor personally with the adoption of foreign learning and modernization. That's not how I recall it from my scattered, decades-old reading in Japanese history but that was then and my book list was comprised of the one or two books available for sale at a store. They held to the line that the Emperor was largely a figurehead. I imagine an imperial shrine would emphasize the Emperor anyway, just like presidential libraries stress their subjects, but what's the present consensus? Is there a difference between Anglophone and Japanese historiography on the issue?

Considering tanks were new technology at the time, what was the response of the German soldiers when the tanks were first deployed against them? Did mass panic ensue? Or did they have some kind of tactic to takes the tanks out?

Hi everyone,

For most of the space race, it appears the USSR was in advance of the US. Even the first man around the moon was a russian (if memory serves right).

If all this is the case, why didn't they try to land on the moon after the US landed? They can't have been that far behind on their moon landing program.

Hi. Hopefully this is the right subreddit for this... I'm an illustrator and I need to depict an escaped convict in 1756. I have no idea what he should be wearing. Does anyone have any thoughts or pointers please? Thanks!

Holy shit, this thread blew up! Thanks for all those answers, I will read through all of them later!

Why wasn’t Europe the most powerful region in the world between 1200 and 1500?

A friend who is a historian said this is true through most of the Roman empire's history the other day. And it disturbed me.

Question is arising from video of Stephen Curry using a towel to hide himself picking his nose.

Does anyone know when this became such a socially taboo thing? I mean, in your nose is just mucus, dust, and blood which is always lining your throat. People spit all the time and that's fine. Seems weird to me that it's fine for people to participate in sexual acts that should be pretty dirty (oral sex and even tonguing another person's anus (let's be mature here)) yet nose picking or booger eating is so taboo.

Curious if anyone know

Thank you Historians

Their anti American revolution didn't lead them to communism. Is that because it was later in the cold war? Did their alliance with Russia not entail them to adapting communism?

I see most morions have a crest at the top but simpler ones look identical to cabasets.

Are the memes based in truth?

I in no way mean to sound rude or insulting, and I am fully aware that this sub is run purely by volunteers who all have lives outside of reddit. So please don't take this to mean I'm operating under the delusion that all of you have nothing to do all day but answer questions and respond to email.

With that said, however, I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the fact that I have contacted several mods over the past few months with various inquiries and I have not received one single answer from any of you. Not once.

Before anyone gets defensive and reiterates to me what I already know, as mentioned in my first paragraph, can you all appreciate how very frustrating this is? I don't expect anyone to drop everything and answer an email they receive within the first five minutes. But I do think it's reasonable to expect that someone will get back with me within, I dunno, two weeks, and certainly I think it's reasonable to expect that someone will eventually get back to me at all. But for it to be the case that I've tried to get in touch with not one, or two, but in fact seven or eight people, and entire months have gone by without any response at all...to call it frustrating, especially when my entire purpose is to see about getting involved with AH, is an understatement. I could, you know, email mods to ask "What gives," but, well...

I understand long turnaround times. I don't understand not ever getting a response from anyone no matter how much time goes by.

Can someone explain to me/direct me to a link that will explain to me how much of the Uncharted game series is based on actual history and how much they made up to support their story?

I read about it, and it seems like a holocaust. It's a mass genocide of Slavs! Why are they listed separately?

I saw the following quote by Vitruvius "It is no secret that the moon has no light of her own, but is, as it were, a mirror, receiving brightness from the influence of the sun." How did they figure that out?