Eating it right now btw, it tastes nice but now I'm not so sure people in the past would say the same.

United States btw, slave era, forgot to clarify

For example, smallpox spread from Europeans to the native people and decimated their population, but why did the reverse not happen, where the Europeans arrived and caught some deadly disease with no built up immunity?

Also, how did indigenous people and early European settlers use these waterways prior to their transformation through engineering into fully navigable rivers and lakes?

Many of Jean Clavin's fundamental tenets, such as Total Depravity, Predestination and Unconditional Election, seem to me to make for a pretty nihilistic (for lack of a better word) Christian philosophy. You are a worthless creature incapable of recieving god's grace even if you do everything right and take Christ's words to heart, your place in the afterlife was decided an eternity ago and there's nothing you can do to change it, and there's no purgatory, it's just a straight up eternity of hell for most of you. It goes on and whilst in Geneva he came up with some more rather grim commandements but the point is it sounds rather unnapealing, at least it would to me were I a contemporary french peasant or burgher.
So why would anyone convert? Am I missing something or misunderstanding Calvin? Was Catholicism that bad/poorly perceived? Why bother joining a new, and likely illegal congration, if that congregation itself tells you nothing you done will change whether you're going to hell or not anyway?

Hurricanes can be devastating even with modern construction methods and satellite meteorology to give advance warning. How did native Americans manage with semi-regular storms flooding the eastern seaboard?

When reading about the history of Ethiopia, it's often mentioned how contact with the rest of the Christian world was more or less lost after the Muslim conquests. Considering that there are lots places in the Mediterranean mentioned in the New Testament (like Jerusalem, Rome, Antioch etc), was there any interest in visiting these or establishing contact with religious authorities there?

I’m basing this question off the Jeeves and Wooster tv show, where in the openings for 3rd and 4th series, Jeeves and Wooster are in New York City for unspecified reasons yet return to England by the end of the series. While to some degree he must spend money in each country, Wooster never works, so what reasons is he in the US? In the 3rd episode of season 4, he tells Jeeves he plans to remain in the US indefinitely, only to later change his mind at the end (rather, it was exacerbated by a few ill-timed conundrums), but the idea is he feels able to stay easily. What’s supporting his means to do so? Besides finances, what legalities does he enjoy?

Meanwhile, there is an implicit suggestion that they’ve moved between the UK and US semi-regularly(?). What was the larger political and social reasons for Wooster and perhaps this speaks to the English upper class in the interwar period to live between both sides of the Atlantic?

Like the title says, does anyone have any good sources, whether blogs or books, about Orphism and Greek mystery cults and magic. Obviously I know that the Orphic and Homeric Hymns are pretty good places to start, but I'm looking for something with more context than that. Although, particularly good translations of those would be appreciated. I have done a bit of looking around, but almost all the online resources are either blogs with banner ads for online tarot readings or YouTube videos that you just know have a conspiracy board stashed somewhere to the side. A lot of the academic material online is behind a paywall and/or really dense and monotonous to slog through. And then, if I'm looking for books, they're either modern academic textbooks that are really expensive or really old books that could use a fair bit of updating and approach the history from a very white, male, cishet perspective. I would even be willing to spring for one of those textbooks, I'd just like to know if it's worth it first or if there are any other less expensive options that will work just as well.

​

In general, I've found it really hard to find reliable, in-depth information on Greek mystical practices. I know that they often used amulets or tablets that they then buried or tossed to invoke gods in exchange for favors, but it'd be cool to know what the contents of some of those things were and the specific ways they might have been used. And Hecate was seen as a goddess of magic and witchcraft, but she was also seen as a goddess of a whole host of many, many things over the years, so how did that change over the years and why? What were some of the original thoughts on the Orphic Egg before it got incorporated into later, alchemical philosophies? And I know it was a mystery cult and so not much was written down, but I would love to know as much about the Dionysian mysteries and what they might have looked like as possible. I just find their whole revolutionary and mystical vibe very fascinating.

Many Inuit societies made use of driftwood because there were no trees in their natural surroundings. Did they think the wood came from the ocean, or did they realize that wood comes from large plants? If so, do we know what they imagined about the lands where those plants grow?

By the end of WW2, the Americans held several Soviet POWs captured by the Germans and made to work in the Wehrmacht, mostly in background jobs like cooks and drivers. According to wiki:

Unlike the German prisoners, who were looking forward to release at war's end, the Soviet prisoners urgently requested asylum in the United States or at least repatriation to a country not under Soviet occupation, as they knew they would be shot by Stalin as traitors for being captured (under Soviet law, surrender incurred the death penalty).

The question of the Soviet POWs' conduct was difficult to determine but not their fate if repatriated. Most Soviet POWs stated that they had been given a choice by the Germans: volunteer for labor duty with the German army or be turned over to the Gestapo for execution or service in an Arbeitslager (a camp used to work prisoners until they died of starvation or illness). In any case, in Stalin's eyes, they were dead men, as they had been captured alive, "contaminated" by contact with those in bourgeois Western nations, and found in service with the German Army.

Notified of their impending transfer to Soviet authorities, a riot at their POW camp erupted. No one was killed by the guards, but some POWS were wounded, and others hanged themselves. Truman granted the men a temporary reprieve, but the Acting Secretary of State signed an order on July 11, 1945, forcing the repatriation of the Soviet POWs to the Soviet Union. On August 31, 1945, the 153 survivors were officially returned to the Soviet Union

It says that we do not know what happened to them, but since then have we found anything that gives us an idea of what may have happened? Are there any official Soviet documents remaining, recording what happened to them?

Edit: (Sorry, I didn't see the weekly theme flair, but I guess it kind of fits?)

I watched a video with Tom Scott about how Shakespeare couldn't have been French. Are there people who think Shakespeare was french and if yes why do they think that. The only thing I found was an April fools' Joke from the BBC that said he was French. Was he a good French speaker? Did he live in France for a brief time? There has to be a reason Tom Scott made that video.

Hi, so I am writing a book set in 1100 in England, and I’m wondering how Old English would have sounded to Norman French speakers and visa vera. I have had a listen to some recordings of modern-day people speaking Old English but not sure how accurate this would be.

My current thinking is that Old English would have sounded quite guttural / rough as apposed to Norman French which is a romance language and maybe more flowing/elegant to the ears? I’m no language expert sadly.

I’m also interested in any insights into how the language barrier between the Norman nobility and English peasantry and other English-speaking people would have been navigated post-invasion. For example, Henry I’s queen Matilda (aka Eadgyth) was presumably raised speaking both Old English and Norman French, and would have spoken English to her aunt /sister but spoken French to Henry. I don’t know if there’s any mention of how people felt about bilingualism in contemporary sources eg. Orderic Vitalis/William of Malmesbury?

So you know how if you want to be taken seriously as a chef, or you want to become a top, top chef, you have to have spent time in France learning from French chefs, the art of fine dining. Even job titles (sous chef and chef de partie as examples) and cooking techniques (confit, sous vide, sauté, etc) have French names, why is this the case? Why is it specifically French and not any other country, that became synonymous with fine dining and cooking at the highest level?

I'm doing a Kelly's Heroes-style pen and paper rpg campaign with some friends in the near future and I'm looking to have a good grounding on this whole topic. If the text covers the major pitfalls and failings in introducing radios at this level all the better.

If it turns out that there are loads of texts on this topic then anything about radio usage by recon units in Korea would be perfect but I'll take anything plus or minus thirty years about any nation's military if there's a paucity of texts.

I’m writing a script for a Swedish medieval movie, which is based in 15th century Sweden.

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Come share the cool stuff you love about the past!

We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. Brief and short answers are allowed but MUST be properly sourced to respectable literature. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: Protest, Resistance, and Revolution! Itching to set the record straight about the Luddites? Eager to spotlight an event from a historical resistance movement that more people should know about? Has a particular moment of protest in the historical record caught your eye? Use today's thread to start a revolution!

Trying to better understand the extent of the spread of these ideas, e.g. if there were similar documents/publications in circulation making the same or similar claims that "The Protocols" did.

Did Vikings (or any nation in the Early Middle Ages) use longswords? Some say that two-handed swords appeared in the XIV-XV centuries because of the development of plate armor, but I know that longswords were used by Scottish mountain men and Irish gallogases who didn't wear plate armor so armor is not a key for longsword use. That's why I wonder if it was used earlier, and if not - why?

I have been trying to learn more about actual Celtic Druids, but much of my knowledge of them is very much colored by their fanciful descriptions from the likes of neo-paganism and fantasy worlds like D&D. One thing I've been unable to figure out is whether or not druids typically lived within forests? Even historical artistic representations tend to show them as tree-loving forest and cave dwelling types, but I don't have any other basis for whether this is fact or not.

Did druids commonly live within forests or wooded areas? If not, what is the root of this common misconception? Are there other shamanistic types from other cultures who commonly lived in forests?