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A co-worker told me about how his families history led him to find out he could apply for citizenship in another country. Apparently, a friend of his researched his family for him to get the info. This got me thinking about researching my history.

How does one go about learning where they come from and family history in general?

I mean do all those books e.g."Al bukhari", "Muslim", "Ibn-Hicham" have any credibility whatsoever in the light of contemporary historical science methods?

And whether there is a difference between those Islamic historians methodology and the “western” methodology

Keep in mind that almost everything I know about this case comes from the musical Hamilton, which is more than likely to include historical inaccuracy. That being said, if the account in the musical number "We Know" is accurate, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr and James Madison reassured Hamilton that they wouldn't publicly out him for his affair with Maria Reynolds. If that's the case, why did Hamilton do it himself, voluntarily destroying his career, personal life and public persona? It doesn't make sense to publicly publish something that could destroy your whole life. So why'd he do it?

Did they all invent the bow individually or was the bow developed very early on and gradually spread across cultures?

Excuse me if this has come up before (searched the subreddit, no dice) or should screwy formatting arise. Reddit lurker here.

What is a/the English-language rendering of a/the term Ancient Egyptians would have used to refer to themselves in their day? Granted, the history here is inherently broad, but I'm looking for something in the sense of ancient Egyptians as members of the ‘cohesive’ Egyptian cultural state of antiquity: united Upper and Lower Egypt, the Red and the Black as ruled by Pharaoh, etc. Maybe something along the lines of the AE version of referring to the ancient Chinese as 'the Han' of 'Zhongguo' (assuming that's even a proper comparison)? The constant use of the 'ancient Egyptians' as the only term for reference is making my paper stale.

Various sources yield the standard geopolitical dynamic duo of 'km.t/kemet' and 'dšṛt/deshret' in reference to Egyptian territory. From there, for the people of that land, I've found:

kememu, tamareans (no idea if these are legit); remenkīmi (Coptic Christians?); and miṣriyyūn (citizens of the Arab Republic of Egypt)

I'm not sure what's what, nor do I have the expertise to anglicize my Semitic root words by haphazardly sprinkling vowel sounds all over them. Help!

Thanks /AskHistorians! :D

Putting aside differences in refrigeration, between metal and wood kegs, etc.

Argentina declared themselves a member of the Axis powers during World War II.

Geographically, the country seems pretty far removed from any of the major theaters of war.

While I understand some Nazis immigrated to Argentina after the war, did they play any major role in the war itself?

This post is actually two separate questions regarding the same topic, but I'm deeply troubled by them. In the 1930's, Nazi Germany's policies towards Jews were aimed at excluding them and attempting to deport them. Even until 1938, Hitler wanted to deport Jews to Madagascar, a plan which ultimately failed. Why did these plans for deportation evolve into transporting Jews into Nazi territory and exterminating them? Why did the Nazis invade territories with such large Jewish populations if they themselves wanted to deport them initially?

My second question about the Holocaust is more psychological. How could the Nazis condition themselves to be so cruel? I'm not talking about the top brass, I'm talking about people in the totenkopfverbande and people like Josef Mengele, how are these people capable of such actions without having psychological problems? Desensitization due to racial theory is one thing, but human experimentation and so many of their atrocities are unfathomable to me.

As an USA type American, I've spent my life understanding "socialism" as most anything "socialistic" since FDR's New Deal programs (even if my wife has an MBA in poli-sci.). I understand that there is a standard definition of Socialism and am interested in not only that, but also how the word has morphed over time, and place. For instance, many seem to use it as a shorthand for "communism", which seems silly as that has it's own word already.
Am fairly sure that even within the English speaking world, that "socialism" denotes something quite different in England than the USA. Seems that the USA has a peculiar relationship with the word. But am not one hundred percent certain of that.
In any case, to begin this week's theme, it would seem that such definitions would be useful. Thanks in advance to our superb scholars.

I've read that about 150 blimps were used for convoy escort duties during the Battle of the Atlantic but why weren't they more popular for things like trans-Atlantic troop transport or high level bombing?

What was the effectiveness of LVT's in the Pacific and Europe in amphibious landings, also how did it do compared to Higgins boats, and were there any objection to their use in amphibious operations.

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EDIT: Just to narrow down the question a bit, I would like to know, from the perspective of the socialists of the late 19th century, why Marx's ideas could be more convincing or appealing comparing to other socialist thinkers (in the broadest sense) such as Proudhon and Bakunin? I am under the impression that many (competing) schools of thoughts existed in the broad spectrum of socialism. How did Marxism emerge as the dominant one?

It's in the syllabus, but she's not totally set on the decision and agrees that it's "a little dated".

I'm aware of a few books that can explain some things better than GG&S, but not any documentaries or other visual media.

Help! Someone save me from Diamond!

Okay so what I understand about the word giant is that it all started when the greeks had the mythological creature called the gigantes, who the french knew about. England interacted with the norse countries and got the idea of jotun. When William the conquerer conquered England, he changed the word jotun into the same word that he had for gigantes since they were similar concepts (big things that fought against the gods), and over time the two concepts and the word evolved into a singular thing known as a "Giant". Since england was christian they discarded the parts about giants fighting against god (as nothing but demons can fight against god) and came up with their own giant myth of brutes who threw rocks around, based off of a combination of the gigantes and the jotunn. Then people like saxo grammaticus thought that giants must be real because they explained old roman architecture. And then because wales is close to England they picked up the idea of a giant from england and wroght the Four Branches of the Mabinogi which codified giants as we know them today. (I may be wrong about this though)

But my question is, Where do nephilim fit into all of this? Unlike other big mythological creatures I see nephlim described as giants fairly often (ie, nephlim = giant while ogree=/=giant) when did that start? My gut instinct is that people described nephilim as giant due to their size, and people got confused and thought that they were giants. But I would also believe that when the english were coming up with thier idea of giants they were combining the jotunn, the gigantes, AND the nephilim. Is calling nephlim giants a new thing? Or is that the british already beleived that nephlim were big brutes who threw rocks around, and the new french word was originally used to describe nephlim? Is my premise wrong?

I want to learn about the mythology, but different sites I'm looking at have different answers for the domain of the Gods. For example, the diety Ku was the Island Eater in one website, the God of War in another site, and on another site he's the God of Creation. Does anyone have a link for an accurate description of Polynesian Mythology?