For context: I’m writing a Western novel but still in the early stages of planning out the plot; and one of the characters is a detective investigating the death of a man in the year 1899 (May change to 1900). The deceased man is examined by doctors who determine that he had too much insulin in his body at the time of his death and without any other way of looking into it, they say that it must have been because his pancreas failed, which in turn caused him to die.
As it turns out, the detective finds a small mark on the corpse that appears out of place since it is located in a weird spot (under the toenail). He’s curious of foul play and as it turns out, he was injected with insulin in his sleep which was easily covered up with the pancreas failing explanation.

My question is: how realistic would this be for the given year? I know insulin shots were not officially done until the 1920s, but given the technology at the time, could this bizarre event theoretically happen? The ‘antagonist’ behind this is a wealthy man who invests money into various research.

I just recently heard that the British Navy was exempt from sailors having to buy their commissions to raise their ranks. Why is this the case with the navy and not the army? Did it lead to a more merit based command structure? Or did you have to be born into the “right” family to reach the admiralty?

Would life come to a standstill for days or weeks, or at least limit mobility dramatically, as people waited for the accumulated snow to melt? Or were brigades of shovel-carrying laborers and horse-drawn plows on hand to clear streets and roads?

The Jewish high holidays (Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah) are expressly referenced in the Tanakh, and my understanding is that there is some written evidence that Jesus and the apostles celebrated the high holidays. I also understand that, on this basis, certain Christian sects today do indeed promote celebrating the high holidays, but these are smaller non-mainstream sects. It seems to me continuity with something so core to Judaism would have helped Christianity gain traction as an upstart religion, especially since Christianity otherwise was (and continues to be) typically expressed as a continuation of Judaic theology. Given the historical precedent, the alternative interpretation available today, and the very practical reasons for maintaining the high holidays, I am curious why they were completely abandoned by the church. I searched Wikipedia on this and came up empty-handed. Curious if anyone here can weigh in.

Thanks!

All I hear nowadays is your baby should be eating solid foods by 6 months.. your baby should be sitting up on their own by 8 months.. your newborn baby should be fed every 2-3 hours and sleep on their backs only.. etc But babies have somehow evolved from being strictly breastfed to, at some point, handling solid foods, and potty trained .. etc

Do we have evidence of prehistoric child rearing or even medieval times at what age did things begin to change and grow? Is there a reason, historically, why these current age milestones are what they are?

The answer may have more to do with the attack capabilities of submarines, but what prevented submarines from targeting warships as opposed to shipping convoys? Was anti-submarine weaponry so effective on armed warships to prevent this? Surface ships seem to a layman very vulnerable to this sort of attack.

I realize that I'm asking about an entire continent over the course of a thousand years, so the answer will have a heavy does of "it depends" but I have read a million quotes saying that bathing will kill you. I've also read a million quotes saying not bathing will kill you. So which is it? Did Europeans bathe or not?

edit: I say a thousand years b/c I'm asking about post-dark ages Europe specifically.

edit 2: If Europeans did bathe, where do all the anti-bathing quotes come from?

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Come share the stories from 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: Racism & Slavery

I hope I'm doing this right, if not I'm sorry.

I was studying the waves of American and Western European democratization - efforts in the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century when the question occured to me that not many of the democratization efforts bore fruitful, functioning democracies. Comparing that to the historical change of political system that happened to Germany post 1945, I wondered where the differences in execution lay.

West German authorities at the time were rebuilt with the partizipation of former Nazi regime politicians, officers, doctors, etc. Similarly the German public did not seem to have resigned from the ideology of Nazi Germany but rather chose to not discuss it in public anymore, implying that the ideology would have persisted even in the intimacy of one's home so to speak.

So one could think that the moment the Allies eventually withdrew from the country, the former Nazi party members or their ideological brothers would try to gain more influence again and fight the democratic system or even attempt a coup, without much resistance from the public?

Is it simple a matter of how long foreign watchdogs and soldiers were in West Germany to oversee and help organize the democratic process and push the consolidation of democratic values in younger generations?

If that's the case would it mean that the whole short time aspect of modern day democracy promotion is a hindrance to its success?

Edit: WEST Germany specifically

I know Jewish people were the principal target of the final solution, but other groups like homosexuals, Romani and others were also targeted. But I can't remember hearing anything about other "races", like people of african or asian descent. How many people in those groups might have been in Germany before WWII and how did they fare?

Hi,

I have noticed that there are several biographies of Churchill, with some of them being criticised as being Hagiographies. I have asked this question before, but didn't receive a reply hence asked again. This question has also been asked by others in the past in this sub-reddit, but there have been only 1-2 answers. Some posts recommended Roy Jenkins, others recommended Manchester, other recommended Gilbert. But, no comparative analysis was done, which spelt out the strengths and weaknesses, and biases of each biography. Of course, no biography can tell the entire truth, but some biographies can come closer to the truth than others. That is my goal. If possible, I would appreciate similar recommendations w.r.t Lee Kuan Yew. Thanks.

Charles de Gaulle only ever referred to the USSR as "Russia", due to his belief that the Soviet Union was essentially driven by Russian geopolitical interests rather than communist idealism. Can this view said to have been vindicated in light of the continued political animosity between Russia and the Western powers since the fall of the Soviet Union?

Were these schools of thought truly as influential in the foundations of western society as he claimed, or did these fade out in place of more modern schools of thought as time went on?

When considering he built the largest public works (baths of Caracalla) and granted citizenship to all free Romans in the empire, it seems odd that he’s portrayed as an “evil tyrant”.

They seemed rather conspicuous. Why didn't German authorities reign them in?

I was told by someone who had absolutely no authority on the matter that Beethoven composed the first two movements of the Moonlight Sonata as a gift for a female student he was deeply in love with, and thus it's relative simplicity despite being an obviously beautiful song. When she rebuffed him he then composed the final movement to be intentionally impossible for her to play just to spite her.

Is there any truth to this?

According to Wikipedia's count, the soundtrack for The Bodyguard is the third best selling album of all time. It sits among obvious contenders (Dark Side of the Moon, Thriller) and beats out the next closest soundtrack, Saturday Night Fever by 50% of that album's certified sales.

This seems weird at first. While the film was financially successfully, it was critically panned and has not endured in the popular memory at all. Other top selling soundtracks are from musically driven films (Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Purple Rain).

Now, the album did have "I Will Always Love You," the best-selling single of all time by a female artist. It won best album and the Grammy's, and two of its songs were nominated at the Oscars. Yet the other top albums don't seem to be driven by the success of their singles. Both the top digital and physical singles lists have little overlap with the albums lists. Most of the other artists in the top 20 albums don't even have any single on Wiki's list. Likewise, hundreds of albums and songs have received Oscar and Grammy noms without anything close to this scale of success.

We might compare it to the Titanic soundtrack. "My Heart Will Go On" sold nearly as well as Houston's single, and the film shoveled up Oscars and redefined "box office success." Yet The Bodyguard's claimed sales are still 50% greater.

Is it really just the strength of the single the sold this album? Was there extensive media/popular hype about the song? Was the album particularly promoted? Did it happen fall in some key point in the changes of music formatting and sales charts?

I know that Byzantine is a relatively modern term used retrospectively by some historians to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire in the Middle Ages and that they generally called themselves some form of Roman (like Rhomaioi in Greek, which became the main language). And I know the eastern cultures like Turks and Arabs called them something based on that, like Rum. My question is what other European countries referred to them as over time?

Like for example, what would the Venetians (who had an uneasy often antagonistic relationship with them) during the Crusades have called them? Would they really have still called them "Romans" at this point? I feel like by that time, after the Schism, they lost legitimacy in that regard in the eyes of the West. Or what about other Italians, particularly from the area of Rome itself, and the Papal States? Would they have just called them the Greeks by this time? Same for the Germans of the "Holy Roman Empire", what would they have called the Byzantines? Or the Franks/French? Russians and other Slavs?

I assume it also changed over time... if you ask about this for 500 AD vs 1400 AD it would probably be pretty different.

I'm reading a transcript of a journal from 1830's Vermont, and I'm flummoxed by the way the writer uses the word "published." At least a couple of times each year he writes something like, "John Waldo was published today," "Mr. Greene was published," "Elder Fay and others were published." What the heck does it mean? My guess is it's a religious reference of some kind, but I really don't know.

TIA! I'm a school librarian working with my 6th graders on primary sources. My library degree is in Archives Management, so I'm usually pretty good at figuring this stuff out, but this one's got me scratching my head!

I'm in the middle of reading the Count of Monte Cristo and was surprised by this passage (Franz, Albert and The Count express similar sentiments throughout their stay in Rome):

but on the contrary ate like a man who for the last four or five months had been condemned to partake of Italian cookery -- that is, the worst in the world.

I, and I'm sure countless others on here, have made or had Italian food and found it delicious, so this is a particularly stand out comment.

Here are my Qs:

• Is this merely a 19th century French man having national pride and slagging off a nearby region?

• If it was true that Italian cooking at the time was not known for being good cuisine, why? Was it only the Tuscan region?

• If it was true that Italian cooking was bad then, what changed to change its reputation?

There's a lot to unpack in that question, but I'm hoping for maybe some slice-of-life explanations as it pertains to your knowledge. I know people knew of cancer's existence, but I'm wondering how people fought it, treated it, lived with it until they succumbed, maybe any superstitions surrounding it?