Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!

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this thread is for you ALL!

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: Dance! This week, let's do an eclectic celebration of movement! We can do Fosse, Fosse, Fosse! We can do Martha Graham, Martha Graham, Martha Graham! Or Twyla, Twyla, Twyla! Or Michael Kidd, Michael Kidd, Michael Kidd, Michael Kidd! Or Madonna, Madonna, Madonna!... and we don't have to keep it all inside! And you don't have to leave your friends behind! Let's celebrate everything about that glorious act when movement becomes dance.

Hi everyone!

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I was wondering, spear-throwing technology comes in many forms, like the atlatl and the amentum.

But these, while based the same principles, differ in the materials. So I'm wondering if there has ever been weapons akin to the sling, but made out of a rigid material like wood.

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Does it exist and if so, what is it and where/when has it been used ?

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Have a nice day!

And yet, from 1928 to 1985, the economy of the Soviet Union grew by a factor of 10 and GNP per capita grew more than fivefold. The Soviet economy started out at roughly 25 percent the size of the economy of the United States. By 1955, it climbed to 40 percent. In 1965, the Soviet economy reached 50% of the contemporary United States economy and in 1977 it passed the 60 percent threshold.

How can that both be?

There is a common bias that civilizations of the past were somehow less inventive/creative/resourceful than modern humans, and therefor it’s a miracle that they could invent such wondrous monuments without the aid of modern technology (like the pyramids of Giza or the stelae at gobekli tepe, etc). I know historians are trying to dispel this misconception but I wondered if there was an official term for it

Hi historians! Apologies for wordiness, I’m quite tired today.

I’ve just seen a tiktok titled “real medieval dog names” and, not to be a critic, but I don’t exactly trust tiktok for “true” information.

Does anyone happen to specialise in the history of dogs? What names did people give dogs in medieval times, were they as silly with dogs as we are now?

We hear a lot that we really spoil dogs now. People will cook an entire meal, or birthday cake, just for their dogs. We’ll call them silly names like “sock” or something. Did this happen in history (I’m thinking of medieval, but quite happy to hear from your specialty time periods too), or is it a fairly recent way of approaching our relationship with dogs?

Effectively my question is: how much were dogs “part of the family” or were they just there to work (although I suppose even children were “there to work”)? and subquestions are: Who would own dogs? What would they name them? How were dogs seen?

I really value that answers here are so incredibly well put together and don’t ignore nasty details, but I would like to politely request that any details of animal mistreatment are intentionally vague in your answers, if possible

Thank you!

I’m writing a research paper for class about the formation, structure, and evolution of Britain’s landed class. A large section of the paper deals with the increase in the number of landholders after 1535. I thought it important to include a number of people and families that benefited from the suppression of monasteries. Is there a list or resource for such information? Thank you in advice for any and all responses!

This was mentioned passingly in an infographic by romasintigenocide.eu, but several other sources mentioned it as well. It was really shocking and confusing! Was there still pockets of Nazi resistance after Victory in Europe Day holding out in these areas? Did the Allies willingly keep the Roma camps open or did they not know they existed or weren’t priorities?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

In places like Athens where occasionally people would over throw the democracy and implement an oligarchy, how did that work? Were only the rich people allowed to vote or was it just a certain group of people allowed to vote (ie the people with all the weapons, meaning that there might be rich people excluded)? If one person was super duper rich, did his vote count 2x or 3x as much as just a regular rich person?

When democracy got re-instated, did all the poor people just immediately massacre the rich people and steal all their stuff or was it seen more just like the "oligarch" party came to power and then the "democracy" party came to power and more of a natural "this is normal" type thing? I saw that oligarch was implemented many times and sporadically throughout so it might not have been that abnormal.

I was recently watching The Last Samurai and something peaked my interest, in the film Tom Cruise's character wears socks that look completely regular, as if they had been purchased at Walmart a couple of days ago, nothing special or extravagant about them. So, I undestand that wearing a piece of clothing around your feet with the objective of keeping them warm has been a thing for thousands of years, but when did the modern "design" of socks become popular?

Apologies for any possible typos, English is not my first language.

Hello folks! I’m a lover of Tudor history as was excited to see a new show centering Anne Boleyn. I’ve read texts analyzing previous series about the Tudors and given how new this one is can’t seem to find any on this series. My initial impression is that the series is molding and editing Anne’s story to fit more modern sensibilities. While I love the emphasis on her beliefs and (despite the title) a balance in how her story is told, the isolated narrative feels very… off to me. However, I’m not a professional and would love the perspective of those who are. Thoughts?

Hi, for anyone who specializes in ancient documents I have some questions for you. There’s this fringe theory that’s popular in Hindu and New Age circles. The idea is about Jesus traveling to India during his teen years to learn from Brahmin and Buddhist priests. He then returns to Israel to share what he learned and this was supposedly documented in an “ancient” text called “ The Life of Saint Issa”. The man who claimed to discover it was Nicholas Notovitch who said that he found it in a monastery while visiting Tibet. I’m well aware that this is a far fetched theory and that the text was proven to be a hoax, but can anyone explain how it’s a hoax? I’m looking for specific answers that I can use incase I were to debate this with someone who promotes it. Like the writing doesn’t match the time period it was supposedly written in, those kinds of answers.

A long-standing debate in my family was started when I wore pretzel socks to Thanksgiving one year, and my brother insisted that pretzels were not eaten at the first Thanksgiving. After some quick Google searches, and a bit of reading into it I discovered that (soft) pretzels were most likely brought over on the mayflower, along with the beer of the pilgrims. However, I am wondering if pretzels were actually eaten at the first Thanksgiving. Thanks for helping me solve this family debate.

Preferably ones that have english translation but if there are none then give me the japanese ones.

Fancy and/or conveniently cheap lumber of specific from all over the world types is fairly easy to acquire in the modern day (post-2020 lumber woes aside), although the majority of U.S. lumber is domestic, not imported. But wood is heavy and there weren't diesel engines in the 10th century. What was the wood trade in Europe and the Near East in late Antiquity/the Middle Ages like?

I'm aware of things like viking trips to Canada to acquire lumber for the Greenland colony (and possibly Iceland?), but that seems like one of those desperate necessity things given how near-complete the deforestation of both Iceland and southern Greenland were by the Scandinavians. Would that state of affairs be unusual or pretty common, even outside of that specific geographic context?

Thanks!

The New Conquest Historians are a loose group of historians studying the early Spanish conquest. Some of the best known writers in this group include Matthew Restall, Camilla Townsend, and Kris Lane, among others. One of the main focuses of these researchers is to emphasize Indigenous agency in the face of colonization - how Indigenous people and nations formed alliances with colonial powers, resisted them, or generally adapted to colonialism. The point of this according to these historians is to emphasize that Indigenous people were not helpless victims in the face of European conquest, but powerful historical agents in their own right.

While this is a laudable goal, I was wondering if it might unintentionally provide ammunition to colonial apologists who want to deny the atrocities of colonialism. Might some bad faith commentators use the complex relationships between Indigenous people and colonial powers to say that “actually colonialism wasn’t that bad”, or “indigenous people brought their oppression on themselves”, among other genocide-denial tactics? I was wondering what AskHistorians thinks.

I was looking at a map and noticed that many place-names in New York tend to be named after places from classical history (Troy, Ithaca, Utica, Syracuse) but also just other seemingly random places on earth (Cuba, Mexico, Galway, Peru, Bagdad, Panama).

What’s the reason for this seemingly out of place choice of names for these municipalities?

They did get Istria and western Slovenia after war, but even though they got invaded by all their neighbours, except Greece and Romania (who only gave Germans land pass for toops for the invasion) they somehow didn't get to occupy Carinthia or bigger part of Veneto region for example.

As I understand it, things like classical ballet are no older than the 1500s. How did people dance before then? What differences in style would there be between an upper class formal ball and commoners at a festival?