I recently fell down a Wiki-hole onto the article on the Gauls. At the end of the article, there were two things that struck me.

First, Charles de Gaulle (ironically, given his name) identified France as a Christian country that began when Clovis was elected king of the Franks, thus signifying a Frankish origin for France.

Second, the textbooks of Ernest Lavisse, in which the Gauls were referred to as "nos ancêtres lea Gaulois" ("our ancestors the Gauls"), were mentioned.

My question is, are there political reasons that either a Frankish or Gaulish origin for France was adopted? Would the Gauls, for example, be seen as an "anticlerical" choice in contrast to the Christian Franks?

To me, the most iconic image of WW1 is a few machine gun posts which survived artillery strikes mowing down hundreds of oncoming infantry in no man's land. Why couldn't a few snipers among those troops take out the machine gun operators?

John Tyler, Henry Clay ?.. it's all a little weird.

Hello, I own a samurai sword from WW2 that has been passed down throughout 2 generations. I've had it for a long time. The sword is in okay condition but the wooden sheath is falling apart and recently the handle to the blade came completely off. I examined where the handle once was and noticed Japanese letters had been engraved on both sides of the sword. Can anyone help me translate those engravings? I hardly use Reddit, so forgive me....I have no idea how to post multiple photos on here. Please help me though, the engravings have me very curious and can possibly give this sword a story. Thank you.

Hello All, I am working on a thesis centered around the popularity and legacy of Blackbeard, although he was only active as a pirate for a very short period of time. To that end, one thing that I have been pondering is the presence of beards of other pirates during the early 1700's. It is easily understood that the beard lead to part of his popularity, but am I correct in believing that beards were rather uncommon among the British at this time? As a non-British specialist I am a little out in the dark here, yet a quick perusal of images from prominent men of the time, both of maritime and non-sea workers, seems to support it. Would this be part of his legacy?

Thanks so much!

I keep hearing from different sources that the UK was going to launch a nuclear strike on the Argentine mainland in 1982 if the conflict in the south Atlantic continued and became impossible to support the troops over there. But at the same time I hear that Trident couldn't be used without consent of the American government which wanted to avoid an escalation that could get the USSR involved since the Soviets were very concerned about Argentine grain exports to the union at the time.

I've often wondered how modern historians have been able to draw maps of the Roman Empire when, so far as I know, no maps have survived from that period. Because we don't know what their maps looked like, would significant rulers like Trajan agree with the borders we've defined for his empire?

Japanese and Korean pop, European rap, etcetera. I don't mean artists like Shakira who recorded English versions of her songs in Spanish, but rather those who write songs primarily in their language with seemingly random verses in English.

In many countries' militaries during WWII, infantry units were given light artillery pieces. For example, in the IJA, each battalion had 2 70mm Type 92 Batallion Guns and each regiment had 4 75mm Type 41 Mountain Guns. Wehrmacht infantry regiments were assigned 6 75mm guns and 2 150mm guns each. At the end of the war, Soviet Rifle Regiments were assigned 4 76mm howitzers each. So my question is, how did light artillery at low echelons perform in WWII? I especially would like to know about the direct fire pieces.

Essentially, he said that serial killers on average committed their first murder at the age of 28, saying that a large number of serial killers active in the late 70s were raised by men suffering from the trauma of the war in World War II, having been raised in the early 50s.

Growing up I always sort of idolized Pancho Villa as a revolutionary. But the more I read about him the more uncertain I am as to whether or not he was really just more of a warlord. My guess is that he was a little of both, but the things I read on it seem so uncertain in this regards.

So I ask the eminent folks of /r/askhistorians, in your opinion, to what extent was our old friend Villa a revolutionary concerned with social reform and revolution and to what extent was he a warlord concerned with amassing as much power as he could?

I teach an undergraduate general history course which provides a kind of broad strokes view of major historical developments e.g. the Ancient World, the Middle Ages, etc.

I have had great success with one of my earlier sessions where I brought two historical artefacts to class to show students. The first was part of my collection of Roman Coins. I have a few worse for wear coins which I actually allowed the students to touch, while a few higher quality coins were used to display the text on the coins, which of course uses the same alphabet as we (in western countries) use today. The students greatly enjoyed this. Another 'artefact' was an ancient Greek song from YouTube. I find the use of these objects help make students enthusiastic about the field of history, and possibly consider becoming historians themselves.

I would like some suggestions of ways of bringing authentic historical objects into classroom. This can include online resources (like the song) but ideally also cheap physical objects from different civilizations and periods.

Since my speciality is Early Modern Europe I intend to bring perhaps a print or archival type document or book from the period. I can also use high resolution images of paintings available online, but something to touch would be nice too. The modern period should also be easy to find stuff on. But I am at a loss what objects I can collect from other periods and places.

No biased answers please and provide sources. :|

To narrow this down, I'm thinking late Bronze Age - early Iron Age.

By "royal princess," I'm thinking a sister of the pharaoh or daughter of the pharaoh (by the queen, not a concubine).

What am I doing for fun? For responsibilities? Am I tutored in anything? Do I have specific religious functions I'm supposed to perform, and what are they? What does my average day look like?

The war for Greek independence ended in a treaty after European great powers intervened and supported Greece. Why wasn't Istanbul retaken as part of the war? Was it simply infeasible to capture, did the UK/Russia lack the interest or political will, or was there some other reason?

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I'm a British and I have some wealth, how easy is it to travel Europe and far away colonies?

As a university student, I will be writing a term paper this semester on the development of hospitals for a class in American Technological Development. I need a fair amount of primary source documents and am a little perplexed how to acquire them.

I can find some literature on the general history of hospitals in America, but I would love to find some reports from early american hospitals themselves.

Is this information available online for the older hospitals? Has anyone had experience with going to the hospitals personally and asking for archival records to learn about the history, even if it is mainly economic information?

Thank you in advance for your advice and suggestions!