As I read history of the American colonies/revolution, it seems as though every person of prominence, and even many of the common people, kept extensively detailed journals and often wrote multiple letters on a daily basis. These things seem to be the basis for most of the information that we have about these times.

Today, I don't know anyone who keeps a journal, and future historians likely wouldn't have access to our text messages and emails like we do letters and diaries of the past. Will histories of our time be less detailed? What will be the primary sources from which future historians will draw?

Was she really in love with a genocidal dictator or was there some politics involved?

If so, for how long?

If so, what did they change? And if not, why didn't they, in a time that history was written by the victors?

What made the founding fathers choose the electoral system over other systems (if any at the time existed)?

I know there was a question asked like this previously but it's over 2 years old and I believe the standards for this subreddit weren't as strict back then, so I'd rather try for better quality answers than rely on something like that.

To be a little bit more precise, what was the level of education for the average american adult? how has this progressed to the point it's at today?

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I had a discussion with a friend were he claimed that newspaper during that century were merely puppets of the state that wrote nothing but propaganda pieces and that freedom of the press was nonexistant. As an example he said that the battle of Waterloo were reported as a resounding victory for the french in french newspapers. I feel a bit skeptical, so I thought I would ask some experts. Were there major newspapers during that time period that were similar to the standard we have today? Could a person alive during that time read newspapers that gave him a reasonably accurate portrayal of what was going on in the world? And as the title says, how much censorship was there?

[I originally posted this at the Total War Center forums.]

What the hell happened in the 3rd century? The Roman Empire, Han-dynasty China, and Kushan Empire of India all became divided states, while the Parthian Empire fell to the Sasanians of Persia.

It never really dawned on me to connect the fortunes of these four great empires of mid-Antiquity, but it seems like their fortunes were somehow connected during the course of the 3rd century AD. In East Asia, the Han Dynasty of China fell into a state of civil war and was divided into Three Kingdoms by 220 AD (reunited by Emperor Wu of the Jin Dynasty by 280). The Kushan Empire of South Asia fragmented into smaller semi-independent kingdoms after the reign of Vasudeva I, hard-pressed by Sasanian invasion and a century later more invasions by the Guptas and Hephthalites. Further west, the Parthian Empire experienced domestic turmoil and rebellion, culminating in the rise of the Sasanians who, under their leader Ardashir I, quickly captured Persia and the Mesopotamian heartlands (ending the rule of the last Parthian king of kings Artabanus V). After years of Germanic invasions, dynastic usurpations, and political assassinations, the Roman Emperor Aurelian ended the Crisis of the Third Century by 284 AD with the reunification of the fractured Roman realm (conquering both the Palmyran and Gallic Empires), an achievement cemented by Diocletian and his Dominate reforms.

So what the hell went wrong in this century? Why did four of the greatest powers on earth suddenly fall into a state of chaos and political division? Were there larger underlying factors at play? The Antonine Plague, which had ravaged both Rome and Han China during the 160s (depleting an estimated 10% of the population in Rome) had small reoccurences during the 3rd century, but would this natural catastrophe somehow explain away the bigger political movements? Was there a terrible shift in the global climate leading to agricultural disaster and famine, and hence civil unrest and turmoil? Is there any sort of connective tissue we can sew together between these vastly different and distant states spanning the whole of Eurasia during the 3rd century AD? And if so, who in the academic community has ever written about this sweeping topic? I don't remember Gibbon ever attempting a correlation between the fall of these empires (or the reunification of the Roman and Chinese ones at oddly close moments in time).

From what I can see, Texas Hold-Em is a fairly new fad.

Honestly, the best I can figure out is remembering how in old Warner Bros. cartoons from the 50's, if any characters were playing poker, it looked like 5-card draw.

So that'd be my best guess for "most popular poker rules c. 1945". Is this accurate?

As the title says, how did Prussia end up dominating the French so badly? Almost 7x more French soldiers died than Prussian so I wanted to know if there was any more background to why the French lost so badly.

Given the massive size of wildfires that are on the news every summer, I'm curious to know what sort of response Native American tribes had to large fires? Did they have some sort of organized fire response? Obviously they didn't have the kind of modern firefighting equipment we have now, but did they make attempts to fight large fires or did they just flee the area?

They had seen disaster before with the Arab invasion, multiple sieges of Constantinople,and the rise of the Bulgars.

Considering the work has been studied and digested since the 11th Century, I'm sure I'm missing something, but Ansalem doesn't seem to be saying a whole lot in Proslogion.