The question might be a little too broad and I’m sorry. I’m not 100% sure how to articulate my question.

How do we know that documents from leaders, random people, historians, etc…are genuine? Couldn’t they embellish what they put down? How big their troop sizes were, when they were born, who killed who, their adventures, etc…

Do modern historians cross reference multiple documents to feel confident in stating something is fact? What if there is only one account of it?

I guess my one question has spawned a million.

He's best known for missing the transit of Venus twice, being away from home for 11 years because of it, and finding out his estate was divided and his wife remarried because he was declared legally dead since none of his letters made it back home. What I'd like to know is just how unlucky he really was, because he apparently died in Paris in 1792, which was not a great place to be in 1792. I've looked for some time but every little biography I've read online must have used the same source because they all simply say he died in Paris in 1792. Can anyone tell me if he died in one piece? Died in bed or lost his head? I'd really like to know. I was happy to read that he got his estate back, remarried, and seemed to have a successful career after his return, so it was quite a gut punch at the end to read the time and place of his death.

I need closure on this because the biographies I read all basically left him dangling off the edge of a cliff. Honestly! You cannot say "died in Paris in 1792" without saying how! That's just irresponsible.

Supposedly, Paris is much more densely populated than the rest of the country because France started a a single city-state that extended towards regions it could easily defend. And Italy has a much more even distribution because it originally was multiple city-states. Is this explanation accurate?

Hey guys! So, kinda hard to phrase but essentially what I’m wondering is this: Let’s say I’m living in a town somewhere some thousands of years ago. I would know that there’s the “land” and that there’s the “sky,” and that would be about the height of my knowledge and understanding of how the realm that I exist in works. I wouldn’t even be able to understand or wrap my head around the concept of “planets,” or “solar systems” or anything like that - I certainly wouldn’t think the earth is round, or that the concept of a “planet” was even a thing. But then thousands of years later apparently people noticed that boats disappeared from the bottom up when they got far enough out into the ocean, so that (if I remember correctly) was how some ancient people knew the earth was round. But like, how in the world did they come to that conclusion? The idea that the “land” that I exist on - and for all I know is just an unending flat plane - is a round object would make absolutely no sense to me, and would certainly not be the first explanation I come up with for phenomena like boats disappearing over the horizon, or the difference between shadows cast by poles in Syene and Alexandria (which I believe was also another way people found out the Earth was round?). And then, how did we discover that the earth was a “planet” and that it wasn’t the only solid object of land that existed? Because in a world where nobody ever talks or learns anything about “space” or “planets,” I’d think that concept would just be absolutely bizarre and make no sense. I know I probably phrased that badly, but man I’m so curious about that because it seems like it would have been such a weird concept to even come up with back then.

I’m curious as every example I can think of, both historic and current, has essentially been a smoke screen for some description of fascism/authoritarianism.

Are there good examples of it being (at least by intention) implemented as a lefty ideology?

I'm thinking specifically in terms of languages and then communication channels would be a bonus.

examples:

• Mongols invading much of Eurasia
• Alexander the great's invasions of Gaza, the Indian subcontinent (where he asked local chieftains to submit to him)
• Arab conquests of the middle east, Africa

Were nations actively harboring multilingual translators? Were languages spoken around the times similar enough? Were there times in which the language barrier was too great (or did invasions typically not reach so far?)

I'm doing a research about my family ancestry, and of course, as almost every European and people from the Americas, I have ancestors who belong to nobility and royalty. So I'd like to know until which generation those children of Nobility were still considered part of it. My family is mostly from Spain, Portugal, France and Italy, bit maybe English nobility was similar.

P.s. I remember I saw once a diagram where it showed how if a princess married to a commoner their children were "that kind of title", etc. But I cannot find it anymore :(

I’ve been conducting genealogical research and wanted to investigate a change of vowel in our surname. My surname is ‘- - - - yra’, with that (paternal) side of the family coming from Katowice (Kattowitz).

To us, they were Polish but, as we know, history is complicated and unforgiving; looking at it more thoroughly they were very much German/Polish (Poland didn’t exist for years/the city was part of the German empire, which complicates it all, and they had a mixed parental heritage) but understandably ditched that side of their identity on emigration to the UK post-WWII.

I found out from church records/Kirchenbuch that my great grandfather (b.1883) had the name - - - - ÿra, and was wondering about the use of this character in an old Silesian context in German-Poles, and if it has any significance or interesting indication.

Even weirder, his father (b.1854) and before went by - y - - era, in contrast to my - e - - yra, with no umlautend sound and no other (consonant) changes.

Seems like certain vowels and sounds were quite interchangeable in this ‘borderland’ region?

Throughout history, many industries have lobbied the government to further their interests and protect their sources of profit. Is there any legislative record of alcohol manufactures or sellers attempting to lobby the government to stop prohibition from being passed. If so, why exactly did they fail to stop prohibition, and what made it different from the successful lobbying compared to the modern fossil fuel industries such as natural gas and oil?

While learning about the French Revolution, I was fascinated by Philippe Egalite, the cousin of King Louis XVI, who supported the Third Estate, the Jacobins, and the liberal reforms of the Revolution's first wave. I was struck by how he seemed to be true believer in the need for a shift toward a constitutional monarchy and other major societal changes, despite the fact that he was in a prime place in the royal line of succession and benefited from the old regime.

My question is, since his goal seemed to be a constitutional monarchy in France, was he in a position to use his resources and privileges to stop the Revolution once that had goal seemingly been achieved? (E.g. via claiming the throne, as Louis XVI seemed to fear, or other measures taken from his noble perch.) Was he in a position to anything that might have been able to satisfy the reformers/general public sufficient to avoid the insurrection of August 10, 1792? Or was the revolutionary fervor in France at the time too intense, the push toward a French republic so inevitable, that even an ally in high places wouldn't have been able quell it?

I attended a religious university (whose affiliation and history with the Catholic Church is mixed at best) for a brief period as a history major and studied the bubonic plague outbreak of 1346-1353 one semester. I came across the idea that one reason the Black Death was particularly virulent was because Pope Gregory IX issued a Papal Bull declaring that cats were often instruments of Satan and encouraged Christians to kill cats throughout Europe. This led to a rapid decline in the cat population which were often used to curb rat infestations.

My question is this: How likely is it that Pope Gregory IX's Papal Bull on cats contributed to the devastation of the bubonic plague in 14th century Europe? Is this just an anti-Catholic legend?

While (I imagine) most people living in the countryside just disposed of their excreta in a nearby water body or a farm or just near the wilderness, how did the people in more densely populated areas, like cities, deal with it? I can't imagine they were carrying their excreta to some place outside the city every day to throw it, nor can I imagine there being a sanitary way to dump it inside a city.

Was there a marked difference in this kind of waste disposal across different countries and continents, or did everyone deal with it similarly?

Also, what happened during a siege (in say a walled city or the people living inside a large castle) when it dragged on for years and there was no way to go outside?

I am wondering about when this became a pervasive myth that everyone shares with their children. It seems like today it is a nearly universal part of how Americans celebrate Christmas, how did that happen?

I read about how he was born in Austria and lived for a while in Vienna as a young man. What I don’t know is if Hitler only used the hatred of Jews as a scapegoat in order to gain power during Germany’s economic crisis or if he personally held this deep hatred for Jews himself and if this is the case. I wonder how exactly this came to be as someone wouldn’t develop such a resentment towards a group of people overnight.

My seven year old son shows keen interest in world history. He particularly enjoys learning about military history, in broad terms, who fought whom, how many troops, galleys etc, but he is also curious enough about the causes of wars, expansions, imperialism etc, so we also discuss these things as well as I am able (my principle is to give him the best information I have as simply as I am able to articulate it). I was thinking that it might be a good idea to intorduce him to the Civilzation video games (civ iv is the last one I played), so that he can broaden his conceptual tool box a little bit, have him thinking about the impact of geography, the importance of trade, the differences in technology, and of course institutions and other political concepts (he is still at the Great Men of History phase [we will have to have a talk about Ghandi in particular]).

Anyway, my question is, have peope identified paritcular blind spots that civ games have? What kind of corrective will have to be applied in due course?

So it’s common knowledge that viking longships were mainly ships for river and lake travel and not really the kinda ship you’d send into the rugged open waters of the ocean but viking knarrs and Mediterranean trireme type ships don’t look that safe for open water and like the ship itself could make it while everyone on the ship would inevitably sleep with the fishes. How could a ship with no cabin have faced such rugged sea and ocean conditions without the crew just dying?

I'm playing Pentiment at the moment, a game set in Bavaria in the 16th century.

One of the main gripes that the villagers in the game have is that the abbot of the local monastery has raised their taxes. Once or twice a character refers to him as the lord of the land and says that if he wants to raise the taxes then he is entitled to. Also, a woman has her farmland seized by the church after her husband dies.

Is this accurate? I did not know that the church owned land other than the land on which church buildings stood.

What was the process to make sure they got the correct image of said Egyptian pharaoh?