Long time lurker, first time poster. I’m a mother of a 6Mo had a lot of trouble producing enough milk, even with the so called “expensive pumps” massaging, hydrating, cutting caffeine.

Eventually I had to drop it entirely (around 3+mo I forget the date)

My question is how did women produce milk in a worse environment, with less technological advances? And if they couldn’t how could the wet nurses? When did having one stop? And how did it even begin?

I was only 12 at the time, but I didn’t even know until last year that Gore won Florida. All I remember is hanging chads, recounts, but nothing about Gore being the rightful winner. From a child’s perspective, it must have been swept under the rug because I remember nothing about it and don’t recall anyone harking back to this issue even in the years that followed. Why?

Both states were going through a period of turmoil and revolution resulting in the implementation of vast liberal reforms and the establishment of a constitution, they also had common enemies in the form of Russia, Prussia and Austria.

Considering the political alignment and geopolitical convenience of an alliance, why wasn't such alliance formed ? What was the relationship between these two states ? And how did the french revolutionaries see Poland and vice versa ?

I was helping my husband prepare a syllabus (he’s a historian) and we noticed that the book the school recommended didn’t have a chapter for WWI, it just jumped from late xix century to three chapters of WWII. It is an American textbook. Why do you think they made this choice?

When did people learn that boiled water was safer to drink than right out of a river? They clearly knew that drinking beer and wine was safer since antiquity, and that if you drink upriver the water was less likely to make you sick. But was there a moment when they began sterilizing their drinking water? OR was it simply a byproduct of making teas and other infusions for culinary purposes?

In particular, where did the company officers and militias get their brutal idea for chopping off hands as punishment?

I assume there had to be a particular reason because, well, wouldn't the chopping-off of hands to enforce rubber quotas, you know, make the rubber-harvesters even less capable of meeting quotas?

Hence I ponder why this method of punishment in particular was enforced and not another, less detrimentally excessive form of mutilative punishment (i. e. the cutting of ears)?

Hey so I'm just curious, how did other nations of the world react to the atomic bombings of Japan? Were these nations shocked by the power of the bomb or were they aware of it's development more than we were lead to believe?

With society’s current struggles against disinformation, I’m wondering how difficult it was to convince people who were subjected to a totalitarian state and it’s propaganda for over a decade that everything they’d been led to believe about race, the government, their leaders, the war, etc was false and wrong.

It seems kind of strange, at least to me, that a leader of a superpower would go by what seems to be like one of many noms (?) de guerre, at least from what a brief Wikipedia search would indicate. Furthermore, did Stalin attempt to go by any other names after he first settled on the name Stalin?

In regard to history, recent scholarship is understandably seen as the most accurate and reliable. As a result, previous historical literature is somewhat invalidated or reduced in importance. Apart from works read for their historiography, are there any works of history known for their lasting value, which are regarded as "classic?"

I'm interested in knowing if long expeditions on the oceans ever warranted bringing livestock on to ships for the purpose of supplying fresh milk, or eggs, or after butchering, meat.

I think, logistically, sufficient food rations would've been stored aboard for the crew as there would be ample space for even an extensive voyage on a brigantine for example.

I guess I'm just wanting to know if there was any documented accounts of live animals being brought along and used as a supplement to the rations.

Thank you AskHistorians!

For example, the ship's carpenter and his mate are Americans, the Bosun and his mate are from Austria and France, respectively. There are also New Guinean, Russian, Chinese, Danish, Swedish, etc topmen and seamen serving as crewmates.

For example:

• Berlin (Massachusetts/Wisconsin/New York/Georgia/Pennsylvania/Vermont/Connecticut)
• Cairo (Illinois/Ohio/Georgia)
• Vienna (Illinois/Indiana/Missouri/New York/Virginia)
• Shanghai (West Virginia/Illinois)
• Prague (Minnesota/Oklahoma)
• Copenhagen (New York)
• Paris (Arkansas/Maine/Missouri/Illinois/Tennessee/Texas)
• Athens (Georgia/Ohio)

As follow -up questions, why do so many of these towns tend to be in Illinois? And how did random towns in West Virginia and Illinois come to be named after Shanghai, of all places?

Question about the Confederate states' ideologies during the Civil War:

Preface: I'm gonna stick to liberal vs conservative so as not to start a flame war about party switching.

Were the Confederate states more liberal or conservative with their ideologies? I know this sounds like a dumb question at first glance, but my initial thoughts are that they'd've been more liberal since they valued personal freedoms (even if they thought those freedoms only applied to some). Perhaps this is a stupid question, and maybe it has a stupid answer, but I'd still love to hear some reasoning from both perspectives because it's quite a confusing topic for me. Thanks!

At the start of the 1600s the country had a strong modern military, with tons of experience and was newly United.

However after a failed invasion of Korea they retreated into military isolation. Why? Why didn’t they ever try expanding again?

How come whenever a fantasy novel or movie features a location themed around gothic horror tropes such as small superstitious peasant villages, forests, vampire filled castles etc. it’s always set in a vaguely Austro-Hungarian empire themed location. Why is there an association in the pop cultural imagination between gothic horror and the balkans/central-eastern europe? What about the Austrian-hunagarian and Russian empires led Europeans to utilize them this way?