Obviously there's not a monolithic answer, but it seems kind of wild that a sitcom set in a Nazi POW camp existed for 6 years and I don't see it condemned as a universally bad idea. Was there support for the mocking of the Nazi command? Was it criticized for making light of it?

For the record, I've only ever seen clips of the show, but I am aware that at least one actor on it was himself a Holocaust survivor.

When did the metaphor of “surfing” the Internet come about? How did early netizens conceptualize using the Internet, and were there competing metaphors?

I was trying to find out what the norse or germanic names of the planets were- but all immediate links talked about how norse and roman gods both gave name to week days.

Do we not know what the germanic and norse people called the planets?

If the town was within 10km travel distance that every peasant (allegedly) adhered to in medieval times, and the peasant had a whole cart with many sacks full of grain that he wanted to sell, how would he go about doing it?

Assuming the market was the only place in which trade could occur under the watch of the lord of the land, what was the procedure for selling things at a market? What if he was only trading a small commodity - eg. he had an extra pot or chicken to barter, and he's willing to spend 8 hours going about it (before the 2 and half hour walk back to the village), because the town might have more unique wares than any nearby village.

If he was selling for coin, how would he know the coin was not counterfeit? How would he know that merchants weren't trying to sell him a bridge, when it came to the value of the coin he was given?

Edit: I meant to type how far*

Is the kennedy assassination a closed issue? did Oswald definitely act alone on that day in Dallas? are the versions that question Oswald's sole culpability valid? I ask because even public museums, such as the Sixth Floor Museum (which is the main museum dealing with the facts surrounding Kennedy's death) have given publicity to voices advocating a different story, and in lectures, the same museum staff refers to the Kennedy assassination as a maze. The latter gives me the impression that kennedy's death is still a controversial fact for even the most serious institutions. how do historians deal with this?

Christopher Columbus famously traversed the Atlantic Ocean in 1492. Europeans had not discovered the Western Hemisphere because they did not have technology to travel such far distances, given the amount of supplies they could hold for the trip. (Or so I think, maybe I'm wrong on that one.) Europeans also did not know that the American continents even existed. Europeans also did round pass the southern tip of Africa until Dias did it in 1488, only four years before the journey of Columbus. How hard would it have been to simply follow the African coast south? Couldn't Europeans have done this centuries earlier? Europeans obviously knew about the African continent, and couldn't they have resupplied while making stops on the west coast of Africa? Why did it take so long for them to finally get around the southern tip? Did crossing the Sahara present a challenge because there would have been no place to resupply along the coast at those latitudes?

This question is a little different from normal specific event or time period questions. I know primary source is always the best, but how do you pick through all the conjecture, apocryphal fabrications, and artistic leeway authors use? I have been looking for a good book on Talleyrand, so I’ll take suggestions on that of course; but I just don’t know where to start, so I figured I would ask historians how to find a good/accurate book. How would you all go about this if you didn’t have access to historic primary sources?

Hello everyone, hope you are enjoying the first full week in 2022! On YouTube, there's a whole genre of videos about 'ancient historian in weapons reacts to 300' or 'medievalist reacts to man speaking Old English.' These videos are of course, fun. Yet sometimes, I'll come across an academic historian will publicly bemoan a work of historical fiction or a popular podcast. This gets everyone defensive quite quickly, thanks to social media. I've also noticed some history YouTubers have negative interactions with academics, as well as some really positive ones.

I'm interested in reading academic perspectives on how public history can improve, and how public historians can teach your area of expertise better to a non-academic audience. For example, you may be a Renaissance historian working in political science. Perhaps you have a strong opinion on the contemporary use of 'machiavellian' when history podcasters describe a scheming figure.

Bit of background into me: I have a B.A in modern history at an Australian university, and am currently completing a graduate certificate. I plan to get a Masters, hopefully in the UK, but decided against a Phd. It's not necessary for what I want to do: help the public learn more about history, whether through non-fiction, novels, podcasts, educational materials, consulting for film and television, etc. A Masters, and my growing track record of work experience in those fields, should be enough. I look forward to, over my career, working with both academic and popular historians!

Thank you

Recently I read Anna Karenina, and currently reading The Brothers Karamazov, and I find it odd that the upper classes in the books frequently speak French and there seems to be a fascination with France, but why?

Germans used mostly trains to move stuff to the front. What about the allied forces?

Did they also have issues with supplying enough diesel etc to the front lines? If so how did they improve it?

Just curious :)

Even accepting the fight was the biggest sporting event in the world, that number has to be way off right?

That would mean that over a quarter of the world population would have to be:

interested in the fight

Awake

Not working

With access to a television

That seems hard to believe to me, yet everywhere I look, this is the number given. What's the source of this number and is there a reason to believe its accurate? And if it is... how?

Edit: and as an added question, how many tv sets there even were back then?

Edit 2: Ok, is probably BS, but here's another question for the historians: What WAS the viewership of the fight?

Hello everyone! I was listening to some ultra conservative guy talking about traditional gender roles and how women should not go out to work and it made me wonder, how traditional is that really? In my head I have this image of women working in the medical period and up to the 19th century, then we have the "traditional" labor division and then our modern world when women work again, but how accurate is that really? How common was it for women to work outside of home in different periods in history? I suppose there might be a difference between the rural and urban experience, but how big was it?

Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!

If you are:

• a long-time reader, lurker, or inquirer who has always felt too nervous to contribute an answer
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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: BIRTHDAYS & CELEBRATIONS! Tell us about what did people of your era celebrate and how? Birthdays, Namedays, Special days, what was their thing? Throwing a big party? Small get together for close friends? Or nothing much due to lockdown quarantine? Whatever the story you've got share it here with us!

Or is the extent to which the Anglo-Normans maintained their status as a people apart exaggerated?

I recently read that whilst both Nicholas and Alexandra were multilingual, the Tsarina’s grasp on Russian was limited. My understanding is that the royal couple conversed in English and that at court, they spoke French. So, given that Rasputin was from a peasant background and had received relatively little formal education, how did he communicate with the Tsarina?

The US Army Camel Corps imported camels in 1855 for use in the arid west, though with the Civil War, these plans were abandoned. Apparently, some of these camels went feral and lived in the wild afterwards. What happened to them? Were there too few to continue a population? Were they hunted?

I understand that there were not roads or modern means of travel, but it is is absolutely possible for people without modern technology (people can walk or use animal carts) to provide famine relief, which was common in ancient times.

The Mongols at the time were famed for the speed at which they moved. I read it's because unlike the other armies at the time, they didn't have to worry about supply trains coming from their cities slowing them down. They simply rode their horses and lived off the land.

My question is the following; how did the Mongols live off the land? From my understanding, they weren't farmers (and how could an army farm while moving anyway?), and the steppe was mostly grassland and pasture, hardly crops intended for human consumption. Then I thought they perhaps carried cattle and sheep with them, but wouldn't that slow them down considerably?

So how did those armies famed for their speed travel such enormous distances and kept fed and hydrated?

Thank you