Hello everyone. In Turkey, our highschool history starts from Huns as it refers them "First Turks". We learned that even Scythians were probably Turks too. Do we have certain evidence to support those claims or would it be better saying that they were one of the Turkic peoples rather than calling them directly "Turks" ?

My mother-in-law is self-publishing a book she has written, which is a fictionalised account of a real love affair which her aunt had with a famous Russian writer, Boris Pilnyak. She has taken letters which she discovered after the death of her aunt and woven a story around them.

She has been very pleasantly surprised at the number of orders she has received for the book, with scholars from Oxford and Harvard, among others, getting pre-orders in.

My question is; how much utility does a book like this have to an academic historian? I always imagined that good modern history books would be more a case of "just the facts, ma'am".

Where I live the summer temperatures go up to 50 degree celsius. If we have a power cut it gets very hard to even sit outside in a lawn chair. You just get DRENCHED in sweat, even in the middle of the night.

How did people in the old days deal with such intense heat? Or was everyone just miserable all the time in summers?

Although Operation Barbarossa begun on June 1941, did the German High Command not predict that the operation would continue on into the winter of 1941/42? Or did the expect a quick victory as in the Battle of France?

As sort of a secondary question, did native americans ever show much interest in acquiring other european weapons such as swords or polearms? I know Bernal Diaz mentioned Aztecs tying captured Spanish swords to the end of long poles during the retreat from Tenochtitlan, but that's about it.

If so would armies send crews to go looking for cannonballs after a battle?

Family history is that my mother was born in an air raid shelter in Germany on 4 September 1942. Is there a way to find out if this might be possible? Is there a comprehensive list of Allied air raids in WW2?

I'm currently watching World War II in Colour, episode 4 "Hitler Strikes East," and it said that although German armor was able to advance very quickly, the infantry still had to walk and use horse-drawn carriages. How many miles did German infantry have to walk per day to keep up with their armor divisions?

Also, thank you for being the best subreddit. I visit this subreddit every day and I'm always learning new things.

The movie is now considered something of an "old shame" for Disney because of its antiquated attitudes about race, but I've heard some argue that the movie was almost progressive for its time. (Uncle Remus is allegedly portrayed more positively than any white adult characters in the film.)

I recently learned that polls taken throughout the period indicated the a majority of Americans did not approve of many parts of the movement, contrary to the common notion that the injustices and solutions were "obvious". So if the majority was at least hesitant to accept the changes, how did they come about anyway?

Just a thought that popped in my head. We think of the presidency as Secret Service details and motorcades that it's easy to forget that the pre-industrial revolution presidents as even being from the same country. Was it a slow evolution of the office, or could we point to events like this and say there are "historical presidents" vs "modern presidents"?

Why did the upper-class gentlemen of the 19th century and earlier think it essential to have a valet (manservant)? It seems they thought it a necessary; could barely live without a valet.