You would think that after having a nuke dropped on one of your cities that you would be desperate, but I’m confused as to why Japan wasn’t.

Various sources seem to say that Vikings raiders in England, and later Danish and Norwegian settlers, were seeking more fertile land than that of their cold, rocky, Scandinavian homelands. However it would seem that Denmark is a relatively fertile land. It is surrounded by sea on 3 sides and the land is moist. Today around 65% of Danish land is cultivated. So although I can imagine that fertile land was a motivating factor for the Northman, as Norway seems to be as cold and rocky as it probably was 1000 years ago, was Denmark not was fertile then? If it was, what was the main motivating factor for Danish settlers? I’m not talking about Vikings anymore. Obviously a Vikings wants gold and silver. But a settler would want fertile land to call his own. Could he not have it in Denmark? And if not, could he not just raid South into Germania or the north coast of Poland?

Such as his hatred for Jews and "lesser races" -- did he wholeheartedly trust said beliefs, or did he just use them for power?

It seems self-evident that if you’re starting a colony from scratch, you’d need farmers, carpenters, etc; but my understanding of Jamestown is that the majority of the settlers were gentlemen or their servants, and that the general lack of know-how contributed greatly to the sky-high mortality rate. Why wasn’t there more sensible personnel planning?

I am looking for some sources of celtic British War paint designs for a tattoo as I'd like to make it as historically accurate as possible. If anyone could direct me to some I would be very grateful.

Thanks!

In a Classical (Western) education that involved learning Greek and Latin and reading works in the original, were texts involving Ancient Greek and Roman homosexuality censored?

Maybe always framed as sinful from a Christian perspective? Ignored unless referenced to in a Biblical studies lecture? Perhaps everything was open and known, but no one dared speak about it? Could the views at the time have been more akin to Achilles and Patroclus were just best bros and no decent person would ever consider anything…beyond…that? Or alternatively, “they were Greek, so naturally they were sodomites, the lot of them, and in their wickedness…”?

In high school English class we read A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Someone from a previous year had written “Gene is gay!” in a classmate’s copy. Do we have schoolboy marginalia from hundreds of years ago commenting on the Ancient Greeks and Romans?

Thank you.

Hi,

i'm searching for some good (mainly books) about the 7 years war (in europe).

Especially regarding military tactics - or military tactics in the 18th century in particular.

Does anyone perhaps read some and can recommend any ?

I'm interested in reading a bit more about Vietnam, I only know very basic facts I've picked up here and there and haven't read anything detailed on the conflict as of yet. I'm looking for something along the lines of "A World At Arms" by Gerhard Weinberg, just for Vietnam instead of World War II. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

By the end of the Vietnam war, the American public viewed militarism and foreign interventions so negatively that some people were spitting on soldiers coming home from deployments. With this in mind, why did the Cold War continue on for another ~15 years after the end of the Vietnam war? If Americans at the time didn't want to so much as fight a war in Vietnam, why were they so willing to prepare for fighting the Warsaw pact in Europe? I know American militarism saw a resurgence under Reagan with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and various proxy wars throughout Latin America and Africa. But why exactly did Americans keep supporting the Cold War even after Vietnam?

I'm interested in learning the history of England (but specifically London) after the end of Roman rule. Wikipedia says that the city was "practically abandoned" at this point. I know that Wikipedia shouldn't be considered the most legitimate source for studying history. Just how abandoned was London at this point?

I would love to hear your personal "nutshells", as well as recommended historical sources during this period.

Thank you!

If I went back in my time machine, and handed Cicero a copy of his own works, in latin, printed in a modern book, would he be able to read it? Though plenty of letters are similar across typecases, a good amount ("R", "Q", "G", "N" etc.) are clearly different symbols - I imagine it'd render text sufficiently indecipherable to someone unfamiliar with the equivalence.

Presuming it's much the same with Ancient Greek, Chinese, Persian, or... ?

I was just watching a live streamer draw what can only be described as a photo. It was made with a pencil, but you would not be able to tell it apart from what a camera can capture.

Supremely talented artists have been producing masterpieces for millennia yet I don’t recall ever seeing a “photo-real” drawing in a museum. Hundreds of realistic paintings, yes. But not a single piece that could be mistaken for a photo.

Is this hyper realistic approach a fairly new achievement in talent? Do our modern day pencils and paper make a difference? Was it simply unfashionable to produce such art hundreds of years ago?

Findings vary but written numbers started appearing 2000-3000 BC. By that point the world would have had many languages. So did numeric systems evolve way back in a few original Stone Age tribes and then percolate globally or did it spread at a later point with trade ?

Having read the three musketeers and even The count of Monte Cristo, André Dumas seems to imply that duelling amongst Gentleman was commonplace. To such an extent that it would occur on a monthly basis. Sometimes friends also duelled your enemies firends. This too, to the death.

What would like to ask is, was this as commonplace as it's made out by these novels? Or is there creative licence used to romanticise the novels?

If I were to go into a saloon in the Wild West (circa 1880s) and ordered a whiskey, what would it have been like. Whiskeys now are aged, blended, and diluted to standard proofs. Did whiskeys that wouldve been available in saloons also go through this kind of processing? What would they have made it out of?

Victorious armies, after destroying an opposing army, would usually pillage the enemy city, etc., since nothing stood in their way. In the case of single combat, however, the opposing army is still there to provide resistance to such acts. Would the winning army still attempt to obtain loot in certain ways? Would the losers instead owe them a tribute? If a battle were decided in single combat, would the losing army graciously surrender, and the victorious army, in turn, subjugate the losers in a (relatively) gracious and nonviolent manner? How did the populations react? What was the scale of the largest conflict resolved by single combat?

Most histories of the Haitian revolution present as a start date the outbreak of the slave revolt in the north. But revolutionary events were already in progress on the island, as big white slave holders pushed for representation/autonomy/independence from France, while colored residents of the island had already mobilized against them and begun a civil war. These events are presented as “background” or “pre revolutionary” table setting. I am interested to hear from scholars on the subject how much these events should be considered separate, since the slave revolt was inspired by the same rhetoric of the French Revolution and the cries of liberty of their quarreling masters. It also has the character of being a (somewhat) premeditated effort designed to take advantage of revolutionary chaos, somewhat like other moments of radicalization like august 1792 or October 1917. I welcome your expertise!

I assume that television made digitally can include any footage that needs to be shown in multiple episodes relatively easily, but before that was possible, did someone at the studio make copies of whatever was needed for more than one episode and splice it in to each episode? I'm thinking about title sequences, credits sequences, and stock footage in shows like Power Rangers or Sailor Moon that were made with analog methods and used the same footage to depict the same events in multiple different episodes.

The mud in the street was fetlock deep, rutted by carts and fouled by dogs and by the swine that roamed free. (The Pagan Lord, B. Cornwell)

Like most people I'm alienated from how food gets to my table; it's probably as easy for a medieval householder to identify their pig as it is for you to identify your pet dog. And also pigs are said to be pretty smart; I can imagine them coming home (the same way a cat does) after being out and about and having piggy adventures.

But a pig has significant economic value and would comprise a significantly larger percentage of that family's wealth. Theft would be I think an overriding concern.

As background, the specific quote above that prompted the question is set in a village, but one big enough to be chosen as a location to consecrate priests (the presiding authority was an abbot, not a bishop suggesting no cathedral) making it unclear if it's large enough you wouldn't know all your neighbors.

For example, Hokkien(the language spoken in Fujian province) is completely unintelligible to a Mandarin speaker. There are also many cultural practices practiced by the Han population in Fujian that are absent in Beijing. If the Dutch and the Flemist are considered different peoples, why can't there be different Han ethnic groups?

In early photographs from the 1800s into the early 1900s, everybody was dressed very formally, irrespective of what they were doing, including physical labour, construction, etc.

Why did everyone dress so impractically, sometimes in suit pants, a waistcoat and button up shirt for activities such as tree felling, construction, etc? Was there no sense of dressing practically?