It's been going around on my facebook/internet in general that Thomas Edison launched a campaign where he electrocuted animals to demonstrate the dangers of AC. Is this true?

I know an elephant named Topsy was killed by electrocution but I don't know if it was just because it needed to be put down or there was an additional motive there (some attack on AC).

When i was taught history in Vietnam, the textbooks mentioned that we captured quite a number of American spies. And our spies were so good that our espionage department at the time played a major role in our later victories. So i am curious to know what is American's side about this matter.

What was the average citizen's daily life like? What kind of jobs or daily activities were common? How much money did the average person earn annually? Was there much violence by modern standards? Did everyone attend church? I am interested in any social class, but I already know a lot about the papal family and court so I am interested in knowing more about the other, more average people in Rome at this time. I would also welcome reading material suggestions.

This past Christmas I got my best friend George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I by Miranda Carter, which he enjoyed immensely, and he has now asked me for another as a loaner. He's looking for a book on mid to late-19th century Europe is what he is looking for. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Question as title.

I'm a Latin and Attic Greek student, and I want to read more Roman history. As I have never read a whole history text before, I would like something that isn't too dry. I was thinking De Bello Gallico, but I'm not sure. I will probably read in translation, as I want to get to know the history, rather than the text itself. Thank you.

Hi folks.

I'm a technologically inept research assistant trying to find a reference management software suitable for a library of around 10 GB of PDFs, all of which are scanned and OCR'd copies of texts from around the 17th-19th centuries. As such, I don't need a program that searches through databases and keeps me up to speed with contemporary journals so much as I need something that will let me effectively manage my existing library. I've tried Zotero, Mendeley, Sente, Papers, and a few other programs, but I'm having trouble finding one that meets all of my needs for this specific collection of documents (or perhaps I've totally misunderstood and misused these programs so if that's the case, please god tell me why I'm wrong).

I should also mention that this is not my library; it's my advisor's. The main issue he's having is that he set up Papers on his campus computer but can't access it from anywhere else; he's also had problems syncing it with Dropbox and has experienced frequent crashes. He wants to be able to access and update his library whenever and wherever, regardless of what computer he is using.

Ideally, the program I use would have the following capabilities:

• Mac compatible
• fully searchable, including PDFs and metadata
• manual input of metadata
• remotely accessible across various computers

I've been systematically going through the Wikipedia comparison chart of reference management software but as I do so, I was hoping that I might be able to get some recommendations from actual historians. What programs have you had success with? Which ones suck and aren't worth trying out?

Thanks!

p.s. sorry if formatting is weird; first post ever.

The mass deportation Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tartars and Kalmyks are examples I know of. I know one justification was for (supposed) Nazi collaboration, but as far as I know the Chechens, for example, didn't have nearly the level of collaboration as found in Estonia or Ukraine, and yet they suffered far more extensive deportation.

The second part comes from my understanding that the predominately Muslim central Asian Turkic peoples tended to see the politicized atheism of the Soviets as being the same sort of anti-Islam as found in the politicized Christianity of the Russian Empire.

Say in a battle where two centuries are pretty much destroyed, what would happen to the cohort now that it is greatly reduced of men? Will they have to hire auxilleries to fill the place of deceased for the time being? Or will they reorganise the army making the other cohorts lesser in number to even it out a bit?? Writing a novel and not sure of this thanks

If not, what are the arguments for this position?

Were there spies involved? Im sure that they both had knowledge of previous research done by the Union before the south seceded. But the timing was so perfect.

What kind of work was done by the prisoners?

Were the prisoners relied on by the larger system to contribute, or was it just punishment?

Is it correct to call them work camps?

As far as I remember from A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, they were just putting up a small building and maintaining the camp.

First off, I would like to say that my knowledge of history consists of a bunch of Wikipedia binging at work so please correct me if I'm wrong in my dates. That being said, I always found it extremely coincidental that Greek Democracy and the Roman Republic were founded within a year of each other. I know each respective culture has it's own explanation for over throwing a tyrant king and subsequent formation of the new government. However, Greek trade with Italy as far as I know was occurring at this time and I'm sure they were exchanging/discussing ideas on government. Is there a possibility that the Romans influenced the Greeks or vis versa regarding the development of their respective governments?Could they both have possibly developed the idea of meritocracy from the same root cause?

My Serbian girlfriend told me today about the Sorbian people, who live in eastern Germany, saying they were an offshoot of Serbs, who ended up living to the north. I can't find anything to corroborate this. They seem to be more closely related to Poles and Czechs. Their language is western Slavic, while Serbian is southern Slavic.

While I am sure all Slavic peoples are related at some point if you go back far enough, was there a point in history where Serbs branched off from Sorbs or Sorbs from Serbs?

It's common knowledge that the VC/NVA were effective in guerilla warfare. But, did the US use the jungle in the war to hide and fight their enemy? How effective were they?

Is there an organized archive (in English) of oral personal testimonies of life in the Soviet Union? In particular I'm interested in the lives of Soviet Jews, although I would be interested in other Soviet experiences as well.

I'm currently doing research on urban renewal and how it affected American cities in the post-World War II period and I'm trying to compile as diverse a collection of sources as possible. In particular, I'm focusing on the urban renewal process in Pittsburgh, Boston's West End, and Tucson, AZ. I chose Tucson because that is what inspired this research in the first place and it's where I live; thus it is relatively easy to find primary sources such as physical plans, blueprints, and reports.

Finding sources for Pittsburgh and Boston are a bit more difficult and I welcome any suggestions that would give me more insight into the planning process and the sociological aftermath. Currently I have Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh by Roy Lubove, Planning the City Upon a Hill by Lawrence W. Kennedy, The Last Tenement by the Bostonian Society and a few assorted newspaper articles.

I have a variety of general sources, categorized by sub-topic:

Reactions to Urban Renewal

• The Death and Life of American Cities by Jane Jacobs

• The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro

• La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City by Lydia Otero

• The Federal Bulldozer by Martin Anderson

• The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal by Christopher Klemek

• Urban Renewal and its Aftermath by Jon Teaford

Modern Urban Design

• The American City: What Works, What Doesn't by Alexander Garvin

• Reconsidering Jane Jacobs by Max Page and Timothy Mennel

Contemporary Urban Design

• Classic Readings in Urban Planning edited by Jay M. Stein

• The City Fights Back by Hal Burton (1954)

• The Practice of Modernism: Modern Architects and Urban Transformation, 1954–1972 by John Gold

Misc. Suburbia

• Suburban Nation by Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck

Life in Subsidized Housing/Projects

• Don't Look at Me Different / No Me Veas Diferente by the Voices Project

• American Project by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh

What sources do you all recommend for tackling a topic like this that reaches into multiple historical and sociological categories? Any and all suggestions are welcome. :)

I am studying the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 and trying to get a handle on the Ottoman disposition in the Balkans. I have heard from a few scattered sources that the Ottomans had some kind of fort or system of forts along the coast of the Black Sea near the Danube Delta which would severely hamper Russian attempts to march a shortest path to the enemy, ultimately resulting in the Russians choosing to cross the Danube farther upriver. But I can't find find specific mention of what fort or forts these were and where exactly they are. Any help?

Also I welcome any good sources of information on the military campaigns of this war, thank you!