So, I'm writing a Sci-Fi that involves the mass outbreak of a prion disease. In order to model what social effects this might have, I want to look ad mass outbreaks of disease through history, and see how society reacted to them.

The Bubonic plague is an obvious starting point, but I'm also looking at the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic and the AIDS scares. I'm wondering if there are any other mass outbreaks that could provide a good model for me to look into.

Also, if anyone happens to know a good book or paper (I can probably get past pay walls through my university) that addresses the response to and effects of mass outbreaks, a recommendation would be fantastic.

And why did they fall out of favor?

We are covering the Jacksonian era and doing a project in which we place Jackson on "trial" for "Crimes against Humanity via Indian Removal", and I was wondering how could Jackson possibly justify his actions?

Coalition forces suffered less than 200 casualties in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, compared to the Iraqi casualties estimated in the tens of thousands. Similar casualty disparities exist in other modern conflicts. Was it a vast disparity in preparation between forces or is there something special about modern warfare that leads to casualty rates close to 100:1?

I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this question

In history class we always learn about how Spain is the most powerful empire in the world in the 1500's. They have mountains of gold, own a continent and a half, and conquer 2 great empires as well as countless tribes. How come they just seem to fade out of importance after that until the Spanish-American war? How come they fall so far behind the other European powers and what were they even doing during, say, the world wars?

EDIT: I just realized this is in the FAQ, sorry! I'll delete it unless there's interest in this again.

I'm a huge soccer fan here in the US, and would love to know what it was like to be a fan of a team prior to the 1960's. There doesn't seem to be much out there about this topic when it comes to searching through databases. Anyone care to fill in the details?

there are a number of threads that detail how the lamp candle and lantern are superior to a torch on many levels, so when did they use the dangerous and stinky things?

Paintings, photographs and various other historical sources all show that even in the late 19th century, people typically wore folk costumes, be it Lederhosen in Bavaria, the Fustanella and fez in Greece or the Kroj of Slovakia. In some parts of the world, traditional costumes are still an every-day sighting, alongside modern, global outfits - such as the Sari in India and the Deel in Mongolia, or the Chullo in Peru.

My question is: why did these beautiful (I know, there's a sentimental bias there) and cultural outfits largely die out, pretty much entirely in Europe with the exception of folk dancers or festivals/parades, in favour of global clothing? When exactly did this occur? Whilst I'm sure it was gradual, is there a date we can say was the catalyst of the downfall of national costumes?

On a side note, why did people stop wearing hats? Almost everyone in the past seemed to wear hats, whether they were regularly outdoors or not.

The biggest culture seems to have been the Romans but Christianity seems to have been taken up by many people at the expense of many other Pagan religions.

In school we are watching a show called Holocaust, in this during a sermon a Catholic priest said that they would continue to pray and support the Jewish people. After saying this he was threatened by a SS officer about helping out Jews. This made me wonder if the catholic church, with the power that they have, had any response to the Holocaust.

I started reading The War for Mexico's West by Ida Altman. In the second chapter she states that Nuño de Guzmán recruited troops from central Mexico and Michoacan for his entrada into the territory that would become New Galicia (Jalisco, Zacatecas, Nayarit). Perhaps not in Guzmán's case, but in others, did internal fighting arise between these mixed regiments of formerly hostile groups? Did the Spanish keep these groups in separate camps? What prevented these groups from turning on one another in the heat of battle?

What's the fastest, safest, or surest way for me to get myself and/or my children a knighthood?

Sorry for any for any errors, Im on my mobile.

I am a junior in college, a history major, and have been assigned a 20 page historiographical research paper about medieval western Europe.

I have never written this kind of paper before. I am a great student, pay attention in class and have tried to figure this out on my own. My professor (and this is a class wide issue) has not adequately prepared us. Yes, he has explained the history of, well history writing, but he has failed to elaborate on HOW to write a paper like this. please can anyone help. I am not asking for someone to write it for me, i just need to know what to do. I am sincere in that the professor has not been of any help at all and I just don't know what to do. Feel free to pm me if you need more info.

By this I mean drummers, bagpipes etc.

Book 4 of the Foxfire Series (of the 60s) has a bit of oral history with fiddle makers from this period, but they don't give much detail on how fiddles were distributed, just a lot about how to make one from scratch! They also give the impression that a fiddle was something a woodworker might make on occasion, but not regularly.

So if you're a hill farmer with a penchant for chopping and sawing on an evening, how do you get a new fiddle if you want one? Did you ask your local wood expert neighbor to make you one and just hope he was a decent part-time luthier and could make you something that sounded okay? Or did you go to a nearby town and get one from a specialist or that was imported perhaps?

I imagine this has been asked and answered already though I couldn't find it in my search... I heard a bit in The British History Podcast about how some post-Roman Britons marveled at Roman ruins, believing they were the creation of giants and not simply of the previous civilization. So the structural remains of Rome must have been a mystery to a commoner that didn't know any better about them.

Was there really widespread "forgetting" of Rome? While I'd assume that the Catholic clergy and ruling/trading classes with connections on the continent at least knew of the former Roman glories, and the commoner might know via the Bible that there once was an empire called Rome, did they fully know that that empire extended into the British isles, that those ruins were Roman? If not, what was the explanations of those ruins? And if that memory disappeared, when did it "return" to the commoner?

Related:

When, if ever, did the Roman Empire stop referring to themselves as a republic? When, if ever, did the Romans start referring to themselves as an empire (assuming there's a Latin/Greek equivalent for it)?