I thought of this during the question on how wars were declared.

Was there someone who decided, 'this is Earth now'? Was it called something else before? Do we have no idea?

I know this is pushing up against the 20year limit, but its historiography as much as anything. As a Google historian living in Zhengzhou, I recently heard about the Falun Gong. It was introduced to me by some Americans as a weird religion that did organ harvesting. Our Chinese friend mentioned that it was a cult, which immediately made me realize that it was probably a source of huge propaganda. Ive talked to many chinese, some of whom have been afraid to talk over weixing (possibly irrationally), about it. The accounts vary wildly. Some say they were a cult; some say they were a scam; some that they were a cult that pretended to be a religion and puts out propaganda. No one defends the Falun Gong, not even the progressive Chinese college students who know about tianamen and whatnot. Yet the online propaganda (ie Wikipedia, which is years out of date) paints a harshly negative view on China, as does some US resolutions it seems.

My question is how a historian would go about unraveling this. I ask this both for a professional historian (ie, do you rely on chinese documents/leaks that may never come or be falsified? Do you interview people who may be biased or "brainwashed"?) and for a google historian (what websites do you trust, how do you weigh evidence, etc). What are the problem solving skills I am missing to form an opinion, or is the problem intractable?

I should have said ancient Egypt. I was curious because of the ridiculous amount found in the tombs of dead pharaohs. Did they mine it themselves or get it by trade? If they mined it, where/how did they mine it? If they traded it, where/who were they trading it from and where/how did those people mine it?

Edit: Also, did they have a reason other than being ordered by the pharaoh because he thought it looked pretty? Or did they trade it for other goods? Etc?

I'm curious as to the music, entertainment, games and dances that would have been popular with the youth (late teens through mid 20's) in a post civil war era in America, mostly focused on the 1870's and 1880's. I'm looking at both upper and lower social classes.

In my current course at school, we need to write a piece on a historical figure of our choosing. I'd love to do the spartan king Leonidas, and I was wondering if anyone had some knowledge on good books or sources I can use?

I just finished reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle which is set between 1650-1714, and in it several characters carry around a sword openly as part of their outfit while others had to hide them. In general, who was allowed to carry a sword openly (in England, France, and the HRE) and were they prohibited from bringing it to certain places such as church, palaces (Whitehall, Versailles, etc.), and other people's private homes? Also, when did people stop carrying around a sword as part of their everyday attire?

I've been listening to Dan Carlin's episode Logical Insanity which talks about the firebombings of places like Hamburg and Tokyo and so on by allied forces, and he reads an account that states pilots of B-29's wore masks to keep from throwing up at the smell of burning flesh from the cities on fire and that some crew members were horrified at the destruction they were causing. Did any bomber crews refuse to bomb cities like that or suffer mental breakdowns?

I'm not sure of the history of higher education in the US, but I'm curious if a high school education was ever considered "higher education", like college is today?
To me, it seems like a high school diploma in the past is equal to a bachelors degree today. It used to be enough to have a diploma to have a wonderful job, and then an associates was required, and now, if you want a half-way decent job you need a bachelors degree.

So, was high school ever considered "higher education" (or equal to college today), before it was deemed a requirement?

I'm asking because of the debate over tuition-free public university and it's growing status as a necessity in American life

I've heard this from a number of sources that London, in it's height, had a policeman on every corner and was the safest city in the world. A rich man could walk down the street at any time of the night, without fear.
I, personally, feel the larger the city the more dangerous, the more crime. So, asking the experts, how safe was London, really, in 1910?

Is he still an active force, was he eliminated, and what was the fallout as we know it?

Just as a preface: sorry for being guilty of clogging the sub with more military history, I'm a sophomore student of history at college but this is something I've wondered since high school and I've never found a good answer.

From what I've seen in my research, whether for fun or academic purposes, the Baltic fleet seemed to be capable of not only launching a successful sea invasion of Finland. The technological know how was there, the naval supremacy and air supremacy were nearly uncontested and the ability to securely supply a beachhead all seemed present in 1939. So from what I've taken away from this is that their are at least 2 possibilities as to why there was never a naval invasion. First reason being politically motivated, the use of the Baltic Fleet would make the Soviets look even worse than they already were. The juggernaut of Soviet military strength would scare the Scandinavian states into aiding Finland if the sealanes became a battleground and they themselves would fear similar invasions. The second possible reason is that the Soviet military was incapable of actually launching and/or sustaining an invasion and that I've severely overestimated Soviet military capabilities.