The Capulets conclude that the law would not be on their "side" should they admit that the openly "bit their thumbs" at the Montague men.

1. What sort of law was there against this in the time period that Shakespeare is referring to? Could it be circumvented by simply lying about the gesture or its recipient? What was the punishment? Was it common?

2. What significance did thumb "biting"/flicking have? Are there any other references to it in other works or common history?

In Huck Finn, there's a moment where Jim talks about investing in "stock" by which he means livestock. He also mentions lending money to another slave who was starting a bank.

Obviously that's mostly Mr. T having a bit of fun, but would a slave have had extra spending money in the 1860s South? What kinds of things would they spend it on?

Was Alexander the Great a homosexual or bisexual? I watched the famous 4 hour movie about him and it shows, his sexual relationship with his male servant, and also sexual relationship with female servants.

honestly the only thing I learned in my high school books are:a long time ago there was an empire in the americas, the spanish arrived, kidnapped the emperor and they started dying of the flu (and don't forget machu picchu)

leaves a lot of questions like,What is the beginning of the history of the empire?,how was it administered?,were the most important events in the history of the inca and...etc

I would be most grateful for any information that is known about the Incas prior to their discovery.

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Obs:I am not a native English speaker so this text is likely to contain errors.

It's often said that the fuhrer of Germany wanted to unite the German people so why declare war on anglo saxons instead of uniting with them?

Germans migrated to England and america causing them to be German countries and English is a German language. Invasion of France and Russia make sense they weren't German but why England and america?

It feels like it would have been hard to justify both of these positions and have Americans believe his claims of not wanting to get into the war.

I see this in different fantasy works (not an authoritative source, obviously) where characters will state "that city is a five day walk from here," or "it's six days away if you're riding hard," etc. I recognize there are many different cultures in medieval Europe but were there any which measured the distance between locations in terms of the time it took to reach a destination? If not, were there standards for distance that were generally agreed upon?

I saw several paints and only identified some cutlass and sabres, but it was all?

Someone shared some social media posts from some Thai and Pakistani kids who were flummoxed by the independence expected of them while in America for grad school because it was 'normal in their cultures to live and help out at home in early adulthood, often until marriage.'

I'm curious about the accuracy of the historical aspects of this reply someone posted (parts of it break the twenty year rule and get into politics, but I wasn't sure how readable it would be if I snipped them out):

"In Western culture, including America, it was normal for kids to live with their parents into adulthood and until marriage, sometimes longer. In America, that changed (for men) in the 40's and 50's when it became extremely easy for an 18 year old to get a job that paid more than enough to live comfortably on or even to afford college which would practically guarantee an even better job. [Edit: Was the GI Bill a major factor here?]

And now those jobs don't exist, and guess what! People are living with their parents again! But that 70-year span was just long enough that it fell out of common memory, so now kids are "failures" because the economics have changed.

In fact, a great deal of American culture is still based on the memory of the '40s and '50s as baseline normalcy despite them being a total fluke at the time. World War II and McCarthyism created a massive shift toward rabid patriotism, Christian fundamentalism, and the ideal of the "nuclear family" which resembled nothing before it and which [endures] because many of our most powerful politicians are just old enough that this period of sudden fanaticism is their "nostalgic good 'ole days" and "the way things are supposed to be."

So Columbus sales in the time that most people believed that the earth was flat. I get how the kept track of hours using sundials etc. but how did they keep track of years. There's no definite thing that happens every year the same day to mark 365 days. My best guess would be something like new Grange but if anyone knows if really appreciate it if you told me a definite answer.🙂

How did the F sound become the Digraph, Ph. I am aware of the existence of Φ, but if the letter Φ is pronounced fi, why did we ever spell it phi?

In the 1932 original, the character in question is very high up in British society (her father is governor of Sudan), but otherwise this type of background...doesn't really seem too unusual to the other characters. It certainly isn't really remarked upon in relation to her social status or even her suitability for being courted by the very English male hero.

A random question for those who might be old enough to remember this. A common thing to see in movies and TV made before the mid 2000s, was that when your credit card was declined, it would be destroyed. The clerk at the grocery store would pull out a big pair of scissors and cut your card in half. Or your waitress returns to your table with your card cut up into little tiny pieces...

Did that actually happen? It seems like the ultimate dick move on the part of the business you're shopping at. If I'm shopping at your store and discover in that moment that my account is overdrawn, or that I need to move some money around in my bank accounts to put more money on that card, how is cutting up my card nessecery? You just took a small issue of having to pay a bill, or transfer money around, and turned it into a bigger hassle. Now I have to order a new card and wait for it to arrive in the mail. ...and once I get it, I'm certainly not going to use this new card at that store that felt they had the authority over my finances to destroy my bank card.

In Alex Vitale’s The End of Policing, he makes the following claim about early 20th century America:

“There was also a widespread fear in the South that blacks on cocaine had superhuman strength and couldn’t be stopped with .32-caliber bullets, then the standard police issue, prompting the widespread adoption of .38-caliber bullets.”

He doesn’t provide a citation. Does anyone know if this is historically accurate and can provide a source? Thank you!

Hi, I’m a college student majoring in History. I’m currently moving into more advanced classes and I feel as though my lower level history courses didn’t properly prepare me to interpret history. I’ve only learned to absorb facts and just answer interpretive questions, but not to create my own arguments and questions. I’m trying to form an argument based on Andrew Johnson’s reconstruction plan and how it affected the Black population in the South. Could my argument be, “Andrew Johnson’s lack of consequences for the South post Civil War led to the political inequality, violence, and mistreatment of Blacks in the South.” I figured I could expand on this by asking questions about Andrew Johnson’s connection to the South, what was Johnson’s main goal, and how did Johnson’s blatant racism blind his goal of reconstruction. Any advice on how to make this idea better?

What laws relegated them to a lesser status then men, what practices etc? What was the life of the average woman like compared to the average man, in terms of work, duties, obligations, etc.? Do we know much about gender in Rome?