In Elizabeth Bowen's, Death of the Heart, Part 2, Chapter 3

A character (Matchett) says, "Mr. Thomas's books are out to be electric cleaned, preparatory to washing the shelves down."

Any idea what electric cleaning of books is? My best guess is vacuum. The time period setting is late 1930's London.

Thank you.

Between World War 2 and the rise of David Duke, how much cooperation was there between groups like the Ku Klux Klan on the one hand and groups like the American Nazi Party on the other?

The Italian ambassadors from Venice and France, he notes, often provided updates on the sexual favourite of the sultan among the Janissaries. He also infers the court was very liberal and tolerant sexually. What I didn't understand properly is if this was specific to a period or a single sultan, or typical of the culture of the Ottoman court. .

What do we know about the sexual liberties at the Ottoman court? Were they comparable to the French court, for example?

I'm arguing with someone about whether Confederates were comparable to the Colonial troops or not. My argument is that they're only different because they lost.

I was reading an article on Afghanistan‘s ‚last Jew‘ (Zebulon Simentov) and a comment of his got me curious.

„Kahana said Simentov, who had lived under Taliban rule before, was not worried about them.“

Nazi Germany's attitude towards Christianity was two-fold. Some saw it as foreign hence the focus on Pre-Christian Pagan religion. Some sought to Germanify it further, to reject the Jewish parts. This happened in the form of Positive Christianity.

What was happening in Italy in the same time? Mussolini's regime did fashion itself as a rebirth of the Roman Empire but how far did they take it ?

How did they time keep adhan (call to prayers)? Some salat like the maghrib or zuhr might be more obvious as you can see the direction of the shadow cast by the sun, but what about the rest?

When the Norse sailed across the Atlantic they landed in Greenland and Newfoundland. There they had encounters with the indigenous communities of Newfoundland as well as the Inuit of Greenland. My question is did people in Europe know about those contacts the Vikings had with the indigenous communities in some way shape or form?

The reason I ask is because I have read in sources that not only where there Norse settlements in Greenland and Canada. But you had some Inuit who were taken back with the Norse to Scandinavia. Not only that the Catholic Church established bishoprics in Greenland where there would have been contact with the Inuit. This part to me is crucial and interesting because we know the Catholic Church has a pretty centralised structure where they kept detailed records on things and events that took place, including the various dioceses and bishoprics in the Church. So if you had Catholic Bishoprics in a place like Greenland wouldn't the Catholic Church at least have known that there was a Norse contact and indigenous communities across the Atlantic?

Why did the medieval period have so many nations that split inheritance between the monarchs sons instead of one single heir?

I've always been fascinated with zoroastrianism bc even though it was so important it never gets talked about

Title is very much being reductive when applied to a number of religions, I know.

Not counting satanism here, are there real world examples of this kind of thing? In which an antagonist of a faith such as Angra Mainyu is worshipped? Did Apep have cults? Were there temples of Eris or Deimos and Phobis, or Hel? Anything along those lines, or were these kinds of beings worshipped only to keep their attentions away from the petitioner, if worshipped at all?

Did men in Ancient Rome eat pussy? Heated debate in my house. SOS

Military insubordination seems like something that has been around as long as humans have been forced to fight, but I'm especially interested in the consequences of insubordination during the great scale wars such as WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Persian gulf etc.

How has military treatment of insubordinates changed through history? I would imagine a conflict of extreme trauma such as ww1 would have been rife with insubordination, and if so what was the response?

Recently i’ve seen some comments made by a few saying that the removal of confederate statues would lead to revisionism etc, which i was confused by as there are so many other ways to learn history besides observing statues and memorials. Is this true that the removal of them begins this process, are there examples of it? i certainly can’t think of any