In Imperator: Rome any Greek nation can send a competitor to the Ancient Olympics, even the far-flung Diadochi states. These Greek nations can even send a courtier who isn't ethnically Greek or an adherent of the Hellenic religion to compete.

So do we have records of non-Greeks, or people who didn't adhere to the Hellenic religion, competing in the Ancient Olympics? Also, did the far-flung Greek states like the Seleukid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt, Massilia, the Bosporan Kingdom, Phasis or Menesthei regularly send competitors to the Ancient Olympics?

In 1816, weather changes affected the world in numerous ways. I've read that the phenomenon was mysterious at the time, though evidence now points to a massive volcanic event. So if it was a mystery, what were the main theories of the time? Did they know about the eruption in Indonesia? Were there any "outlandish" explanations out there?

I've heard this story a million times, but I've heard conflicting reports that he was actually fairly wealthy near the end of his life and basically stayed in lavish hotels. I've heard the myth stems from a misunderstanding of some hotel room debts he accrued.

Are modern images and portraits of early English Kings (before Henry VII 1505) created only based off of descriptions or how do historians know what they looked like? There’s things like Effigies that were made for Edward II and Richard I and others but I thought those were made long after their deaths and the portraits stamped in coins were very unrealistic to what they really looked like. I know I’m ancient Rome and Ancient Greece had statues but from what I’ve heard the oldest statue of an English King was built in 1630. So do we have any idea of what these kings really looked like?

From my understanding, through out most of western history, the easiest way to drunk purified water was via alcohol. Knowing that the Islamic world banned the use (or taxed non Muslims) of alcohol, how did the Islamic world deal with their drinking water? Was this a specific Arab technique or middle eastern in general? If nonalcoholic drinking water was common throughout the Middle East, why didn’t the Greeks adapt it during the hellenization period? Or the Romans during the Byzantine Empire?

So TIL that North America and the USA specifically has the most severe weather. With more than 10,000 severe storms and more than 1000 tornados a year. Also blizzards in the north and hurricanes in the south.

How did native Americans deal with these storms? Did they migrate away from areas prone to storms in diffrent seasons? Or make some kind of structure to wait them out?

I've seen in some books families paying a tradesman in order for him to take on their child as their apprentice - is that true? How did that work? How much did the family usually pay?

In Crusader Kings 2, to fully occupy enemy territory, you have to besiege all holdings. Usually, that is a castle, a town, and a bishopric.

I know that bishops sometimes led armies in the middle ages (badly defined as it is), but it seems absurd that there would be a "Battle of X Cathedral". Most of the clergy would be some combination of bookworm and lazy noble, so you wouldn't expect too many to be starting armed resistance groups. (I know this isn't a very academic way of thinking about it) If I were a Catholic leader of an army invading another Catholic area and I came across a cathedral for a major bishop, I wouldn't want to wage war against him. I would probably meet with him to help ease the transition. Plus, sweet! I have a new Cathedral.

All this to ask: Were there any sieges of Church property that were comparable to castle sieges or did the Church property generally pass peacefully (if politically) from conquered to conqueror?

If there were these sieges, how did that work? Were there soldiers stationed at the Cathedral to sound the alarm or something?

If it helps, in CK2, the current year for my Siege of Argyll is 870.

It's common in popular culture to dramatize the technology they had during the renaissance and periods prior to today-

But I wonder- did we ever any novelty type of wheeled vehicle before cars were popularized by Ford and Mercedez-Benz? Even something as simple as an engine strapped to a chair with wheels?

While there are a few geographic features in Ireland that are referred to as "glens" and "mountains," those features are really more typical of Scotland. And the song itself was composed by an Englishman (Frederic Weatherly). Under the circumstances, why is the song so closely associated with Ireland (at least, among Irish Americans)?

Im curious as to whether service members had the knowledge or equipment necessary to modifiy their weapons to better suit their conditions/needs.

I've seen it mentioned in various documentaries as well as works of fiction that pirates were notably egalitarian for the time, employing black crewmen as well as white. But were white people who came from racist, slave-owning, slave-trading societies really able to treat their black shipmates as equals?

(Side note: I'm saying black because most of the pirate fiction I've seen and read is set in the Caribbean but if you happen to know about race relations affecting Chinese, Latino or otherwise ethnic minority crew members in majority-white crews I'd love to hear it)

Reading his wiki and all the documentaries I’ve watched made him seem tyrannical and ultra paranoid even about those closest to him including family and friends and would send them to labour camps for next to no apparent reason.

The phrase ‘hunter-gatherer’ evokes in the general consciousness an image not much better informed by scholarship than the general ideas people have about interstellar travel. The Sentinelese, and various other uncontacted peoples are often dubbed remnants of the stone age, which implies that hunter-gatherer peoples have undergone essentially no substantive change in the thousands of years and more that they have occupied the earth. That assumption seems patently absurd when we try to apply it to agricultural, industrial, and post-industrial societies, so I tend to be quite suspicious of it. What do we know about how the lifestyles and social organisations of hunter-gatherer peoples have changed throughout the millennia?

Dear All,

I am looking into the different census reports that have agricultural data for the 19th century. I'm trying to find transcribed copies of these reports SOMEWHERE because the US Census Bureau just slapped some PDF scans of the reports online and called it a day. I really don't want to have to transcribe several decades myself if someone else has done it. Any ideas??

We have evidence that cultures from the Chinese, Arabs, Japanese, Europeans, to the Native Americans all recorded this event. Surely somebody somewhere took this as a sign to stage a coup, launch an invasion, give credence to their movement, etc etc. Did this supernova have any significant effect on history that we know of?

I've been doing a lot of research about this matter ever since I saw a TikTok debating it a few weeks ago, and I'm seriously confused.

Stephanie Dalley from Oxford has suggested that they weren't located in Babylon, but rather in Nineveh, a city that was once called Babylon, as there is a lot of evidence for an extravagant garden having existed there.

However, Eckhart Frahm from Yale disagrees and considers Nineveh's gardens to be a separate entity, as an inventory describing numerous exotic plants was found in Babylon, suggesting that the Hanging Gardens truly were located there.

However, this contradicts with every other claim I have seen, which all say that there has never been any historical evidence for any gardens in Babylon. This relates to the theory that the Hanging Gardens never even existed, and were just a fantasy of Greek historians romanticizing the Middle East, which is the theory I believed in for the longest time.

Is there a definitive answer?

I recently came across a screenshot of the video game eu4 by a french user. In it the polish-lithuanian commonwealth was called "République des Deux Nations" meaning republic of two nations. After looking up it's polish name I got the result "Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów" republic of both nations this surprised me because it wasn't a republic. The part about the two/both nations makes sense but these nations were the kingdom of Poland and the grand duchy of Lithuania neither of the two were a republic. Is there a reason why the polish and french call it a republic and not a kingdom?

Reading how spartans treated helots is heartbreaking. If i made a "top 10 worst things humans have ever done to each other" the Spartan treatment of the helots would be there

However we know of many escaped slaves in other societies from the time, like Rome, so I wonder, do we know about any escaped helot?, did they ever write something?, because I would love to read it

When they were incorporated to the roman empire by Caesar did the Inhabitants of gaul gradually abandoned wearing pants when were slowly assimilated and later put them back on during the twilight years of the western roman empire or did still kept wearing pants despite being assimilated by roman culture?