Hello,

I just started watching a historical TV show on Hulu, called Manhattan, about the scientists working on the Manhattan project and their families. I'm curious about the accuracy of the setting it portrays:

1. Were the scientists living that cloistered of a life?

• Did families chafe at their confinement and the secrecy?
• Was their scientist-military friction?
• Was the fear of scientist espionage so aggressively acted on by the military?

Etc, etc, etc. I'd appreciate any historical insight on the show.

Hello, and thank you to any Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire historians that might be able to answer my questions. I am asking specifically about the early 13th century (circa Andronikos I's reign/The Fourth Crusade arriving in Constantinople) but I am open to answers from a little before and a little after this period.

1. Did Byzantines use patronymics to differentiate two men with similar names? I know modern-day Greeks don't and that ancient Greeks did, at least sometimes. But since Byzantine families loved using the same handful of given names, it must've gotten confusing when you had six cousins all named Alexios.

2. What might a day in the life of a typical citizen of Constantinople be like? I realize this would vary depending on age, social class, gender, etc. but even just the basics. Did they wake up at dawn? Start the day with breakfast? How many meals did they take during their waking hours? How often was one expected to attend church? How often was one expected to bathe? Were little kids looked after by nurses or slaves? Did unrelated men and women mingle with one another or was that taboo?

3. If an official was speaking to the emperor, what did he call the emperor? Your Excellency or something similar? In Greek or in Latin?

4. What was the standard of beauty in Byzantium? I imagine something must have survived of their poetry or plays that mention what was considered beautiful by them.

5. What were the officials and servants who waited on the imperial family called? I imagine the empress must've had ladies who dressed her hair and fetched and carried for her. Someone must've brought news to the emperor and announced visitors and that sort of thing.

6. What was a Byzantine wedding like? Was it similar to a modern Greek Orthodox wedding? Did they crown the bride and groom? Was there a certain color for the wedding clothes or did everyone just wear whatever their nicest clothing was? What would the vows have sounded like? In Western Europe the bride and groom would say something like "I take you to be my wife/husband and no other".

7. Were dogs and cats kept as household pets? What about exotic birds? I understand the emperors kept exotic animals like leopards in a menagerie.

8. Were children educated in separate schools or by private tutors?

A month or so ago I was reading some early English history and the idea came to mind that Offa and Arthur sound so similar that perhaps Offa's name was just distorted into Arthur by word of mouth. The idea makes since as Offa's reign was around the same time as Arthur's supposedly occurred and he himself achieved much fame during his reign as a strong leader and conqueror. Could it be that through some misunderstandings, tales about King Arthur are really tales about King Offa?

Were there even organized platoons and what not of air forces? Or were the planes mostly used for reconnaissance ? Was it the increase of usage of planes between WW1 and WW2 solely due to technology?

EDIT: grammar PS: sorry for my english

I'm writing a, you guessed it, essay, about the development of the essay. I'm not asking you to do my work for me, but any thoughts or resources you may have would be lovely to help me get the ball rolling. This is not for school but for my own personal edification, and to sort out a longstanding feud with my english teaching mother.

I know that the essay developed in importance in the renaissance and that it continued as a major writing form in England after that. Are there any historical clues as to why this was the case and why writers moved away from the earlier Platonic (or otherwise) dialogues, to the essays of Montaignes and others from the 16th-18th century, and finaly into the sort of thing we use to write about "How Lord of the Flies is Basically About God and Such" in our English courses today.

Any help is much appreciated.

Obviously, being a joke email it's not going to be a nuanced look at French history but is there anything egregiously bullshit about it?

The email in question:

French Military History in a Nutshell

Gallic Wars: Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of French history, France is conquered by of all things, an Italian.

Hundred Years War: Mostly lost, saved at last by a female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare - "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchmen."

Italian Wars: Lost. France becomes the first and only country ever to lose two wars when fighting Italians.

Wars of Religion: France goes 0-5-4 against the Huguenots.

Thirty Years' War: France is technically not a participant, but manages to get invaded anyway. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually the other participants started ignoring her.

War of Devolution: Tied; Frenchmen take to wearing red flowerpots as chapeaux.

The Dutch War: Tied.

War of the Augsburg League/King William's War/French and Indian War: Lost, but claimed as a tie. Deluded Frogophiles the world over label the period as the height of French Military Power.

War of the Spanish Succession: Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved ever since.

American Revolution: In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as "de Gaulle Syndrome", and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare: "France only wins when America does most of the fighting".

French Revolution: Won, primarily due to the fact that the opponent was also French.

The Napoleonic Wars: Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer.

The Franco-Prussian War: Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.

WWI: Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States. Thousands of French women find out what it's like not only to sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein." Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.

WWII: Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song.

War in Indochina: Lost. French forces plead sickness, take to bed with Dien Bien Flu.

Algerian Rebellion: Lost. Loss marks the first defeat of a Western army by a Non-Turkic Muslim force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Muslim Warfare -"We can always beat the French." This rule is identical to the First Rules of the Italians, Russians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Eskimos.

War on Terrorism: France, keeping in mind its recent history, surrenders to Germans and Muslims just to be safe.

I know that there were both positive and negative reactions, but was it appropriate to be happy because we got out revenge or was it appropriate to be angry because we have killed a lot of innocent civilians?

Also what exactly is it's significance and if Russia were to ever loose it who would it go to?

I am a particle physicist. Using lead smelted in ancient Rome as radiation shielding will improve the signal to noise ratio in my experiment.

There is really no reasonable alternative so I will need to destroy a few ingots. As a scientist I very much understand the frustration of historians over the destruction of artifacts before they can be studied. As a physical scientist I have access to scientific resources not easily available to archeologists and historians. I can devote a small part of my budget and expertise to characterizing the ingots before I process them.

I would like the input of historians as to how I should direct my resources. Please do not consider the monetary cost of the test, I just want to know what data is most important.

Thanks

Ps. Sorry for the semi-repost. ‘itsallfolklore’ provided me some fantastic advice on how to revise the question for this forum.

What are good resources for researching 16th (particularly mid to late) century Spanish attire? What were the fashions, the materials, and how many clothes did they have? I'm looking for references for the rich, the ordinary, the soldiers, and the other occupations. Thank you!

It seems to me the Soviets were easy pickings after losing so many soldiers during the siege of Berlin. Maybe it was not the right time, but how about after the US invaded Japan? The soviets by then were already seen as a threat, if not, why invade Japan alone when the soviets were already going to do it?

edit- for legibility

Was this book ultimately a failure or did it contribute to the rise of modern terrorism in the seventies and eighties?

If Hitler was using the principle of self-determination to invade Czechoslovakia, why didn't he use that same idea to invade Switzerland which also has ethnic Germans?

Even after the war began, what stopped Hitler from invading Switzerland at that point?

I have heard of some rumors that claim Jews are not related to the Israelites and that there were cases of conversion to Judaism especially in the roman empire, however historically there doesn't seem to be evidence of this and it seems it would be counterproductive to do so since most of Rome was pagan and later catholic.

Is there evidence that Europeans converted to Judaism or that Jews migrated from the middle East to europe? What reason would Jews migrate to Europe?