Hey y‘all,

Today I’ve purchased a „Templar“ Robe from an Armory-Shop where you can get all kinds of stuff from the middle-ages. The robes are white and have a typical, red Christian cross sewn into them. The Cashier told me that those robes are kind of ahistorical, as the robes of the real Templar knights had a „Cross pattée“ on them, and not a „normal“ cross. So my question is- How did historically accurate Crusader armour look and where there examples of normal Christian crosses being worn on them?( I’ll post an example in the comments)

I have one question. I am Central European and have a friend from Taiwan and people there use hand-held parasols to protect from intense sun. Well, I guess using parasols is a Chinese tradition and from pictures I know it was also used by wealthy people in Europe, in earlier times.

But today, Western people do not use that. Why and when did that change?

On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred Arab horse was brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and rode at a gallop to one of the bridges over the Niemen, deafened continually by incessant and rapturous acclamations which he evidently endured only because it was impossible to forbid the soldiers to express their love of him by such shouting, but the shouting which accompanied him everywhere disturbed him and distracted him from the military cares that had occupied him from the time he joined the army. He rode across one of the swaying pontoon bridges to the farther side, turned sharply to the left, and galloped in the direction of Kóvno, preceded by enraptured, mounted chasseurs of the Guard who, breathless with delight, galloped ahead to clear a path for him through the troops. On reaching the broad river Víliya, he stopped near a regiment of Polish Uhlans stationed by the river.

"Vivat!" shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their ranks and pressing against one another to see him.

Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted, and sat down on a log that lay on the bank. At a mute sign from him, a telescope was handed him which he rested on the back of a happy page who had run up to him, and he gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became absorbed in a map laid out on the logs. Without lifting his head he said something, and two of his aides-de-camp galloped off to the Polish Uhlans.

"What? What did he say?" was heard in the ranks of the Polish Uhlans when one of the aides-de-camp rode up to them.

The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The colonel of the Polish Uhlans, a handsome old man, flushed and, fumbling in his speech from excitement, asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be permitted to swim the river with his Uhlans instead of seeking a ford. In evident fear of refusal, like a boy asking for permission to get on a horse, he begged to be allowed to swim across the river before the Emperor’s eyes. The aide-de-camp replied that probably the Emperor would not be displeased at this excess of zeal.

As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old mustached officer, with happy face and sparkling eyes, raised his saber, shouted "Vivat!" and, commanding the Uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse and galloped into the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse, which had grown restive under him, and plunged into the water, heading for the deepest part where the current was swift. Hundreds of Uhlans galloped in after him. It was cold and uncanny in the rapid current in the middle of the stream, and the Uhlans caught hold of one another as they fell off their horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some of the men; the others tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some clinging to their horses’ manes. They tried to make their way forward to the opposite bank and, though there was a ford one third of a mile away, were proud that they were swimming and drowning in this river under the eyes of the man who sat on the log and was not even looking at what they were doing. When the aide-de-camp, having returned and choosing an opportune moment, ventured to draw the Emperor’s attention to the devotion of the Poles to his person, the little man in the gray overcoat got up and, having summoned Berthier, began pacing up and down the bank with him, giving him instructions and occasionally glancing disapprovingly at the drowning Uhlans who distracted his attention.

For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough to dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called for his horse and rode to his quarters.

Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were sent to their assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from which they had started. The colonel and some of his men got across and with difficulty clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they had got out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they shouted “Vivat!” and looked ecstatically at the spot where Napoleon had been but where he no longer was and at that moment considered themselves happy.

Sorry if this isn't allowed, but I'm doing some research for a pet project, and would like more info that might be in field manuals. I'm looking for an artillery manual, as well as documents that would outline things like different offences and punishments under British military law.

If this isn't allowed, I will delete this post.

Thanks in advance.

If the action of Viking or going Viking i.e raiding was to find new riches and lands, surely the discovery of the Americas would be the ultimate treasure? What changed in the time between the Vikings sacking Paris and the colonization of the Eastern coast of the U.S that the Scandinavian peoples, who were once such incredible seafarers, didn't end up playing a big part in this martime adventure to the West?

Most political cartoons I've seen of Jackson depict him as a non descript king, but looking at Jackson's beliefs and policy, he seems very similar to Caesar.

- Got his political success through successful military campaigns

- Was a highly populistic figure while also being pretty aristocratic and authoritarian

- Claimed the Senate/Congress as corrupt institutions

- His populist vigor was mainly gained through agrarian policy.

You could even claim that Polk was his Augustus, which would also make sense as Polk ended up starting a sort of Pax Americana over North America. It is one of the things I've noticed that seems to fit a bit to much and I am just curious why I haven't seen this comparison made more.

Hi Historians of reddit

During my energy studies i fell down a rabbit hole of sustainable energy > Nuclear energy > A-bombs > WWII in Japan. (..you know how YouTube and procrastination works)

I was wondering if there are any details that I'm missing that qualifies Harry Truman to NOT be a war criminal? My reasoning is that he did, in a few hours, kill more than 300,000 civilians with the 2 nuclear bombs in Japan.

Is he not considered a war criminal solely because he won?

I am not a historian myself, but it seems that those two cites were chosen, not because of a military target, but specifically BECAUSE of the number of civilians.

Please enlighten me.

I know what it celebrates, and of course I know Juneteenth is a portmanteau of June and nineteenth, but why is it just named after the date rather than being Emancipation Day or Liberation Day or something? And why is it the celebration of emancipation, rather than the date of the Emancipation Proclamation or the Thirteenth Amendment or something?

I’m Canadian, so forgive me if this stuff is already widely-known in the US; Wikipedia doesn’t seem to have anything.

Europe, India, and Japan all had what one might call a "knightly" class: Aristocrats who could afford the armour, horses and training to be much more effective combatants than the peasants whose surplus they extracted. (I'm aware that I'm simplifying, but as a view-from-ten-thousand-feet I think this is reasonable.) But it seems that China did not have such a class; their hereditary aristocracy is stereotypically bureaucratic, as in passing the examinations, rather than military, as in wearing mail and keeping an armed retinue. (At least once we get out of literal chariot warfare.) Why was this? Or did China in fact have warrior-aristocrats and I'm just missing them due to the literary dominance of the bureaucrat-aristocrats?

Of course, other places had non-military aristocrats to, as clergy in Europe, Brahmins in India, but it seems that the balance of power and prestige between them is quite unusual in China. Crudely, you'd think a military class unsatisfied with its position would just whack the scholar-bureaucrats over the head with their swords and rearrange matters to their own satisfaction, but this does not seem to happen. Why not?

I remember growing up the wide spread concern over Y2K leading up to new years eve 2000. There were dire warnings that stock markets would crash, power plants would fail, planes would fall from the sky, and the US economy would be in ruins. To prevent this, there was a massive effort to reprogram computers to handle the date rolling over.

January 1st came and went with barely a hiccup, so I guess it worked, but how close was the US computer infastructer to failure? Were any other countries ignore the worries and suffer negative effects?

Hi, I have found a little difficulty looking into late 19th fashion discerning what models of shoe were used. Balmorals are often mentioned by I get the impression they were somewhat rustic or that they were out-of-date by the 1880's? What models of shoes would a gentleman wear in the 1880's? Oxfords and Derby seem to be on the list, and I have seen the suggestion of slippers for evening wear, would that mean you'd wear Prince Albert's to a dinner party? What kind of shoes would you wear if you were doing something slightly more outdoorsy, but not fully hunting top boots? What role would button boots fill? I feel like what I've read so far have been somewhat vague, out of period, or contradictory and I would like a clearer, somewhat more detailed picture of men's footwear around the 1880's.

During the 90s, North Korea was a country on the verge of breaking due to the famine, Russia was effectively reduced to a status of a minor power due to the collapse of the USSR and incompetent Yeltsin administration, China was nowhere near as strong as today and the US public was reinvigorated by the decisive victory in the Gulf War in 1991 after a period of mild defeatism following the Vietnam War failure. Why didn't the US and South Korea attempt to pressure (or invade) North Korea to rejoin it the the South at the time they were weak and the US was the sole global superpower?

I've been wondering this due to historical inaccuracies in the Bible, like the entirety of the judges period. So, which written accoumts can we take pretty much at face value? I'd like to have some of these questions answered. At least I believe Roman texts seem to be accurate, even to modern standards, but not so for Greeks (even now, it's uncertain Socrates was a real person), which still seem better than what came before. How long did it take for Europe to recover that level of reliability after the Middle ages? Also, how reliable are non Western sources? I'm not really sure about India, but at least post Spring and Autumn period China kept plenty of records from state officials, so I'd say they're reasonably accurate.

historians always mention that the Russo Japanese war left japan bankrupt. As a result they had to give back land grabs to Russia since they couldn't hold it. Why didn't they use Retake them while Russia was tearing itself apart?

I had a princess costume as a kid with what was basically a pretty dunce cap with trailing gauze. I’ve seen it painted on a very few historical items/paintings but it doesn’t seem as common as I thought it would be. Were these cone hats/crowns really worn? By whom? And were they worn only for special events?

Khazars and Judaism seems like a complicated, or at least superficially, topic. Googling leads me into some sources but it doesn't really explain much, so I have a few questions regarding the topic at hand.

How did the theory that Khazar elites converted to Judaism come about? What is the current consesus regarding this theory? Was it ever at any point a very prominent theory?