Admittedly I'm not versed on this subject but I've always wondered why it was so short lived when the decades beforehand there was surely tons of plane crashes, yet the Concorde was abandoned after that one famous crash?

Im coming into contact with this name through artists William Burroughs and Brion Gysin.

I wonder how they heard of him ? How long he's been known in the west ? Is he real or mythological ? What evidence is there of his mountain palace , garden of eden , hashishen scam ?

And lastly (it did not fit into the title anymore):

If Pedro II was such a competent and good ruler, then why did he grow tired of ruling (which in the end lead to him not supporting any efforts to reinstate him as ruler of Brazil) and why was he deposed in a coup despite his alleged popularity with the masses?

Also, in regards to the empire title, that title is even higher than that of its former mother country of the Kingdom of Portugal.

George Washington was Lieutenant General (until posthumously promoted in 1976). After Washington, the highest army position (Commanding General/Chief of Staff) was held by Brigadier, Major, and Lieutenant generals until Grant, who was only promoted after the Civil War. The two successors to Grant were also four-star generals but then the Army went back to being headed by Major and Lieutenant Generals until WW1. Even during WW1 era, Chiefs of Staff Tasker Bliss and Peyton March were only temporarily made a full Generals and reverted back to Major Generals at the end of their appointments as Chief of Staff.

It seems European nations had plenty of full Generals and even Field Marshals above them. I understand the US Army was smaller at the time, but during the Civil war, the Army did become very large but was still commanded by Major and Lieutenant generals.

There is little cost to promoting someone to the rank and "General" without any modifiers (i.e. "Brigadier"/"Major"/"Lieutenant") is the obvious rank for person in charge. For example, even small police departments are generally headed by a (full) police Chief, not an Assistant Chief, Deputy Chief or something else lower and I don't know of any small organizations that decided for fairness to larger organizations they should be headed by a "Vice President" because they were too small to warrant a (full) "President". What was the downside of making its Army leaders full generals? Why was the US so stingy to its military leaders including war heroes like Washington in this regard?

I've recently began acquiring books through Amazon Kindle, I got Charles C. Mann's 1491 book and decided to see what else the store has to offer, I was more used to physical books on my country (Mexico) through authors like Lopez Austin, Leon-Portilla or Taibo II so I thought this was a good chance to get into North American (US, Canada) native history, since I've read that other books tend to push a more western view of native history (I've heard negative things of books like Empire of the Summer Moon for example), I've liked the introduction so far so I was wondering what is the general consensus of the book and if there were other recommendations on the subject.

I watched the Sofia Coppola movie last month and I am obsessed. There's so much that makes sense to me about her, and a lot that doesn't make sense to me about France. But the more I read about her life online the more gaps are filled in. I'd love to read something that gives a lot of information on her influence on dress and design, although despite being a poor history student I am able to follow a lot of the political and diplomatic events of her life -- really, because when her reasons are described I feel like I can relate. It's a twisted thing to say, in our age of wealth disparity reaching a critical point, but I can't change the circumstances of my birth and I know what it's like to be distracted from real issues by shiny bougie shit and petty social politics.

Anyway, yeah, a real girl's guide to Marie Antoinette would be so fantastic to read this summer, thanks. Especially when it's getting to be time for guillotines again.

Was the rationing during WWII in the United States seen as a universal civic duty for Americans or was there notable resistance among the population?

This question comes from an interest in the concept of the Plantationocene. I'm not trying to debate the validity of the term, social scientists have found some value in it, and I want to see if anyone can spell out the differences. I assume these imply different relations to the territory - but how do these relations differ?

This is a more speculative sub-question but: if the plantation system that existed prior to colonisation had been allowed to flourish, would that also have implied the kind of climate change that we are experiencing now? I realise there is no way of telling but my question speaks to which system was more sustainable.

The source of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey was ancient Greek oral epic history, where an aoidos would improvise verses that followed the outline of a story, usually to meter and musical accompaniment. Every performer would have their own take on the exact sequence of events and the details, which led to a lot of different variations.

But I've read that it was common to memorize Homer's versions word for word. Did these versions become definitive? When the versions we accept as "standard" appeared, did these variant versions of the narrative disappear?

Brahmin scholars in India would also often memorize the entirety of important Sanskrit texts, including the epic poems attributed to Valmiki and Vyasa. These stories originally come from a similar oral tradition based around live performace, which continued into the early modern period. Do we know whether these performers still sang their own versions from the oral tradition into say, the Mughal or Colonial Era, or was everyone singing the versions by Valkimi and Vyasa?

I had a grandfather from far north QLD who came back from ww2 and apparently ran/owned a rubber plantation in PNG. My mum's older brothers grew up there. Would've been maybe late 50s to early 70s roughly. I say owned without really knowing, but the sense I got was it was his and it also ended suddenly. Piecing stories together here.

Can someone tell me about this period? I know PNG established independence at some point (and my png friends are furiously proud of their independence, as they fucken should be). Is it likely my grandad was running an exploitative plantation, akin to Belgium in the Congo, or something in between? How did my granddad who didnt even come from money/class get that sort of responsibility? What would've motivated him, a pretty basic aussie who'd been away from home for years to leave Australia again to go to another, very culturally different country? Was it just a sort of sticking around after WW2 and far North Queensland proximity when the UK were out of the picture, and Australia opportunisitically capitalised and incentivised? And how did PNG vs. other pacific nations (i grew up in Fiji) establish there not to be messed with independence?

EDIT. I realise that last question is way to broad and based on a lot of anecdote and assumption. Feel free to disregard, unless there is a story there.

I read that also apparently Hitler and Himmler were rather squeamish and the latter threw up after witnessing gunshot executions of Jews and switched to gas chambers to make it more “””humane”””.

Again, I’m not sure how true all that is. But I was wondering (if true) if it was like a “I don’t want to know how the sausage is made; just do it” type of thing.

Thanks so much!

So I've been watching a lot of historical fiction shows set in late antiquity and in the early medieval period and one question has kinda perplexed me.

The dwellings that were typical of germanic speaking regions at the time were all constructed of wood with thatched roofs right? Given that, how did the occupants of this type of dwelling prevent fires? Embers from wood fires travel remarkably far before going out and can travel on a very light breeze, so how did the thatch roofs not catch fire all the time?

Many of the notable Americans during the 1920s (Gertrude Stein, Josephine Baker, Hemmingway) did not have French Citizenship, but were still allowed for long periods of time in the country.

Did they have to apply for visas or was it largely open to Americans?

Passports had just come into pretty heavy use after WWI, were there caps or were people who were not famous already basically let in regardless?

I was reading the Wikipedia article on Basil the bulgar slayer and came across this line from the section on Fatimid wars,

In 987–988, a seven-year truce with the Fatimids was signed; it stipulated an exchange of prisoners, the recognition of the Byzantine emperor as protector of Christians under Fatimid rule and of the Fatimid Caliph as protector of Muslims under Byzantine control, and the replacement of the name of the Abbasid caliph with that of the Fatimid caliph in the Friday prayer in the mosque at Constantinople.

I would love some details on the existence of this mosque. Were the Byzantines really this tolerant? Was there a sizeable Muslim population living in Constantinople? Etc.

Thanks.

China became the first victim of aggression of the nations fighting in the second world war when Japan invaded it in 1937 following the Marco Polo Bridge incident and it endured a long eight year war of resistance. How did the Chinese feel when after eight years of war against a seemingly superior and undefeatable enemy, it at last surrendered and Chinese forces were able to take back control of territories that had been lost for anything between a few months (territories in the south lost during Ichi-Go), years (mainly the north Chinese plains) and a decade (Manchuria)?

I’m a reenactor but my interest is mainly in the Napoleonic era, I’ve been trying to get more into WWI and I’m currently just starting to read The Guns of August to try and get a good sense of the early war . I posted this on social media and a cousin of mine who is a history undergrad commented that it’s a good book but not totally reliable and I should take it with a grain of salt. I’ve asked him to elaborate and he hasn’t gotten back to me yet, but I’m curious — what’s the problem with this book? Is it essentially right but just incomplete in light of new information like Gibbons’ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, too subjective to be read as history like Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution, plainly falsified like the Short Course on the History of the All Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), just out of favor like the work of Lucien Febvre, or something else?

All the more known mafia-type organizations (cosa nostra, Camorra, n'drangheta) are from Southern Italy. Why isn't there a bigger presence in whole of Italy? Is it a wealth disparity issue? Were other northern organizations suppressed more effectively? Or there are organizations but we dont know much about them?