I heard that diseases carried by the europeans had a 90% death rate amongs the native south americans because they were not resistant to these diseases. But why didn't the europeans die of south amercan dieseases like flies?

It’s April Fool’s Day somewhere in the world, and that means it’s the one day AskHistorians becomes your Zoom wardrobe: good history on top, unicorn PJs on the bottom.

For 2021, we’re putting the Year of Netflix to good use by becoming /r/HistoriansAskTheMovies! We’re looking for submissions from:

• Historical persons thoughtfully reviewing (or utterly demolishing) movies that portray them or their era
• Historical persons mildly miffed (or deeply offended) that there is no movie about them, and pitching a potential blockbuster

Submissions can take any form: a formal review, a mock Twitter thread, A RANT IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THIS IS NOT LEGIBILITY, THIS IS SPARTA!

As always, a couple of ground-rules to keep in mind:

• /r/HistoriansAskTheMovies starts at 00:00 UTC and ends at 23:59 UTC. Please restrict new submissions to that time frame (although you are welcome to continue to posting to existing threads afterwards)

• You may post using your main account and identifying “yourself,” or you may use an appropriate alt

• To help us flair participating threads, please start your title with the relevant type: [Spoiler] [Let’s Watch] [OUT OF MY WAY PEASANTS]

• Remember, your thread title is your trailer! If you’re referencing a particular movie, be clear in the thread title: “[Advice] A few words about historical fabrics and fashion design for the producers of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat”

• If you’re pitching a movie concept, sell it! “[Disney Princess Pitch] My brother the caliph thought he was a god, so I had him assassinated, took the throne, restored women’s rights, and brought music back to the land! (P.S. There’s an evil eunuch.)”

• Non-flaired readers (you!) may participate as OP or in replies, but we’d like to see posts that display a little more effort than the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels

• Normal AskHistorians rules against incivility and bigotry still apply

And, of course, it’s Historians AskTheMovies--submissions must still reflect historical fact. So fluff up your mullet and get ready for historical business in the front, party in the back!

Happy April Fool’s!

The only book I can find on the era is "Taste of Tombstone" by Sherry Monahan. I'm looking for any insight and resources that you all have into how restaurants operated in that OK Corral environment. Thanks!

I love history so much, it's an obsession of mine. But there are certain events that I don't yet understand and the fall of rome is one.

I was wondering if someone could, in very simple terms, explain how, not why, it fell. When and why did the helm of the empire go from Romulus to the first barbarian ruler. What was this barbarian called at the time? Was he called the emperor?

We see this as a pivotal event where history changed in a moment but was it really such a fast and drastic change from one day to the other at the time? Or was it more of a gradual change?

Thank you.

I’ve always loved history, and I’ve been debating on switching to a History major, but I’m not sure about the viability of getting a job with that degree.

How many denarii/sesterces would it cost an ancient Roman to buy/build a Roman villa/domus? Thanks!

Hi, I am doing a project for school and wanted to how many denarii/sesterces it would cost an ancient Roman for a villa or a domus? I am very interested in Ancient Rome and the answer to this would be the final piece of the puzzle for my project. Thanks!

A few follow-up questions that really interest me if some people are motivated to answer:

1. Would a Roman citizen from 200 AD have a hard time understanding a Latin manuscript from say 300 BC?

2. If Latin did evolve a lot over time, then to which time period of the empire would modern Latin (as spoken today by some academics) correspond?

3. Would a modern scholar fluent in Latin be able to converse with and understand a medieval monk fluent in Latin? Or did our understanding of the language evolve over time with new discoveries, causing the two to be significantly different in grammar for example?

I know this is an awkward question for a few reasons. I don’t want to limit answers to any geographical region. I know that medicine can happen without leaving a great record. I know there are lots of grey areas.

I learned about the Bonn-Oberkassel dog. It looks like around 14,000 years ago some people helped a puppy get over distemper.

But do we have any amazing old stories about treating animals’ health issues?

After The Mongol Empire fell, and the remnants of it had faded (ie the Khanates, The Golden Horde, The Huns), they slunk back into Central Asia, and weren’t influential at all going into modern history. Starting with the Renaissance, all the way to the present day, Mongolia is in a fairly weak state, not having much to show for its economy. It’s military hasn’t been that good, and a sparse populace makes it hard to create a thriving market. Furthermore, it was position directly in between two economic and ideological powerhouses during the arms race. China and The Soviet Union. I am wondering why Mongolia wasn’t annexed or invaded after its fall from the global stage.

Seems odd to me that Paddington, Marylebone, Euston, St. Pancras & King Cross are so close to each other

I've read that many American men were first introduced to oral sex while serving overseas, and I've wondered why. I know the USA was much more conservative regarding sexual behavior, but I've heard that men who frequented prostitutes before and after the war experienced this too, and you'd think that sex workers would not feel constrained.

I don't know how history is told in most countries, but I was taught that anti-communism was big in most of the world even before the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Cold War. The formation of the Soviet Union only increased those fears.

I was taught that France and the United Kingdom were lenient with Germany violting the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 during the years preceding WW2 because they were hopeful that the nazis would direct their anti-communism towards the Soviet Union. Similar anti-communism sentiments existed in the US, given the treatment of Eugene V. Debs and the crushing of many worker strikes.

And if we see the results from WW2 from a anti-communist perspective, the worst outcome almost happened: almost everything from eastgermany onwards was now socialist. Japan was almost taken by the USSR. The world was now multi-polar and the Soviet Union was a superpower. Many socialist countries started emerging and western colonialism would soon cease as it was.

If I were an enemy of both the nazis and the communists, I would have likely just waited out until both sides destroyed each other or the remaining one was crippled. If it was about protecting allies, why not just protect the UK and maybe liberate France? The Soviet Union might have pushed backed Germany on it's own and them start to steamroll it like it happened, but Germany could've won and be depleted, leaving it open for the UK and the US to strike it. You either would defeat both of your enemies, or one of them would be completely defeated.

Given that situation and mindset, why did the US help the Soviet Union at all? They could ensure the safety of its allies while their greatest threats destroyed each other.

Note: This is not a question about whether or not the US should have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. That question has been debated at length in great details elsewhere. This question is about what advice President Truman got about the bomb before he made his decision to use it. Was it as simple as one advisor saying, "We need to do this to win the war" and so he did it? Or was it more complex than that? Did some advisors advise him to do it while others told him it was a bad idea? I had read that General Eisenhower was against using it. Did he ever get the opportunity to voice his concerns?

I want to apologize in advance regarding my ignorance of this subject. Although I was born in Brazil, my family immigrated to North America when I was still a baby, and I lack a lot of the historical knowledge one would have from simply being immersed in a culture.

My extended family is very divided politically and, through social media, enjoys posting highly charged memes for and against the current government, the Workers' Party (PT), Lula, Bolsonaro, and so forth. Recently, my aunt posted an image that reads "Remember March 31st, 1964 - the day Brazil said "NO" to communism." A quick google search informed me that this was the day a US-backed military coup deposed João Goulart who, throughout his short-lived administration, was variously accused of being a communist.

My questions are as follows:

1. How strong were Goulart's ties to "international" communism? Did his government enjoy the support of the Soviet Union?
2. Did Goulart have any plans to centralize the Brazilian economy in the style of other communist countries?
3. Anecdotally - I find it is much more common for people to know of the US-backed efforts to depose Salvador Allende in Chile than for anyone to know about similar happenings in Brazil. To what extent was the US involved in deposing Goulart? Were as many resources allocated to this effort as were to deposing Allende?

(Side note: this is my favourite subreddit, bar none. Reading through it is part of my daily bedtime ritual. You probably did not need to know this.)

Thanks!

France and Britain declared war on Germany after Germany's invasion of Poland, starting World War 2. Two weeks later, the Soviet Union also invaded Poland. I suppose declaring war on the USSR too was never a serious possibility, but were there other consequences for the Soviet Union? What did the public in France and Britain think about diving into war over the first invasion and ignoring the second?

I was reading that the primary motivator for British settlement in the Cape Colony and the former Boer Republics was the discovery of gold, and in French Algeria it was farmland for cash crops like cotton that wasn’t available in Metropolitan France (for France particularly there was an imperative to not be dependent on the United States, British India or British/Ottoman Egypt for textiles) but so many other European colonies, like British India and French Indochina had plenty of resources and “room” for settlement but the European population in these places was mostly made up of soldiers, governors and civil servants/administrators.

I assuming that part of that was down to the fact that many of these places were inhospitable in terms of weather and disease, but at the same time where there’s a will there’s a way and many Europeans settled in the American South, Queensland and Northern Territories in Australia and parts of the Caribbean which are just as awfully hot and humid and malarial as parts of India and Southeast Asia. It might also be that North America and Australia were more sparsely populated by natives, and those natives were comparatively less advanced than Indians or Africans, but South Africa, New Zealand and Algeria are all counter examples to that.