The Russian and Austrian Empires had a very close relationship during and after the Napoleonic wars. Russia also supported the Austrians during the Hungarian revolution. What lead to the downwards spiral of relations between the two nations? The Hungarian Revolution was 1848/49 only 4 years later during the Crimean War Austria suddenly makes a big turnaround and sides with France, Britain and the Ottomans. What happened here? Why did Austria pretty much betray its longstanding ally?

Hein Severloh was a German machine gunner when D-Day happened. He reports that at on D-Day, at his strongpoint, he was the only one at a machine gun defending his section of the beach. He was gunning for 9 hours and killed up to 2,000 GIs. He has become pretty much a legend later.

If it was that simple to defend the beach by gunning down the enemy from a strategic superb, elevated point:

1. why was Hein Severloh's story so unique? Why had other machine gunners not done the same and got a similar body count?
2. Why was Hein Severloh the only machine gunner at his strongpoint?
3. Why was the whole beach line not dotted with a guy with a machine gun? It should not have been a big deal while having a huge effect. Thus, what made the Germans fail to succcessfully defend the beach?

So Pizza.... This has led to a long discussion between me and my GF. She claims fervently that Pizza was invented in China (and brought West via Marco Polo and the silk road) and states that she learned this during one of her Uni classes in SF by a professor. While I certainly am no expert, this claim seemed really odd to me. As far as I can tell, there is no original place that invented Pizza but various local foods from ancient Persia, Greece, Egypt etc. that all had a similar type of baked bread form that could have inspired Pizza later on. And Pizza itself, the pre tomato version, existed long before Marco Polo, at least concerning the word itself. But online I could find various sources that seem to claim different locations as the origin of pizza.

So I was wondering if AH could clear this one up for me, am I missing something and was the invention of Pizza influenced from China? Or was it an evolution of various existing foods in Southern European/Middle Esatern cultures?

I was just wondering how naval strategy and tactics changed over this period of time where the choice of weaponry and ship design wasn't all too different. Like, in terms of land battles, a battle of the War of the Spanish Succession would have looked remarkably different to a battle of the Napoleonic Wars, even though both battles feature musket-armed infantry, cavalry charges and artillery pieces. Was this the same for battles at sea?

I honestly don’t see why “nationalism” should be such a dirty word today, and it feels weird that we should encounter it most often combined with “ethno” or “white.”

For a few centuries, starting late 18th , nationalism seemed to be a very highly coveted goal and a worthy ideal - for americans, the french, the greek, all of the balkans, etc.

What happened? How did this word change? And why?

I remeber reading a reason behind cutting the hairs of prisioners and removing any metal dentures in their tooth before they entered the gas chamber to maximize the suffering or something, could someone explain the reason behind it, if it all there is one ??

Both Reddit's search engine and using Google to search site:reddit.com have failed me repeatedly, so I'm asking here.

There was an AskHistorians post I remember distinctly about how serious ancient belief in Gods was. Specifically, it asked about a ceremony where a woman was expected to go into a room in a temple alone and then a God would manifest himself to her, and how the women would react when no one showed up. I think the god in question was Babylonian or Sumerian, but I can't remember.

In any case, there was a really fantastic answer about how the ancients understood the divine, basically saying "How do you know a god didn't manifest itself to her?", and how some ancients regarded the whole world as divinely inspired and understood the presence of divinities around them even if there wasn't a physical manifestation you could see and touch.

As I said, searching has been no use, and I've been looking for this answer on-and-off for a couple months now. Does anyone else remember the post or have a link to the answer?

Thank you!

Cheers, Ganesha

I think it's fairly obvious how English came to dominate places like Ireland, Wales and Cornwall (As these places were conquered/subjugated by England for centuries).

But how/why/when did Scotland adopt English as the main language of everyday life?

I heard this thing on the internet at one time that racism wasn't a thing until the African slave trade.

Sure, before then people did get discriminated against but not in the same way they are now. People weren't discriminated against for being black for example. In Rome black people could do all the things that white people could do and interracial marriages weren't seen as taboo. That doesn't mean the Romans didn't discriminate, they might have but they probably discriminated based off of something else.

it seems like they modern idea of race is a modern invention invented by people who partook in the African slave trade to justify slavery. after all, how can you partake in something so cruel as slavery, especially chattel slavery on another human being? if you invent race, and then say that the races are just different, and that black people are inferior to white people then you have a story.

This also means that white people before the slave trade just didn't exist because before then Germans would not have even considered French people to be their allies. They would have been at each other's throats.

EDIT**

Thank you to everyone who chimed in!! I definitely needed some of the logical responses in this thread, I debated making this post because I've never posted on reddit but I'm really happy I did now. I got accepted into an Ivy (bit of a humble brag, I'm just really excited about it lol) as an early high school grad but I'm undecided for now, when the time comes I'm going to pair a history major with either an econ, business or poli sci major but I'll need some time to decide which. Thank you for quelling my nerves and providing some clarity!!

​

I don't really know how to start this mainly because I've been reading through some articles about this profession and the grimness of it, of not being able to find jobs and whatnot. Yet as a senior in highschool, about to graduate this month, I really can't seem to think of absolutely anything else I'd love to do besides study history. I've been around talk of history all my life, I can talk about what I know of balkan and eastern european history for hours on end which is definitely helped by my being eastern european. I'm so interested and want to learn more, and I've come to the realization that being a history professor really is my dream. But, I would love to hear second opinions from people who have more knowledge than me on this. And please if you don't think it's worth it, help a girl out on what other career choices there might be for a history BA and hopefully some more grad degrees that will be more specialized (although I'm not sure on what yet).

I mean, China seems like a really stable base for a successful empire. It has primarily one nationality, the coal needed for industrialization, rivers great for farming like double cropping, and a large population.

China was a major power for quite a long time from what I know. What caused its decline? Gunpowder spread to China pretty fast right? So it’s not like it was an obsolete military?

Particularly when one Jesus of Nazareth was creating it from water (for a time reference). How potent was it? How was is made and more importantly stored and shipped? Was it solely produced through small enterprises or was there a Barefoot of the day?

Were Koreans considered Japanese by the US Govt during WW2? ive become quite interested in learning about the internment of Japanese Americans as well as the 442nd RCT. It's a personal interest as I'm half Korean and I have relatives who lived during the occupation but none that were in the US during this time.

I get why they weren't using zippers, those require precise machining. But buttons seem really, really simple: Cut a small hole in fabric, stitch around the hole for strength, attach a small object to other fabric. I've made buttons out of scratch materials while camping.

I've seen drawings of ancient clothes that were supposed to be tied with a string to fasten them. I've seen preserved ancient clothes occasionally in museums too. And they never fasten with buttons. Is this one of those things that ancient people did and we just ignore it, like how we think the 1850s were monochrome? Or did they just not think of buttons?

And if it's that they didn't think of buttons, was that true all over the world?

Talking to a guy at work and he mentioned he read that copper pipe fitters didn’t get sick during the Black Plague era because they have some type of bacteria resistance from being covered in copper. Is this true at all? It seems like it could be but also a stretch. Also if my hands are covered in copper from touching it all day is that like putting hand sanitizer on?

I'm sure when we were all in elementary growing up we all heard the same thing where Christopher Columbus was the only one who thought that the world was round and was mocked for not believing it was flat. However we know that the Greeks were able to figure that out and that Eratosthenes was able to find the circumference of the earth. So where did this original claim of round earth Columbus from?

With Joe Biden as President, John Roberts as Chief Justice, Patrick Leahy as President Pro Tempore, and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, Catholics occupy some of the highest offices of the government. I’m aware of President Kennedy and the continued representation of Catholics on the Supreme Court. I was wondering if this level of Catholic representation has been reached before and when Catholics became acculturated enough into the American Christian mainstream for this to become possible.

Edit: It has been pointed out that Sen. Patrick Leahy isn’t the highest officer of the Senate, but he still occupies a very high leadership role in the chamber.