I am very curious to know how many times we knowingly destroyed vast collections of knowledge. I am equally as curious to know how many of these instances we still know of.

Edit: please check out u/dankensington’s comment on how my question was based on a false premise. I learned a lot tonight!

I’m particularly curious about the relative decline in black life expectancy to white life expectancy. I’ve been reading Robert Putnam’s new book, The Upswing, and he has a chart on page 204 which shows that the ratio of black life expectancy to white life expectancy in 1921 was around .875 or so, but then drops sharply to around .75 in 1924. (He cites the National Center for Health Statistics, “Death Rates and Life Expectancy at Birth” for his info).

What accounts for this dramatic drop? Was it a latent affect of the 1918 pandemic? Were black communities so disproportionately affected that it had such a huge impact on their relative life expectancy to whites? Was it some after effect of World War I? A statistical anomaly? Or maybe I’m thinking about it wrong, maybe white life expectancy rose quickly during this period and black life expectancy still rose but at a much slower pace?

Thanks! And if anyone is interested in commenting generally on Putnam’s book from a historian’s perspective I would very much welcome the comment.

If each soldier was firing when his rifle was loaded wouldn't that result in more bullets being fired per minute because he doesn't have to wait on command to shoot? If so, why would you opt to use volley fire? Is it a relic of pre-firearm warfare?

In these rather trying times, I've taken to occasionally reading "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley for inspiration/hope.

The first stanza of the poem is below:

Out of the night that covers me

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

My question relates to the third line, I thank whatever gods may be. The way I interpret this line, it sounds as though Henley is implying that there could be multiple gods, or one god, or none at all.

Was this a common belief in England at the time the poem was written in the 1870's? Or is the line simply a poet being creative with his word use?

It's something I always wondered about, like the lead soldering on cans of food in expeditions that lead to the deaths of people, and numerous other lead poisoning incidents. I looked up Wikipedia and apparently even the Romans knew lead was dangerous, so why didn't people do much about it? People were less aware back then sure, but there seems to be so many uses people had for lead and I don't understand why they never stopped using it as much.

It was used for so many different purposes and yet it's only in the last century it's been taken more seriously. Very strange and would love more information about this.

Expanding a bit, why did 18th/19th century colonial empires rely on a dizzying array of vassal states, dominions, condominiums, and other special administrative classifications to run their overseas possessions? Why were the colonies considered separate from the mother nation instead of simply saying:

"Alright, this land is part of Britain now, just like Cornwall, Scotland, or Wales. Congratulations, you're all British citizens."

I find this to be especially bizarre when compared to the system used by American and (to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge) Russia, where colonized land would be directly integrated into the nation "proper," and ultimately administered in the same way as the "core" regions.

Thoughts?

Hi guys,

I hope it’s okay to post it here but I really need help of those who are passionate about this time period.

I will skip the details what my novel is about, there are just few questions I really need answers for to have a better idea how and why my characters behave the way they do.

I wanna know As much as possible how regular American felt about the time and setting of the period they lived in.

Did they heard many rumours/news about NASA trying to reach first to the moon?

Was there any propaganda in the US?

Did average Joe hated/ had prejudice towards Russians?

What about the other countries watching it, especially UK? How did they feel about it? How average British person felt about it?

Did people feel excited about the whole fuss around technological innovations related to cosmos exploration?

Were they like... “Jesus, Karen they keep on talking we might be first to get to the moon! I hope that’s true! Let me go buy some moon earrings to get into the mood and starting vibing”

I’m kidding here a little (or maybe not) but I wanna have a good perspective how it was to live in the US in 60s knowing the possibilities with new cosmic explorations. Society’s opinion, mood and attitude regarding that, in short.

I am curious to learn more about the religious attitudes of the Byzantine citizens before, during, and after the schism.

I recently read a book titled The Monuments Men in which a character is referred to as "the good Nazi".

Are there any stories of Nazi soldiers going against orders and doing good for the good of humanity? Such as hiding Jews, smuggling Jews away from danger, etc. I'm interested in learning these stories.

Because I recently got into an argument with the mods over at r/history, please allow me to clarify:

I am not downplaying the atrocities committed by the Nazis. I fully understand that what happened during that time was atrocious. However, even a holocaust survivor stated that not all Nazis were bad some young men were forced into service. Once again, I do not support what happened and condemn the activities committed by the Nazis.

I just want to learn, dang it!

Look, I know that the Presidency of Andrew Jackson was not good for a lot of natives but if you look into Jackson life you will learn that he had an American Indian adopted child. People often say Jackson was a genocidal racist but the fact that he adopted an American Indian son I believe ruins that claim. I was wondering if historians had an idea of Jackson’s personnel beliefs.

The local museum in the town sadly doesnt seem to provide much information on this, thank you.

I read/watch a lot of period pieces, and they often refer to the “court” (like young women getting presented to the court). I get that this is like the nobility or higher class but I’m wondering what specifically made up the court?

I was playing call of duty cold war (obviously ficctional) where in some missions of the campaing and of course the multiplayer there are soviets and americans directly entering in combat whit each other, and a wondered if that actually happened at least once during the entire cold war, I know that could have ended up in a nuclear war, but what if there is an exception? Or something like that, in school I was taught that soviet union and USA never entered in combat with each other, but I also think that the cold war lasted for a very long time and during that time, something happened between them directly, I mean, the cold war was also a war full of secrets hidden by the governments, and they hated each other's a lot. So that's it

As it gets colder and drier, I am experiencing more occurrences of static electricity. I am curious to read any records we have of the discovery and subsequent research into static electricity throughout the world in ancient times. A brief look into this questions shows that serious research into static electricity wasn't until about the 17th century, and that the earliest record of the discovery of static electricity might have been Thales of Miletus around 600 BCE. Is there evidence of earlier discoveries?

I'm interested to hear the earliest records we have static electricity, including independent discoveries if anyone knows. This doesn't necessarily have to be a first hand account, it could be a reference to an older discovery, in the same way even the discovery by Thales is provided to us secondhand. It also does not have to be an earlier Greek discovery, I'm just as curious to know our earliest records from anywhere.

To the extent it makes sense, I'm curious solely about static electricity rather than electricity in general. For example, I'm not really looking for any sources about electricity, such as accounts of receiving shocks from certain fish or early uses of electricity like creating batteries. Rather, I'm surprised to find so few records about something that likely occurred to most people at some point in their life. However, I would also be interested in records that are more fanciful such as ascribing static electricity to some mythological source. Thank you.