As a Yank who's discovered the charms of University Challenge during quarantine, one of my favorite parts of each episode comes at the beginning, when Jeremy Paxman gives a brief history of each of the competing schools. (Can't recommend the show enough for any trivia fans; it's Jeopardy cranked up to 11.)

While watching, I've been struck both by the enormous chronological gap between the founding of the "ancient" and "red brick" universities and the fact that England's largest, wealthiest cities--London included--were apparently without institutions of higher learning until the middle of the 19th century.

This interregnum wasn't observed on the continent or in the colonies, so I'm left to wonder how we can explain it. Were Oxford and Cambridge simply sufficient, and it made more sense to devote resources to founding new constituent colleges instead of wholly new universities? Were there abortive attempts elsewhere that failed for some unifying reason? Was there just not as much demand for tertiary education as I imagined there would be?

I appreciate any insights you can offer!

I'm currently trying to cite something I found in "The Unwritten Order" by Peter Longerich. I'm hoping to look at the transcript of the document he is citing, I'm guessing the problem here is that it's extremely labor-intensive to digitize and translate documents in archives, so I simply can't get access to this. If it's just a matter of my inability to translate this citation into a database entry or something, that'd be awesome to know. Here is the citation:

... see also Bormann's circular to the Gauleiter of 11.7.43 (lfZ, Party Chancellory, R33/43), in which he says, on Hitler's behalf, 'in the public treatment of the Jewish question every statement must remain subject to a future total solution'.

in particular, the "(lfZ, Party Chancellory, R33/43)" bit is making me feel like I could find what I'm looking for if I just knew how to work with this line of text.

I anticipate that this is either stored in an archive somewhere or is easy to find and I'm failing to do so because it's all in German and Longerich translated a small section to english for the purpose of this book. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

When the borders were drawn after the Winter War, does anyone know why they were set where they are?

Because for many years I've noticed that the section of the border running from the Gulf of Finland to NE of Joensuu is roughly parallel to the Finnish coast between Vaasa & Oulu, and that if you rotate a map of Finland so that SW is at the bottom, the southern part of Finland becomes symmetrical in shape. Any idea why this is so?

I’m sure you might’ve of heard of the conspiracy theory the phantom time hypothesis which is that time has been added to our calendar and that the Middle Ages were a hoax. How would you respond to people who make that claim?

In lots of media, like in TNO, Zhukov is usually portrayed as the good Soviet. A man who genuinely believes in communism and it being democratic, but is that accurate to the real man? What were some of his thoughts on things like how representative the various governments were? Did he have any opinions on the economy? Did he ever mention any political figures he particularly liked?

Why did Germany fail to capitalize on Russia’s withdrawal from the war (though, admittedly, moving about half a million soldiers from the east to the west) by leaving 1.5 million soldiers on the Eastern Front who soaked up resources, food, transport, etc. and could have been used elsewhere?

Given how influenced the founding fathers were influenced by Roman Republican institutions when designing the US government however there doesn't seem to have been much thought or reference made to the system of dual consolships. This system seems in roman history was the main check on the possibility of a new king emerging something the founding fathers made other attempts to prevent. So was this system considered and rejected as impractical, favoured by some but rejected by those who wanted a stronger executive or was it never mentioned at all and just forgotten due to a lack of contemporary dyarchies?

The amount of times I enthusiastically open a thread with 100+ comments and they've all been deleted is extremely disappointed. I love how much value and thought is given into each topic but I feel like nine out of ten posts I open aren't answered.

Edit - U/axelrad77 suggested Chrome and Firefox browser extension 'Ask Historians Comment Helper' which displays the amount of top-level comment in each thread. Looking forward to using this with future browsing.

I should add in general I'm wondering if there were clichés that the ancient audiences may have actually recognized and thought were overused similar to us wity movies and televisions today.

Especially in places like Ancient Greece where oracles were kind of run like businesses, how would people rationalise a supposedly divine prediction that just wasn’t at all accurate? (I understand that predictions were usually pretty vague to avoid precisely this, but even then there must have been quite a few that just don’t work any way you look at it)

I've read that adobe construction in the Americas goes back thousands of years, but that the use of rectangular bricks was introduced by the Spanish. Is this accurate? What set apart pre-Contact styles of adobe construction and engineering from post-Contact?

As an additional question, is it likely that Matthew, who wrote that story, meant the same thing or something different?

Magi of course were the Zorastrian priest-caste of the Parthian Empire, rival to the Roman Empire, whose westernmost borders were not really that far to the East of the area ruled by Herod the Great, including the village of Bethlehem. I always assumed that the Gospel of Matthew is referring to Zorastrian priests from Parthia (hence their use of astrology), it's just that later medieval Christians, not understanding the meaning of Magi, interpreted it as Kings or as generic "wise men." But a friend of mine who studied Ancient History (I did Modern History) said that Greeks had a poor understanding of Magi, often using it to refer to sorcerers (hence Simon Magus), or using it to refer to anyone from Iran. So this has made me wonder what a)early Christians might have understood by Magi, and b)what the author meant by Magi. Although I suspect the former is a much easier question to answer than the latter.

From what I know:

-He didn't have exactly stellar military record during Toyotomi's era.
-He wasn't the most senior retainer of Toyotomi's.
-He was from "less prestigious" clan of the coalition (Compared to Mōri, Uesugi, Maeda, Shimazu, etc).
-He was not selected as Council of Five Elders.
-He was more of an administrator instead of a general.

I know he wasn't the official leader of the coalition. Instead the honor went to Mōri Terumoto of Mōri clan. But he was still the de facto leader.

So how exactly did he rise to the top of pro-Toyotomi coalition that's filled with much more senior and experienced retainers?

I did a bit of research and I see lots of mixed things. Some saw it as an opportunity to get rich and start businesses (oligarchs), others lost their jobs. Some sad stories as well in which mothers had to sell hair, or sell themselves to afford food for their children. Crime skyrocketed, there was general confusion among soldiers and police.

I ask this as the Soviet Union collapses 29 years ago today

Been reading a lot about Chinese history and wondered why the emperors dont just kill their regents for treason.

In a few scenarios the regents killed the emperor with poison if they think they cant controll him but can an emperor just arrest him in a public event or place infront of other court officials?

Edit: sorry if i misspelled a couple of words

I've had an interest in medical anthropology for a long time and recently have also become fascinated with what I guess is the history of healthcare. I stumbled on a textbook written in the 1900s for young boys and girls about health, which was great fun to read. Then I was reading Charles Dickens' American Notes and loved his accounts of Laura Bridgman and the various hospitals and institutions he visited. So I'm really interested in reading more texts from throughout history to see how thinking about health developed over time (both physical and mental). Does anyone have good recommendations that I could easily find? I'm mostly interested in primary sources, but if you also have a good scholarly book on the history of healthcare that you'd like to recommend, I would be interested in that too!

Hello,

I’ve been listening to some debates between two of my friends on the 4th crusade in I believe I heard 1204 or maybe 1205 or something.

I remember hearing that the Crusaders I believe was said to be Latin and the republic of Venice sacked Constantinople.

Now what confuses me is who held Constantinople in the time it was sacked?

Or did the byzantine empire remain in control of Constantinople until the sacking in the 4th crusade?

Sorry if my question sounds dumb. I have a disability and when asking something I sorta process my question to quick in my head and can make no sense.

I hope this is the right place to ask.

How come in these countries the languages didn't mix into a new one or a new dialect of one?