Since, as I understand, the greatest honor for vikings was dying in battle and going to Valhalla, it made me wonder the above question. Were old Vikings regarded as heroes, "normal" or instead disgraces since they did not die an honorable death in battle?

I've been doing some research on institutional responses to the Spanish flu. 40 out of the country's 43 largest cities closed their public schools. Tons of public celebrations and gatherings were cancelled. Universities are hubs of young people, aka the people most vulnerable to the Spanish flu. While some schools did unroll some more or less strict guidelines, not many schools sent the kids home. Why is that?

Just read this argument, which says that foodstuffs from outside Europe would have been closed anyways (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, America eventually and Argentina). There is also the point that the German merchant marine fleet was too small by the time the war started, insurance from London was unavailable, and there was little way to communicate via cable for orders.

Reading this in Cambridge's history of the naval war in WWI, which points the finger at Ludendorff's decision to take draught animals for his spring offensive that killed the harvest (and Poland, Hungary and Ukraine not really in any state to deliver food).

I read somewhere (probably TV Tropes, so) that what we would today recognize as a CIC (a centralized hub away from a ship's bridge for coordinating and directing a battle) was first described by Smith in his Lensman books, which went on to inspire their implementation in modern warships.

As a concept, the CIC seems like something that would arise organically from the needs of increasingly complex engagements, but Smith was writing directly before WWII and I believe he did government work in chemistry, so it's possible he was in contact with folks who would go on to implement the CIC as we know it. Can this one author really be credited with something that has become such a staple of our image of naval engagements?

As an aspiring archaeologist, what important books would you recommend I read if I want to learn up on the different cultures within the cradle of civilization. I'm already plan on getting Histories by Herodotus, The Book of the Dead, and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

With the last two presidential elections in the U.S. being in dispute (I.e. Trump winning because of Russian involvement or Biden winning because of Chinese involvement) I was curious if any local/state/national elections in U.S. history have ever been in dispute before where large numbers of people don’t believe the election results are valid.

I apologize if this breaks the <20 year rule but I am more curious about elections prior to 2000 (as that one was decided by the Supreme Court)

What kind of campaign was used? And in general, did people buy them in color for the novelty, or did they need proof or examples that the color version actually looked good?

I know that there was a large influence on English by norman french and to a certain extent by latin itself on vocabulary and pronounciation. But did it also change grammar, syntax etc. ? For example if you take the word 'go' (or 'to go'), the past tense of it is 'went', making it an irregular verb and basically replacing 'go' with a completely new word in the past tense. That is very unlike most other germanic languages (eg in german 'gehen' -> 'ging')

So did this come from the latin 'venit' which does roughly mean the same? Especially since pronounciation of classical latin 'v' is kind of similar to the english 'w', at least at the beginnig of words.

I've always been fascinated by the idea that invading barbarians brought about the 'dark ages'. I was interested if there are any books that deal with western europe in the early medival period and challenge the assumption that technology, civilization and culture regressed.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions of research.

Edit. Early medieval rather than early dark ages.

I know there’s a few theories about Ivarr’s nickname. The obvious and one depicted in the show Vikings was that he had a bone disease that rendered his legs useless. However, I’ve also read that “boneless” was referring to his impotence. Some also think it was a simple mistranslation over time and “Boneless” isn’t the correct nickname at all.

So, is there a general agreement among historians on the most likely meaning behind the name?

Doing a lot of stuff on Roman land assignation during the Republic recently got me thinking on how this was handled during modernity. When such new tracts of land were created, how was the land assigned, especially farmland? Was there an auction, did the land just go to the highest bidders, or was there an effort to give land to 'farmers in need', so to speak? Couldn't find anyhting on wikipedia on that matter.

Hi, i'm from Italy and i come from a really high-grade nobility family from the south of Italy.

I'm studying some history of my family and i realised that the father of my grand father was born in 1899. Here in Italy, these boys who were born in 1899 were the ones who saved the country during the horrible war with Austria, enrolling in 1917 when they became just 18 years old.

I wanted to know what was the role of noble borns during WWI, i know that his sister was an important red cross volunteer and she died on the front, she had a medal for this. But i don't know anything about her brother Paolo, my grandfather's father.

It would be a great honour to know if he served for the army as a '99 boy since this generation is highly rewarded with pride.

During the history of my family, many ancestors had military grade in chivalry and command. My grandfather also was enrolled in WWII as anti-aircraft artillery, but rapidly dismissed for political reasons or for illness.

Thanks for the help!

...or is this an Anglocentric misconception on my part?

I have a ton of questions! Hoping someone could give some clarifications on The death of Yugoslavia Episode 1. So my first question is.. why was Ivan Stambolic suddenly seen as a a dictator after the Kosovo incident and I wasn't exactly clear what it is they where voting for. Wasn't Milosevic the one who went against communist party guidelines? Also why did Milosevic's nationalist ideology gain so much traction within a communist country? Also there was a segment about these (I may be wrong ) magazine publishers . I wasn't clear exactly what the point of the segment was ? And my final question is when its talking about serbia, Kosova, croatia, slovania, bosnia, and montenegro are these all part of one country ? It seems they all have there own governments ?

It seems like there’s a lot of accounts (for instance Magellan’s voyage across the Pacific) where the crew find themselves in dire straits eating rats and ox hides. I’ve always wondered why they didn’t simply fish for food to supplement their stores? With the bounty of the ocean how did it get to the point of starvation. I’d imagine I’m missing some simple point here but I’ve always wondered and I was hoping someone could finally answer this little question I had. Thank you!

I was taking a Classical Japanese course where the professor mentioned that many considered the Tale of Genji to be the world's first novel, and vague google search results seem to agree with this statement. But I was also taking an Ancient Novels course and most of the novels covered in that course predates Murasaki Shikibu (i.e., works by Longus, Heliodorus, Chariton, etc.). In Collected Ancient Greek Novels edited by B.P. Reardon, Reardon states, in his introduction to Callirhoe, that the work, being from the 2nd century A.D., is considered "the first European novel." So I was wondering why the Tale of Genji from the early 11th century is often touted as the first novel ever?

I’m doing research for some art projects. Specifically I’m looking for illustrations of the the fusiliers and the foot artillery uniformes, as well as what their winter equipment was. I’ve searched on Google for this, but the results were inconsistent and dubious.

The dates of their births and deaths of ancient Greek philosophers were always estimated and considered secondary, while their ideas were emphasized. But one of Christianity's major accomplishments was convincing a huge swath of the population that Christ was born in the year 0, and that everything after that counts upward.

Using BC or BCE as a mark of denotation between "then" and "now" seems shockingly religious given its ubiquity in many inquiries into history as well as defining our current year. Yet I see this in articles about history, archaeology, climatology, and so on.

Do academic historians give the alleged year of Christ's birth any credence? If so, how so they justify it?

The British held a military exercise during the Cold War in 1984. It mobilized over 100,000 troops and is the largest British Army exercise. This hasn't happened on this scale again. Why is this? Could something like this happen again?

I would assume Native Americans living in the region that became the center of the California gold rush had encountered gold nuggets and flakes in rivers and streams, but I've never heard any reference to California's gold until 1848. Did they exploit this resource? Did they value it aesthetically? Was it a trade good?