My friend and I got into this as she prefers the Southern version (cause Elvis), while I prefer the one that talks about beating up traitors, and because I think the Northern lyrics are cleverer.

My points: While the song never outright mentions slaves, they are conspicuous in their absence. The first line literally names the South "the land of cotton" as if that were something to be proud of, nevermind who is forced to pick it. To me it is as bad as naming Xinjiang the land of cotton today (just lost 5 social credit points there).

Furthermore the whole "in Dixieland I'll take my stand/to live and die in Dixie" is certainly meant to appeal to an audience becoming increasingly steeped in Southern nationalism, and its place as a national anthem of the Conferacy makes it somewhat uncomfortable, especially when Elvis puts it next to Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Lastly as it was originally sung by minstrels in blackface (not my objection, that was common at the time) "I wish I was in Dixie" could give the impression that black prople long to go to the South, in the spirit of arguments that blacks were better off in the South than the North, which seems downright insulting.

Her points: It is originally a Northern song, that the South adopted it doesn't change its origins, and the composer wasn't pro-seccessionist, it simply spread from the North to a receptive audience.

The land of cotton is just a description, lots of regions have somewhat historically problematic names. Meanwhile the North could be called the land of tobacco or corn or whatever.

The song doesn't glorify the South, it satirises the idea of willing slaves with the minstrel lyrics being intentionally comedic. Most Southern versions did away with the black speaker.

Taking ones stand is a common symbol in American music from the War of Independence and the colonial mindset of self-reliance, it isn't a literal call for secession.

Please bear in mind that this debate is purely academic, neither of us are American of any stripe and I don't particularly care if anyone sings Dixieland at all. This was simply two different perspectives on which version of a song is better in a friendly argument in which I fully respect her points as potentially valid (though not vice versa!)

TL;DR I believe the song has a negative history, and understandably wouldn't be well recieved by many today, while she thinks it has been redeemed by its origins and subsequent pop-culture usage.

I was reading "the making of the atomic bomb" by Richard Rhodes and for whatever reason I assumed that the average person pre atomic era, likely had no real understanding or knowledge of radiation and such. I was surprised when I read about one of the aircrew of the Hiroshima expedition commenting that he didn't know what he was dropping until he was on the plane. Then following it up with "so basically we're splitting atoms here? I hope we don't go sterile from the radiation". This seemed like a surprisingly educated take from a bombardier. So basically, how much did the average man know about the science at the time?

This may seem silly, but I often find myself thinking "What colors were widely used in the 80's" or "How would someone in the 50's have painted this".

I can find plenty of articles with someone's opinion or vague phrases like "pastel blue", but I can't seem to find any real historical lists of "These colored were widely used in clothing production during the mid 80's, here's the hex codes for them".

Does anyone know of any such resources? Are there any color historians? How far back can we get real accurate color values?

Besides some words being integrated here in there with Arabic across North Africa, is there any remnants of maybe a sub vulgar Latin language still being spoken? Or did it all really collapse by the 700s? Excluding modern Romance languages themselves.

The injustice of the clearances is widely accepted, but recently I have heard some people characterising the Clearences as a "genocide". Is this fair? What is the current consensus among historians?

I recently talked to someone from South Tyrol in northern Italy.

They insisted that Italy had gained the territory when they signed a peace deal with Austria after WWI. Due to a misunderstanding about when the deal took effect, the Austrian army began to march home before it was legally enacted. The Italians then occupied South Tyrol with no opposition.

The Wikipedia entry for South Tyrol makes no mention of this. Any truth to it?

Trying to get an idea of how long worship of gods such as Tanit and Baal Hammon persisted in the cultures in/around Carthage. I know the entire city was essentially destroyed but I assume the people would have still survived. I know a new Carthage was essentially built out of the ashes and the place became heavily romanized, but I’m a little perplexed on the finer details on this bit I found from an article on Canaanite paganism on wikipedia:

“After the conquest of these regions by the Roman Republic in the third and second centuries BCE, Punic religious practices continued, surviving until the fourth century CE in some cases.“

What exactly are these some cases? I couldn’t find the source in the bibliography, nor can I find really much about Carthage post-punic wars. Thanks!

There's a story that's told about why modern game controllers have the directional inputs on the left side. Supposedly, arcade games that used both directional inputs and buttons originally placed the directional inputs on the right-hand side, because most people are right-handed, and directional inputs typically require more finesse. But at some point, some arcade owners allegedly started switching this around (which is a very easy thing to do, requiring minimal DIY skills) in order to deliberately force the right-handed majority to play with their non-dominant hand on the directional inputs, so that they would have more difficulty and therefore have to spend more money to progress in a given game. This would probably have been around the 1980s or early 1990s. Eventually the industry standardised around this, and therefore we now have the standard control layout that places the directional controls on the left.

But is there any evidence of this claim about arcade owners modifying their games in this particular way? This story is very persistent, but I have yet to find anyone actually citing a source.

Im currently writing a history project on WWII strategic bombing a need books discussing the topic. I speficaly searching for information on the Dehousing paper.

I just wanted to ask, since I couldn't find the answer on google, and my teacher didn't know either.

Why didnt the Germans make use of shotguns in world war 1. When researching about the MP18 and its development I just kept thinking how shotguns fill all the roles they were looking for, already a common technology, and has been already combat proven by the Americans which they complained about. Any reason not too?

Persia's response (attack with overwhelming force) seems perfectly predictable...were the leaders & citizens of Athens unclear on the forces at Darius' disposal, or have some reason to believe they would not be the focus of Persian wrath, or did they pledge their support in full knowledge of what they were inviting on themselves?

Just wondering if there are any interviews or records from people who saw the end of Tsarist rule who lived long enough to see the end of the Soviet Union.