Today:
Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Day of Reflection. Nobody can read everything that appears here each day, so in this thread we invite you to share anything you'd like to highlight from the last week - an interesting discussion, an informative answer, an insightful question that was overlooked, or anything else.
/u/caffarelli 's discussion of Reboots in the Opera was a fascinating discussion of the question from an angle I didn't even consider before. I had considered the probability of remakes showing up in stage plays like Shakespeare or in folk tales, but the idea of rewriting the music to an opera each season, which is exactly the kind of direct analog I was wondering existing, about never crossed my mind.
/u/AlanWithTea gives us a fantastic rundown of Norman state relations in the 11-12th centuries.
And then /u/TheGreenReaper7 comes in with an exceptionally funny illustration in the big 'Did feudalism exist?' thread from the other day. I quote it here at length, wherein he demolishes someone's deployment of irrelevant historiography:
Blindly reiterating up their position is akin to standing above the smouldering ruins of Herculaneum or Pompeii and protesting that the town is still there because your friend gave you precise directions.
Equally funny is another post here:
Such is the historical veracity with which this individual has captured the essence of early-to-mid twentieth-century historians of feudalism that I can only imagine he is either channelling them directly or that Professor Ganshof has awoken from his cryogenic chamber and speaks to us directly.
Who says history isn't fun? Upvote them for crying out loud.
/u/tayaravaknin explained Jordan's position during the Yom Kippur War.
/u/Cenodoxus explained what led to the North Korean famine of 1994.
/u/Wades-in-the-Water explains drinking habits in the Old West.
/u/The1Man talked about the origins of the Korean War.
/u/nate007 explained the state of the Vichy French military.
/u/restricteddata in Why were the so-called "progressives" of 100 years ago so supportive of eugenics?
/u/profrhodes in Why didn't Britain invade Rhodesia after it declared independence?
/u/Wades-in-the-Water in How reliable, fast, and impactful was the Pony Express and other communication prior to telegraph/telephone?
/u/Tiako in How many countries did Oceania have before colonization?
/u/tayaravaknin posts a fantastic answer to a five month old question about Arabs in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century
/u/elos_ wrote an amazing post to answer the question "When was the last major battle with thousands of line infantry fighting at one time"
User Tayaravaknin answered this 5-month-old question http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1u3u6g/what_is_the_story_of_the_arab_subjects_of_the/
Didn't get a lot of eyeballs, but /u/erus made a nice post on the dichotomy between "art" and "popular" music in history.