Exciting new feature! Once a month we will be presenting the latest crop of newly flaired users to you in this thread. May has been a productive month in that regard. We have gained no fewer than 16 experts. Here they are for your perusal.

So I've been accepted for M.A. study of Vikings and suchlike in Iceland and am beginning to get both extremely excited and nervous about the program. Will I be able to keep up? I feel like I don't know anything and just conned my way through college with enthusiasm and a willingness to sacrifice sleep and social life for good grades and good relationships with professors. I can't imagine I'll be able to continue the swindle through an MA program, though. So... How have other people beginning grad study coped? I'm just reading my way through a pile of books and praying that gives me a bit of a leg-up.

Awesomely, I've also just received word I've been accepted to sail on a reconstructed Norse longship this summer, which seems a fitting start. I don't mean to brag, but... well, actually I kind of do mean to brag. I can't wait to plunder the English.

A couple of things - I have just finished my second year history exams, and I am so excited to be done with academic reading for the summer! I can, at least, reel off some various causes for the Wars of the Roses and the end of the Hundred Years War in France now, as well as some Ancient Greek virtues from the Odyssey and Iliad, so there's that. Now I'm enrolled for October on a study of Europe 1914-1989 and another Classics module on Greek and Roman mythology.

I've also purloined tickets for the excellent Mary Beard lecturing on Laughter in Rome at the British Museum at the end of the month, which should be excellent!

Finally, has the British Pathe collection on YouTube been mentioned yet? I had a quick search but couldn't find it. It is an absolute treasure trove of 85,000 videos from the 1890s through to about 1980 with news films of everything from trench warfare to the death of Marilyn Monroe and the Hindenburg Disaster. Completely invaluable.

So I picked up my cap and gown for my "hooding" ceremony tomorrow, even though I won't be done for at least three months. Not being done gives the ceremony a very empty feeling, and the thought of it is a bit nauseating.

I maybe should ask this tomorrow, but does anybody know of any single volume, easy reading history of London? Flipping around the best option I can find seems to be London: A History by Jeremy Black, is anyone familiar with him or the book?

I'm posting in this Friday thread from the National Archives at Kew! I've been here since Tuesday and it is the actual best thing ever -- even if I'm mostly fumbling my way through everything, it's still pretty amazing!

My question is weapon and armor related. Over on the Game of Thrones reddit, they posted images of Oberyn's armor and spear. I can see the flaw in the spearhead (the snake head looks like it's a separate metal then attached to the spear, which indicates to me that it is weakened for cosmetic effect) but is the armor actually any good? It looks stylish, but I'm unsure how useful it would be on an actual battlefield.

Any other things I should be aware of, weapon and armor historians?

what were these things on the beach in D-DAY used for? These cross-like X things. Why were they set up there? You can see some soldiers hiding behind them.

http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2013/10/wwii-d-day-hero-H.jpeg

How reliable are John Green's crash course videos on youtube? Of course they are not very thorough, but due to their brevity and quality I really enjoy kicking back and watching them.

Genghis Khan's military successes are well-documented and oft-discussed. What, if anything, do we know about his reputation as an individual warrior?

A friend of mine is studying abroad in Italy this summer. He's a Latin major. I'm a Classical Humanities major. I'm more than incredibly jealous of him. I wish it didn't cost so much money :|

Finished my final exam today, feels a bit odd to have nothing to do for the next two weeks of term. Hopefully (if I get the grades) I'll still be here next year for my MSt Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, exciting times ahead!

Random question, but how cheap did the US buy most of the land they acquired (Alaska/Louisiana purchase) and is that cheap by today's standards for buying land (ie. $ per acre/hectare/square mileage/etc)?

So I want to be able to answer WWII related questions better, but unfortunately a lot of my previous reading was amateur to intermediate at best. I'd really like to get a few books or articles or something that would have large amounts of information on Germany during the 1930s in terms of economy, industry, social, and political change. I know all of the things that most others know, but I must go deeper!.

What are some good recommendations that aren't going to break the bank?

What do you most like about studying history?

Does it give you a rush?

Did you think you would end up like Indiana Jones?

What could I read about your favorite part in history that would engage me?