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.
There were good answers from both davidAOP and ETFox on the question of Pirate Curses.
/u/ETFox popped up again to give an excellent comment on Pirate Articles which came up on the latest AskHistorians Podcast episode.
I enjoyed this comment from /u/kohatsootsich regarding the prestige of the Field's Medal and France's dominance.
/u/rosemary85 gave yet another superb answer to the question of precursors to the Iliad and Odyssey.
Finally, a question a think should have gotten a more attention, yet went sadly unanswered: Did the Vietnam War improve race-relations in the USA in some way?
I enjoyed this answer from /u/age_of_kings in response to the question "How did European nations come to dominate India"
I just loved this answer by /u/krhm answering the question, 'Why did Spiritualism become so popular in the mid 19th - 20th centuries?' I love answers like these because so often the 'why' in history doesn't have a single answer, and /u/krhm did a good job of showing the confluence of very different historical streams.
And there's also this answer by /u/restricteddata to the question 'How long did it take for the Nobel Prizes to reach the prestige they have now?' In addition to having a really cool data table, which is a nice reminder that some things in history are--to an extent--quantifiable, it generated a great discussion between /u/restricteddata and /u/yodatsracist. Really great emphasis on interpretation, and how the same raw data can lead to very different explanations.