So, I'd like to throw out a suggestion for this sub-reddit.

As my flair indicates, my topics of interest are very recent history and even what many people would consider to be current affairs. /r/askhistorians has a strict 20-year rule that I believe is a good and necessary measure to ensure civility and analytical rigor in this sub-reddit. Unfortunately, it also means that we don't get to discuss some of the key historical events that have shaped today's world, events that historians in the academy are addressing vigorously and with a great deal of insight.

With that being said, I was wondering if the moderators might consider, and if the users of this sub-reddit might be interested in, a bi-weekly or monthly feature thread on a particular topic of great historical import that has happened within the last 20 years. Just from my own research focus, we could have a thread on the historical significance of: 9/11, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Lewinsky scandal, the 2000 US presidential election, and much more. As someone interested more generally in the global history of the 1990s and 2000s, there are many other topics I'd be interested in learning more about.

Like I said, I think the 20 year rule is overall a good thing, but I also think it would be beneficial to look at some of these more recent events and issues that we normally can't discuss here.

I passed my MA dissertation (Medieval Studies) and I graduate in December :D

Dear History,

I'm leaving you for the political science department. It's not you, it's me.

xoxo gplnd

My book's arrived. I'm a happy academic. It arrived just in time to go into my tenure file as something other than page proofs, which is a huge plus in terms of inoculating me against bureaucratic snafus. Of course while I was away at the African Studies Association meeting, my fiancee had to drag the book all over town and take pictures of a few local legends "reading" it. (That is my only book tour, I think.) She's awesome.

I'm 27! In addition to avoiding white lighters like the plague and trying to avoid death, I thought I would do a monthly series on some members of the "27 club."

Part 1: The Experience

John Alan Hendrix was born on November 27, 1942 in Seattle, while his father was serving in WWII. His parents' marriage fell apart quickly after his father (Alan)'s return, and his father took care of the child and on September 11, 1946 rechristened him with the name that would be plastered on the annals of rock and roll history: James Marshall Hendrix.

Hendrix was an entirely self-taught musician. He even (famously) played guitar left handed, even though he wrote with his right hand.

In 1961, Hendrix dropped out of high school to enlist in the Army, and joined the 101st Airborne. His military career was uneventful; he obtained the rank of Private First Class, after being cited for several offenses, including sleeping on watch on masturbating on duty. After an ankle injury, he was discharged in 1962.

Hendrix began playing on the Chitlin circuit, and earned a place in the backing bands of established artists, including the Isley Brothers and Little Richard. His most important work as a sideman was with Curtis Knight and the Squires. While working with Knight, Hendrix signed a record contract with Ed Chalpin who managed the group.

In May of 1966, Hendrix's playing caught the eye of a London fashionista named Linda Keith, who was at the time dating guitarist Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.

Linda aided Jimi in making some contacts, and soon he was speaking with Chas Chandler, the former bassist of The Animals (You are probably familiar with their versions of House of The Rising Sun and Don't Let me Be Misunderstood)

Chandler was in the process of leaving The Animals, and had decided he would much rather be a record producer than a bassist. In September of 1966, Hendrix flew with Chandler to London, with a White Stratocaster in tow. (Some sources say Linda "borrowed" it from Keith Richards for Hendrix, but that seems to me to most likely be mythos being added after the fact. However, much like Fox Mulder, I do want to believe)

Hendrix began jamming around the London scene, with Chandler being keen to make him "an item." One late night jam at an after-hours club involved Cream. Jimi went on stage and began playing his arrangement of Howling Wolf's blues song "Killing Floor." An astonished Eric Clapton walked off the stage during the song, lit a cigarette and said "Is he that fucking good?"

As Chandler was pressing Hendrix to record some original material, in particular his arrangement of the song "Hey Joe," the two began auditions for a band. They eventually selected Noel Redding (A fine guitar player in his own right) to play bass and Mitch Mitchell to play drums, and thus The Jimi Hendrix Experience was born. Michael Jeffrey, who had previously managed The Animals, was recruited to manage The Experience.

Before we delve further into his musical career, I want to talk for a moment about Jimi Hendrix, the man.

Jimi was a remarkably private and insecure person offstage. I don't mean that he was antisocial, or that the stories you have heard and read about how much he partied are false. I mean that he was always insecure about his singing and had to be coaxed by Chandler to take a lead singing role. He had a curious inability to say "no" to people, always wanting to avoid confrontation, and loved partying, but when it came to friendships, he would almost never let people in. Even most of his "close" friends were kept at an arm's length. Although he was charismatic, when not performing, his personality was far from the unstoppable wild man on stage at performances.

Simultaneous with a frantic performing schedule, the group recorded and released two singles, "Hey Joe" and "Purple Haze." They then began working on material for a full length LP: Are You Experienced?

The album took 16 recording sessions at 3 different studios to complete, mainly because of Jimi's perfectionist nature, and his frequent desires to change the arrangement or tone of a song. During this time, Jimi met a kindred soul in the studio in the form of sound technician Eddie Kramer. Hendrix would frequently try to explain to Kramer "colors" or "sounds" he heard in songs, and Kramer would find a way to translate them to recorded audio using guitar effects.

Are You Experienced? was released in May of 1967. The band's next big break came at the Monterey Pop Festival in June of that year.

The Experience's first big gig in North America, they were billed with other acts such as The Who, Big Brother and the Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin) The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.

Either The Who or The Experience was to close the festival, but neither act wanted to follow the other. A backstage coin flip ensued, with The Who winning the right to take the stage first.

The Who came out blazing, and ended their set with a destructive climax during "My Generation." Roger Daltrey swung his mic through the air obscured by smoke, and Pete Townshend and Keith Moon both demolished their equipment, then the band strode off stage to wild applause.

After a short introduction by Brian Jones (of the Rolling Stones), Hendrix, Mitchell and Redding sauntered onstage to make their debut.

As Hendrix began Killing Floor, the lights remained down. Only when Mitchell came in on the drums did the crowd see Jimi, sporting a vest and a pink feather scarf. The as yet unreleased in America Foxey Lady followed. The crowd was in frenzy. The penultimate number would be Purple Haze, with Hendrix toying with the crowd by substituting the oft-misheard "Scuse me while I kiss the guy" line for the actual "Excuse me while I kiss the Sky" lyric.

Before the final number, Hendrix thanked the crowd and told them he was about to be "sacrificing something I really love" before the band launched into a feedback saturated version of Wild Thing by The Troggs.

After seeing solos played with his teeth, between his legs, or while lying on the ground, the crowd was then subjected to something they expected even less as Hendrix began a physical assault on his Marshall amplifiers, then began to pull on his tremolo bar. In contrast to the apocalyptic quality of the sounds when Townshend has smashed his guitar, Hendrix, by some miracle, maintained an odd, sensual quality, and Hendrix's actions were nothing if not overtly sexual. As Mitchell and Redding played on, Hendrix picked up a can of lighter fluid, and proceeded to create one of the most memorable images of Rock History.

After Monterey, the group began a tenacious touring schedule, egged on in part by Jeffery. It is worth noting that Jeffery and Chandler self-promoted Hendrix's live performances, using in-house employees and subcontractors and enabled The Experience to become one of the most profitable acts in rock music history up to that time- for every dollar made on tour, roughly 85 cents went back to Are You Experienced Ltd. Around this time, the group began to party harder than they ever had before (a remarkable feat) and were dropping a prodigious amount of LSD, along with an impressive concoction of other drugs.

The group soon began work on Axis: Bold as Love, a much more ambitious undertaking than the first album had been. While Are You Experienced? featured mostly bluesy jam songs, for Axis, Hendrix tried exotic recording techniques, added new instruments including the Recorder and Glockenspiel to tracks, and generally took his time (and money) to experiment in order to get the perfect sound in his head. Tracks were dubbed and redubbed, mixed and remixed and recorded then rerecorded with a different arrangement. Redding and Mitchell had increasing downtime as studio editing ate up more and more of the band's recording sessions. Redding took to leaving for the pub until being told he was needed between takes. Mitchell had his own approach to such frequent downtime, which resulted in at least one studio employee walking in on a blonde astride Mitchell in what had been presumed to be an empty room.

When Axis was finally completed, there was one additional problem-the day before the album was scheduled to be sent in to the record company, Hendrix lost the masters to side A, presumably in the back of a cab. A frantic re-production was done remixing unmixed tapes during a stressful all-nighter by the group, Chandler and Kramer.

More incessant touring followed, urged on by Jeffrey (who did not see much revenue except when the band was performing) with the group becoming increasingly fatigued and exhausted, while simultaneously beginning work on another album.

Part 2 will be coming next week, as I haven't finished it yet- my writing took on a mind of it's own and I've had to substantially trim this part down, but I wanted to get this posted today in honor of Jimi's birthday yesterday.

Sources: Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll (3rd edition), Hippie by Barry Miles, Hendrix- setting the record straight by McDermott and Kramer.

I seriously can't be trusted with history books. I have zero self control. Right now my Amazon wish list has several tantalizing volumes, and I don't think I have the resolve to survive this weekend without buying some of them.

The books most likely to tempt me?

• Indigenous Landscapes and Spanish Missions: New Perspectives from Archaeology and Ethnology

• The Victory with No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army

• Gathering Together: The Shawnee People Through Diaspora and Nationhood, 1600-1870.

Sigh. Hello, my name is anthropology_nerd and I'm an addict.

When I got accepted into my MA program in February, I briefly considered whether I could write my thesis on Russian sports, namely the Kontinental Hockey League (Russian hockey league that's slowly moving into Europe). But I decided against it for a couple reasons: as much as I'd like to involve my other great interest, hockey, into my academic life, I didn't think it would ultimately help my future prospects. And I wasn't sure how well it would be receptive, though I did have a basic idea of how it would work.

Only last week I was introduced to an MA thesis regarding the history and development of Soviet hockey, via a hockey website. What really caught my eye, aside from this being one of the only English-language efforts on the subject, was that it came from my university, indeed my program, in 2004. Then a couple days later I found another thesis, this one about the KHL itself (and its effects on Latvia), that was just written last year at the University of Turku, Finland (in English).

While I'm not about to change the direction of my thesis, I was inspired at least to write a paper for a class on the subject, changing it at the last minute. So I spent last weekend writing how the Russians are using the KHL as a means of utilising soft power into Europe via expansion, and how its a nice microcosm of Russia-West relations. Unfortunately I could only write 12 pages, though I easily could have double that, if not more. And I was limited to only briefly touching on this historical background (Putin has on multiple occasions mentioned the influence the Soviet's exceptional record in hockey has on the current league).

And even better, I now have some 300 pages of MA theses to read regarding Soviet/Russian/Latvian hockey history to go over on the December break. Really interested to see what the two say.

I recently volunteered time to help a local historian collect information and objects related to the history of the town I work in. She is setting up an online museum, digitizing photographs, and transcribing letters.

My job is to research a booklet that has names, their signatures w/ dates (1920s/30s), and a code of conduct for a group that met in the area around those decades. Are there any great place to start researching genealogies that stretch back to that time? She is very knowledgable but thought some outside input would be great. We're located in northern NJ.

This guy is designing the next Assassins Creed game.

I hope it's good.

Has anyone considered the sarsen stones at Stonehenge were moved in winter time on sleds?

Is it possible for undergraduates who do not major in history to apply to a master’s program in history (or in my case, classical studies)? Do graduate programs look poorly on applicants who have worked in a non-history related field for several years before applying?

Since I recently passed my thesis, fellow historians, what did you write your thesis on?

Mine was on the Middle Ages on film, with a particular focus on the films about Joan of Arc.

Hi there r/askhistorians I dont know if this is the best time/place/sub for this type of question, but here goes

Im starting my masters in History next year, with an eye to doing my thesis on something to do with kingship during the various barron's wars of the 13th century in England. Thus far, i have acquired through the university library a number of books, mostly by Michael Prestwich. My question is whether any of you fine people can either suggest either a potential area of study within this, add to my reading list, or to help narrow the definition of what I could spend a year studying.

Alternately, the other topic that i was considering was something to do with post ww2 Marxist historiography within the English historical profession.

Any thoughts/comments/pointers on either topic would be much apreciated

I would like some reading recommendations for tengriism. The origins, mythos, how it was used on the steppe, and its modern day practices.

Anyone can recommend books which look at the affairs,or deal with Indian historiography?

I have recently graduated with a Bachelors Degree in History and Education, currently looking for a teaching gig. The question I'd like to ask though is this, how did you all decide what area to specialize in? I'd like to eventually pursue a masters and I'm having trouble deciding what to focus on as I have a lot of interests.

The Golden Age of Piracy, Celtic History/Mythology, Norse History/Mythology specifically the vikings, and I also find the Medieval era to be quite fascinating as well. How do you go about choosing a field of study and sticking to it?