Today:
Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Sunday Digest (formerly the Day of Reflection). Nobody can read all the questions and answers that are posted here, 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.
I wasn't expecting such an awesome answer from this question, but /u/OakheartIX gave a wonderful and textured explanation of the importance of, of all the things in all the world, BALLET COSTUMES as a social tool and political weapon at the court of Louis XIV, Sun King of France. Well, the importance of dance in general, but. I mean. BALLET COSTUMES.
The whole thread on the standard French stereotype was a blast. It is fascinating to see how a seemingly cohesive image has so many constituent parts from wildly differing origins.
And working on Alaska time, here's my roundup:
/u/Theon had fun discussing a new paper in response to the question Before electricity, were people as sleep-deprived as we are now?
There was /u/zekthegeke with an answer to a question about the U.S. government's testing projects on unwitting citizens. It ended up being the best answer in the thread, but it was criminally under-noticed.
/u/sunagainstgold has been knocking it out of the park lately and did again with an answer to the question, "I am a peasant in medieval France - how well do I know my religion?"
Weekly Rundown, better late than never!
/u/cthulhushrugged answered "How did the Imperial bureaucracy and centralization develop from the Zhou to the Han dynasties?"
/u/britainopplsnerf answered "What exactly was the Soviet Deep Battle theory and how did the theory differ from the practice of it?"
A bit late, but I was wondering whether someone could answer the question whether "How many Americans fled to other countries during the US civil war?" by /u/bobhwantstoknow. It's, in my opinion, an interesting question but it's not answered yet.