If you have an interest in the Witch Trials, do not come to Salem in October (or at all for that matter). We're already being inundated by the tourist crowd and they all expect to see the locations of gallows, homes, and legitimate witches.

So ranting in no particular order:

1. There were no real witches. Just because people were convicted doesn't mean it was a fact. They were victims of social, political, and religious hysteria.
2. The site that they tentatively identified as the site of the gallows is not 100% confirmed. It is in a wooded lot behind Walgreens.
3. The bodies are not buried anywhere in Salem. If they were by the family afterwards, the locations were not public knowledge.
4. Salem in 1692 consisted of much more land area. Modern day Danvers, Peabody, Andover, and other local towns were part of it. Most of the accused hailed from these outlying areas.
5. The statue by Salem Commons is of Roger Conant. He was an original settler - not a witch.
6. Every witch related museum in town is a commercial entity. They do not house artifacts from the trials.

There's more, but I think I made my point. All that being said, if you're coming to Salem because of the tourism and not the actual trials, by all means enjoy yourself.

Promised somebody an article, so I've spent the last week digging through the published letters of 1930s pulp authors H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith and piecing together what they knew about Atlantis and Theosophy - and when they knew it vis-a-vis their published fiction. For one excerpt:

About Atlantis — I believe something of the sort existed, though I do not especially hold any theory about a high type of civilization existing there — in fact, I doubt that. But some continent was submerged away back, or some large body of land, for practically all peoples have legends about a flood. And the Cro Magnons appeared suddenly in Europe, developed to a high stage of primitive culture; there is no trace to show that they came up the ladder of utter barbarism in Europe. Suddenly their remains are found supplanting the Neanderthal Men, to whom they have no ties of kinship whatever. Where did they originate? Nowhere in the known world, evidently. They must have originated and developed through the different basic stages of evolution in some land which is not now known to us.

The occultists say that we are the fifth — I believe — great sub-race. Two unknown and unnamed races came, then the Lemurians, then the Atlanteans, then we. They say the Atlanteans were highly developed. I doubt it. I think they were simply the ancestors of the Cro Magnon men, who by some chance, escaped the fate which overtook the rest of the tribes.

All my views on the matter I included in a long letter to the editor to whom I sold a tale entitled “The Shadow Kingdom,” which I expect will be published as a foreword to that story — if ever. This tale I wove about a mythical antediluvian empire, a contemporary of Atlantis.

• Robert E. Howard to Harold Preece, 20 Oct 1928, Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard 1.237

"The Shadow Kingdom," starring Howard's character Kull of Atlantis, was published in the August 1929 issue of Weird Tales (it was not uncommon for the editor Farnsworth Wright to "hold on" to material for quite a while after acceptance before publishing it; regrettably their correspondence on this story no longer exists). The talk about the "fifth sub-race," and combining Atlantis and Lemuria put's Howard's source(s) pretty firmly in Theosophical territory, though there's no indication he ever read any of Blavatsky's work - though he did read a collection of notes on theosophy's epic mythology which had been prepared by fellow pulpster E. Hoffmann Price and passed around the literary circle in 1933, that was a long while after this letter was written. Howard, like Lovecraft, had a great love of history and read copiously with the books he could get, but had little formal education in the subject, and put a good deal of stock in the anthropological ideas the period (many of which basically amount to scientific racialism) and his own euhemeristic interpretations of things like the Book of Invasions (he was far from alone in this pursuit, Lovecraft did a lot of the same, and they tended to reinforce the tendency in one another.)

Theosophy is such a grab-bag mish-mash of fringe and pseudo-history, occult concepts, 19th century scientific theories, and appropriated Indian folklore and philosophy - and so influential as a source of ideas and concepts in popular fiction, from Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom novels to Jack Kirby's Fourth World in comic books - that it's sometimes really difficult to say where exactly any idea originated, but I think I can make a good case to track a line of influence - or at least different people taking stabs at similar material.

Just taking this opportunity to vent my feelings for the way the 500th anniversary of the Reformation is going to be celebrated by the Protestant Church here in Germany next year. There's little to no interest in actual historical scientific findings, rather a strong tendency of promoting a pretty idealized and sweetened image of Martin Luther. "Luther as a paragon of religious tolerance"? I mean, come on! Even the feminist organisation within the church credited him with the fact that today we have female pastors and bishops. As somewhat of a feminist myself, this statement seems ludicrous. Now Martin Luther definitely was an outstanding and immensely influential historical figure, and I can understand the high esteem the church holds him in. But that's no reason to treat him so completely out of context and to forcibly try to make his teachings out as the answers to today's issues. They also completely ignore the political dimensions of the Reformation, portraying it as a solely religious event. Noted Reformation expert Heinz Schilling even described what the church is doing as dogmatic historiography. Seeing as how well the Protestant Church in Germany dealt with their involvement in the NS-Regime, I would have expected a lot more.

what were people's reaction to the modern flushing indoor toilet? were people worried about disease or smell from having it, since they were used to outhouses?

Not directly a history question but I would like to ask that how to seriously keep my historical knowledge up to date and if I do a bachelors in history would it be worth my time? My background is Accounting but I am a keen history enthusiast who studied history upto 11th grade and also read up on a quite a few historical topics on the Internet. Also playing the games age of empires 2 and 3 really helped to develop my interest in history.

What are one or two good books to read to get a good lay of Latin American history especially post 1800?

New blog post today, on a question that comes up occasionally on here (and elsewhere): What did Roosevelt think about the atomic bomb? Would he have used it against Japan? What can we know about what he thought it was going to be used for? I've tried to summarize the evidence and my thoughts on it here: FDR and the bomb

This is probably covered somewhere or is too in depth for this sort of thread but I'm new to this subreddit so here goes.

What was the day to day of a Samurai like? In addition, would they be expected to attend any special events throughout the year?

1.How accurate are claims discussed in "the greatest story never told" and such neo-nazi works about hitler not intending to start a war/or seeking world domination? 2.also on most WW2 videos, vast majority of the comments section is bombarded with accusations that the videos are lieing ... what do these comment writers refer to? what is wrong with the WW2 events that so many people seem to consider as lies? thanks in advance.. Love your subreddit.