Here’s another small batch of questions from last week which were popular and/or interesting and have not received an answer so far:

/u/grapp was wondering about differences between farmsteads in England and New England in 1702

/u/caffarelli wanted to know more about How were overseas American soldiers' ballots handled during WWII?

/u/Neutral_Fellow would like to go back to the 16th century and buy a greatsword

Rundown:

• /u/sirventricle on "Did the story of Gilgamesh continue to be well-known past 1000 BCE, before its re-discovery by Hormuzd Rassam in 1853?"

• /u/the_alaskan on "Dave Chappelle recently claimed that when Teddy Roosevelt invited Booker T Washington over to the White House, Teddy received so much flak from the media for it that he supposedly said, "I will never have a n****r in this house again." How true is this story?" and "During the 1850s, illegal logging in the Great Lakes region was so bad that the US Navy was called in to help stop it. How did these "timber pirates" operate, and why were they so successful even after the US Navy was involved?"

• /u/iphikrates answered "What actually happens when a city is sacked?"

I tagged a few odds and ends...

• /u/The_Alaskan in a very popular thread During the 1850s, illegal logging in the Great Lakes region was so bad that the US Navy was called in to help stop it. How did these "timber pirates" operate, and why were they so successful even after the US Navy was involved?

• This one was largely overlooked, but it was great fun listening to a survey of western music suggested by /u/ponticello and /u/EMPEROR_JUSTINIAN_I in I want to listen to music from the beginnings of music till today.

This is the 'tooting your own horn' thread.

My inititial answer to How was it that Milan was able to manufacture so much plate armor in late middle ages? allowed me to talk about the Milanese armour industry (which I really like doing!) with an eye toward labor organization and mechanization, which was interesting. But I really loved the follow up questions!

For those who missed this week's Free for All Friday thread: u/Georgy_K_Zhukov knocked it out of the park with his answer to the question What's the difference between half plate and 3/4ths plate armor?

Elsewhere he got into an interesting discussion about how the post-WWII gender imbalance affected society in the soviet union.

I don't normally do self-promotion but my question; "How reliable is Nelson Mandela as a primary source for understanding apartheid-era South Africa and his role in ending it?" didn't get an answer.

/u/qhapaqocha posted a downthread response to Were the first civilizations (Eridu, Ur, Uruk) aware that they were the first? that explained why the slippery concepts of "civilization" and "city" make it a very hard question to answer.