I'm a hot blooded user of 2017-era Reddit hitting the subreddit of AskHistorians for a night out and I've got 'hot blooded X' questions burning a hole in my keyboard. What kind of vice or strangely patterned questions are available to me?

Hello everyone!

As a few people already know, a group of Moderators were fortunate enough to present a panel at the National Council on Public History's Annual Conference in Indianapolis last Friday. Entitled "Democratizing the Digital Humanities?: The “AskHistorians” Experiment in User-Driven Public History", session #s40 saw /u/annalspornographie, /u/agentdcf, /u/WARitter, and /u/sunagainstgold each present a 15 minute talk which, collectively, presented the concept, history, mission, and most importantly, the future vision, of the Subreddit.

To say the least, the session went incredibly. There was great turn out, an attentive and responsive audience, and the panel was fielding some really excellent questions that only got cut off by time running out. The online chatter can give you a taste of the response, as you can see a number of attendees who were live-tweeting the event by checking out the #s40 hashtag on Twitter (Alternatively you can find yourself a used Volvo S40 to buy at a decent price).

We also need to give a huge shoutout to several flairs who helped make the presentation possible. We wanted to provide a demonstration of how the subreddit worked, and chose four flairs - /u/iphikrates, /u/thefourthmaninaboat, /u/miles_sine_castrum, and /u/trb1783 - from a number of volunteers who were simply told to be on stand-by, and that they would have roughly one hour to answer a question posted for them with just a rough idea of what the topic would be. As you can see, everyone of them came through with absolute flying colors - I, II, III, IV. They all did an amazing job providing us with illustration of the subreddit in action.

While we did make an audiofile, our Podcast team is reviewing it to see whether it can be cleaned up to be more presentably sounding than the 'phone next to the speaker' quality it has going for it, but whether or not we are able to release it, each of the panelists will be sharing their papers in a response to this post, and they are all eager to talk more about their papers, the event, answer questions you have, and of course, get the community's own thoughts on what was presented!

As it seems yesterday I wasn’t quite fast enough to write up my response to a question about the possible symbolic meaning behind the at times quite grotesquely large eyes of Late Roman imperial portraits before it got deleted again by the questioner. Maybe it is still of some interest to some of you so I link to it here.

(1/2) Hi all! I've been toying with the idea of creating a podcast specifically dealing with aviation history for a while now. I plan to write and record some episodes throughout the summer. This week I've been doing some reading and writing for what will hopefully become the first episode : The Montgolfier brothers.

Note: it's not a finished work yet, but I hope to get some feedback.

The Montgolfier brothers and the first manned flight

Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier were the sons of Pierre Montgolfier, a Frenchman whom owned prosperous paper factories in the small town of Vidalon in Southern France. The prosperity of their family businesses meant they could draw upon a vast source of wealth to experiment with their shared interest in mechanics and science. Apart from this shared interest they had few things in common.

Of the two Joseph is said to have been the dreamer and the inventor, but impractical in business. The prototype of the absent-minded professor often lost in thought. He once forgot his bride, Therese Filhol, en-route to Lyon after he left the inn in the morning, only remembering her after he arrived and his hosts enquired after her whereabouts. He was quick in learning though and had an outstanding memory. he possessed traits of what today would probably be diagnosed as being a light form of autism spectrum disorder. In addition to the episode with his bride, described above, this is supported by the way in which he writes his letters, easily distracted, and hopping from one subject to another without finishing his thoughts. he was also highly intelligent. (though I must stress I am by no means a doctor qualified to make a diagnosis) He dreaded his time at the Jesuit college in Tournon, especially the theology lessons he thought to be boring, but he devoured hosts of forbidden books on mechanics, arithmetic chemistry and arithmetic, whom were smuggled to him by a bookstore clerk. He became auto didactic in these fields, which he reinforced and fortified through experimental verification. He later on escaped school to establish a small travelling business producing and selling dyes.

In Contrast to Joseph stands Etienne, who was well and formally educated in mathematics, mechanics and other fields. He possessed a strong sense of self-discipline. As the youngest son of Pierre he was sent of to learn a profession under the overseeing eye of the Uncle Jacques in Paris, there he enrolled in the college of Sainte-Barbe where he studied Architecture. In Paris Etienne made friends that would prove to be very useful later on, including Ami Argand, a Genevan inventor and Nicolas Desmarest. In 1772 it was Etienne that succeeded his father Pierre in the family paper business.

Joseph first dreamt up the idea of a balloon. One of the stories that survived says he first got the idea when he was drying some of his wife’s lingerie over a fire, when the fabric billowed and was lifted with the heat. Could a large sack not be filled with the same gas and sent flying? Is what he must have thought.

In 1777 Joseph accompanies his Cousin, Matthieu Duret, to Montpellier where he was taking his medical degree. Joseph extensively wormed information out of Matthieu regarding the newly discovered chemistry of gases. (Joseph Priestley had discovered Oxygen in 1774, and Henry Cavendish isolated Hydrogen in 1766.) After Matthieu laughed at Jospeh for sharing his ideas with regards to flying Joseph merely responded by saying: “ All that you have thaught me of chemistry only confirms me more fully in my ideas, I must make some experiments.”

This is exactly what he did, he experimented with small paper boxes filled with warm air that would float up. Etienne grew impressed with his experiments, which he at first seemed to regard as light-hearted amusing time away from the stress Etienne experienced through several worker’s strikes in the paper mills. The brothers set to work on a larger model, measuring 9 feet on each side. They tried it on the 14th of December 1782, a calm and sunny day they underestimated the lifting capability and the balloon broke free of its cord and floated out into the sky from the ravine in which they conducted their experiment. It came back down to earth at the edge of a field about 3 quarters of a mile away. There the model was destroyed by ignorant passers by. Word was now out that the Montgolfier Brothers were up to something.

Charles Sumner was not born to considerable privilege, except for the usual amount granted to a white man in early nineteenth century Boston. He sort of came from a good Puritan family, but his father was born out of wedlock. Boston then was small enough and incestuous enough that no one was ever going to forget it. The family had a windfall when the governor appointed said father (another Charles) sheriff of Suffolk County. It was a lucrative enough office to afford sending Sumner fils to Harvard.

So Our Hero goes off to Harvard and has a middling career as a student. Harvard at the time has a strict uniform of "black-mixed". It's mixed in that you can have no more than 10% white involved. For the vest you had the option of using white. In his junior year, Sumner got sick of that crap. He bought and wore a buff vest.

He was summoned to the disciplinary board and told them his vest was in fact white. They could believe him or their lying eyes, right? Maybe it needed a washing, but it was white. They gave him a warning. A few days later he's back: same thing. He gets written up. Repeat a few times.

According to his relatively hostile biographer, David Donald,

the professors, wearied by Sumner's stubborn unwillingness to admit that he could be wrong, or perhaps impressed by his ability to argue, in the name of morality and justice, that buff was white, relented and voted "that hereafter Mr. Sumner's vest be considered by this Board white."

I think Donald means for us to read Sumner as being a bratty Teen Rebel(TM) but I'm with Chuck here. A buff vest isn't going to break a gutta-percha cane over anybody's head.

While looking up vintage cocktail recipes, ran across a recipe for mulled wine rendered in verse from How to Mix Drinks, Or, The Bon Vivant's Companion (1862):

First, my dear madam, you must take

Nine eggs, which carefully you'll break—

Into a bowl you'll drop the white,

The yolks into another by it.

Let Betsy beat the whites with switch,

Till they appear quite frothed and rich—

Another hand the yolks must beat

With sugar, which will make them sweet;

Three or four spoonfuls maybe 'll do,

Though some, perhaps, would take but two.

Into a skillet next you'll pour

A bottle of good wine, or more—

Put half a pint of water, too,

Or it may prove too strong for you;

And while the eggs (by two) are beating,

The wine and water may be heating;

But, when it comes to boiling heat,

The yolks and whites together beat

With half a pint of water more—

Mixing them well, then gently pour

Into the skillet with the wine,

And stir it briskly all the time.

Then pour it off into a pitcher;

Grate nutmeg in to make it richer.

Then drink it hot, —for he's a fool,

Who lets such precious liquor cool.

The receipt was republished in several places, and achieved a certain popularity during Prohibition (due to being out of copyright), and there are a few textual variants and additional instructions; might be a fun project for somebody someday to track them down and do an article.

/edit - Should add, "Betsy" in this context means a serving-maid.

So I've been reading Correspondence Analysis and West Mexico Archaeology: Ceramics from the Long-Glassow Collection by Roger Nance et al. on the side. In the background chapter by Phil Weigand, Phil describes the Palacio de Ocomo. It is the only publication I've come across that provides details of the tecpan despite excavations going back to before 2013. The excavators just have not published anything, though I think they submitted reports to the government which are hard to find. It's just nice to finally read some details.

Just for some measurements, the final construction of the tecpan measures roughly 125 meters a side. It encloses a space that is 60 meters by 70 meters. The highest preserved point of the tecpan measures 6 meters. Unfortunately due to its close proximity to the town of Oconahua, many of its finely shaped stone slabs that once covered the structure were mined for other uses like house foundations and a bridge. Phil said these slabs measure 40-50 centimeters a side and some of them were even carved with symbols and possibly glyph (he doesn't include pictures/drawings, though). There's not very many pictures of the structure floating around on the internet yet despite the site being registered with INAH. Oconahua is kind of out of the way to visit. You can see some shots of the tecpan in this interview with Monty, the lead archaeologist of the project. He's a cool dude and he used to work at Los Guachimontones.

I hope Monty publishes more on this structure. It's an important and large building for West Mexico dating from the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic. This was a time of great change in the region when people were no longer burying their dead in shaft and chamber tombs, constructing guachimontones, and creating the elaborate and lively hollow ceramic figures that grace many museums across the world.

/u/400-rabbits, I think I recall you asking me for information on the Palacio. If you would like, I can scan the pages and send it to you to read.

Does anyone know about the use of "chemical hypnosis" during WWII? How effective was this practice in treating shell shock in the field as compared to in rear positions such convalescent hospitals? Namely, the use of either IV or hypodermically injected sodium amytal or tablet phenobarbital.

The origin of this question is that I was watching a 1944 training film on the use of medication at convalescent hospitals and briefly mentioned using Phenobarbital or sodium amytal to put a patient into a state of hypnosis to treat combat fatigue and that this occasionally happened in the field. Cursory research has lead to little outside of collecting stations being issued liquid sodium amytal during pushes occasionally. Any ideas?

Definitely gonna tie down my friend and make them play through a few test scenarios i cooked up for DnD-but-you're-a-Napoleonic-general-but-doing-Hannibal's-campaigns once i finish this stupid paper i procrastinated for weeks.

Late post, not sure if appropriate question for it's own thread.

My sister is graduating NYU with a degree in antiquities, where she took classes in Akkadian and Sumerian. We wanted to get our family a series of t-shirts that had either of the two languages on them, preferably with different funny or odd (for today) phrases ideally coming from historical texts.

We've already found the phonetic translation for some phrases (Gatekeeper, open your gate for me) but were hoping to get the cuneiform translations just so noone would understand.

Any guidance is appreciated.

Is there any academic consensus on the events and developments that everyone ought to know to be considered literate in history? That is to say, someone not pursuing history as a profession. If so, where can I find a list, cirriculum, etc?

I'mnot really sure if there is or isn't, but such baselines do exist in other subjects, so I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. By "everyone" I mean either precisely that, or if no strong international consensus exists, then what every American ought to know.

I was browsing a list of the major events of the 1960s and I noticed that Johnny Carson took over as permanent host of the Tonight Show on October 1, 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis began just two weeks later on October 14.

I tried to find some clips of how the Cuban Missile Crisis was handled by Johnny on the show, but wasn't able to locate anything. No luck with articles either. Is anyone able to locate/recommend some clips or written sources? Personal experience welcome also.

Hello! I have a few questions -

1. How can you tell if a secondary source is outdated? Is there a cutoff date for certain fields or is it just based on the work itself? For example, I have seen some works from the 70s-80s recommended here as being relevant while other works from the same time are said to be outdated, so I'm curious how you go about this.

2. Let's say I'm studying and writing about Clinton's foreign policy and I want to use some Serbian and Bosnian documents in my research. Even though I don't major in Serbian and Bosnian history, I'm I still expected to translate the documents myself or is it okay if I have someone translate them for me? If so, how much money would the translator cost? This post by u/alexis720 didn't seem to give a direct answer to the type of situation I proposed.

3. Just for curiosity, how did you decide on the cutoff date for this subreddit to be 20 years, instead of 10 or 30?

Thanks!

Well guys. The NCPH got you some exposure after all. Pauly Shore showed up. Thanks for nothing.