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.
Okay I'm posting my own answer—shame on me—but I wrote it two months late so it'd be nice if someone other than the OP (and apparently the author of the paper I'm critiquing!) saw it:
Let’s look back at the theme of the week! What did we learn about literature?
/u/RockNRollJedi talked about the realism of the fantasy tropes of naming weapons
/u/threechance talked about ancient Chinese libraries
/u/AncientHistory talked about female sci-fi fandom and was part of a rather interesting discussion on why do some older authors put a line through all but the first letter of some of the names in their works
I hate tooting my own horn, but both of my comments on questions concering the Boer Republics, which I work on directly as part of my research on 19th century Highveld states, have slipped past a lot of folks. I'm only sad nobody asked for more detail, because I do have it, but you can only hear so much about John Robert Lys and the struggle over sinecures paid in land during the Burgers years, et cetera.
u/Macintosh2003 asked How accepted by historians is the idea that the Crusades and Imperialism had a similar fundamental motivation?
u/Clawstrider2 asked Why did the Danubian Legions so often proclaim the new emperor of Rome?
u/TheFallenHero asked Why did Odoacer proclaim himself King of Italy (as opposed to Western Roman Emperor)
/u/hillsonghoods answered "Abbey Road initially received mixed reviews from critics, but today almost everyone agrees that it's one of the Beatles' greatest albums. What changed everyone's minds? Can Abbey Road's retrospective reviews be linked to some greater cultural phenomenon or shift in thought?" and "In the Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil", there is a lyric that goes "I shouted out/Who killed the Kennedys?/When after all/It was you and me". Was there any stigma around such references in music and TV, considering the song was released five years after Kennedy's death?"
/u/frogbrooks on "I have seen Jesus and Paul being described as "failed apocalyptic prophets", can something similar be said/not-said(?) about Muhammad?"
/u/restricteddata on "How was the Soviet Union so proficient in space travel?"
Hello there, wonderful readers and contributors of AskHistorians. Hope everyone is having a great weekend! Here are some of the popular and/or interesting questions from last week, which did not get an answer yet:
/u/henry_fords_ghost asked how did Baptists become such a dominant denomination in the American South
I happen to be interested in the Indian tradition of champo
/u/fusionsc2 would like to know more about the Confederate presidency
/u/Illya-ehrenbourg and /u/NientedeNada explored some fascinating points on my question about How Japan went from an isolated nation to a superpower.
/u/LateNightPhilosopher also expanded upon the positions on colonization and slavery within the Church concerning the New World.
A bit late, but I'd like to add u/Yawarpoma's very interesting answer on Diego Columbus reclaiming rights before the Spanish Crown.
I didn't get any answers to a question I asked and would love to know if anyone has any info: