Things anti-Semites have ruined:

1. Casual study of the Khazars.

The hurricane had struck a strip of farming country just east of Brownwood, and its edge had ripped through the town itself. It was of terrific intensity, but narrow in expanse and the destruction to life and property was not as great as it might have been. Four people were killed, a woman, a man and two children; or perhaps it was three children instead of a man. I do not exactly remember I do know that either two or three children were killed. I remember discussing the storm with the banker with whom I do business in Brownwood. He had seen the bodies. Their fate had been grotesque and horrible. One was crushed by the falling timbers of a house, but the other three had been killed in a different manner. Apparently they had not been struck by flying timbers or hurled against anything hard enough to kill them; but their heads had been blasted; above the ears there was no skull at all. It was as if their heads had exploded from a terrific pressure inside. That was the theory; the center of a cyclone is a vacuum, and it was believed that the sudden removal of the normal airpressure on the outside had caused their skulls to burst apart — a theory supported by the experience of my friend Pink Tyson who was once in the dead center of a small cyclone. He said his eardrums seemed to be expanding outward, as if his head were about to burst from some pressure from within. The bodies were utterly bloodless when discovered. Whatever caused the blasting of their heads, the terrific suction of the tornado had sucked every drop of blood from their bodies through the ghastly wounds. That might form the theme of a horror-story — “Vampires of the Storm” perhaps — unseen fiends lurking in clouds and winds to devour human victims.

• Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, Jan 1935, Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard 3.298-299

On May 11, 1933 a tornado swept through Brownwood, TX. Newspaper accounts reported one woman and two children killed, with seven others hurt. Howard never worked out "Vampires of the Storm" as a story, but another incident - the torrential rain that led to the flooding of Lake Brownwood and the busting of the dam - was the inspiration for his story "Wild Water."

So I'm working on planning out curriculum this weekend for my middle school history students. 7th and 8th graders, many low income and depending upon (standardized testing next Monday and Tuesday) varying reading abilities.

With all that, I have a textbook that I can use and intend to pull from both some things for reading as well as to help me figure out pacing of the year. That said I need to rant. The previous teacher who taught the 8th graders said to start at WW1. Ok fine. So there's 29 chapters in the textbook. For 8th grade that means starting with WW1 up to about the Vietnam War or Cold War. That said that's only 7 or 8 chapters. For 7th they would start with map making and geography skills and go from the roots of early American people to at least the start of the civil war. That's 15 chapters. Oh and on top of that they have to be prepped in February to take the Constitution test as a state mandate and pass it. So in terms of pacing, the 8th graders have significantly less chapters. Also the American History textbook has 2 pages on the Holocaust....

If anyone has some advice or thought I'll take any iI can get. Thought people here could understand my frustration.

How were Mongolian envoys chosen? I'm reading the history of the great Khans and it seems like they had a 50/50 chance of being sent back with no chest, arms, or legs, so who would volunteer for such a position?

I imagine either people in the army had to draw straws, or the mongols had to continuously put up "hiring now" posters around town.

What are some good books on Louis XIII/Louis XIV, generally the era where the French regime consolidated it's rule and became an absolute monarchy?

I ask because I wasn't sure where to ask other than make a post, and I didn't want to waste extra space for a book.

Also, any good books on Caesar/Augustus era of Rome in the transition from the Republic to the Empire, if at all possible.

Couple random questions rattling around in my head that probably don't deserve a full post:

• In Attack on Titan, soldiers frequently use smoke flares to signal distant troops (scouts telling the main army to change course, start your assault, etc). For those who don't watch the series, the titular titans are bloodthirsty humanoid giants of severely limited intelligence, so even for scouting parties using flares makes sense in-universe. I know that in British WW2 nighttime bombing raids the bombers would follow a spotter plane that dropped flares to designate targets, and my dad told me about friendly aircraft dropping parachute flares for battlefield illumination in Vietnam; but did earlier (up to early gunpowder) armies ever make widespread use of flares for signalling?

• What kind of footwear would late-Medieval plate armor-wearing foot soldiers wear to battle? I know sabatons existed, but I've also heard they were only/mainly worn by mounted men, since their feet were at a perfect height to be slashed at by foot soldiers but that footmen would wear normal leather boots because the sabatons were heavy and bulky, and because attacking an on-foot opponent's feet is awkward and easy to avoid, while putting the attacker in a bad position for a counterattack. But then I think yeah but if you already can afford the harness why not spring for the foot protection too? I know there's that one skeleton from Visby, but that was a peasant, not a professional soldier, who probably had very limited knowledge about combat basics like footwork. EDIT Yes, I know, full-body plate isn't bulky or even that heavy compared to modern ballistic armor that barely covers the torso, so logically I think any footman would have worn as much protection over as much of his body as budget and technology allowed.

Who were the best shipbuilders for merchant ships and blue water navies in the 17th and 18th centuries? Who actually were building the ships for the Spanish Armada and the British Navy, as well as the ships that carried spice and gold to and from Europe?

What is the earliest account we have of Atlantic hurricanes? Do we know what the pre-Columbian natives thought about them? Did they have any way of predicting them? Did they know anything about what caused them? What about early European settlers/consquistadors? Do we have any records describing particularly bad hurricanes?

Possibly silly question, but one that's been sitting in my head for a while. If I were a middle-class young man living in a place like Victorian England, how long could I potentially let my hair grow out before it was deemed socially unacceptable, and what could happen if it were considered so?

Is IFTTT broken for everyone else? I thought I got it to work, but it just spurted out two or three emails and stopped.

Did the stalk of the now extinct Silphium plant inspire the architecture of roman columns? Or do drawings passed on to us of Silphium reflect an art form influenced by its architecture? See image on right at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium