Is there any evidence that wealthy families actually had whipping boys for their children, to take punishment for them?

As an American, I don't know/fully understand what Margaret Thatcher accomplished as British Prime Minister and what she did that makes her controversial. So, what did Thatcher accomplish as Prime Minister and what makes her controversial?

I'm not sure if this is a simple question, but the frontispiece of Hobbes' Leviathan strikes me as a rather brilliant artistic representation of the themes of the text, and is extraordinarily well executed besides. Is quality of work "typical" for book of the time? Is it only well known because he work itself is so well known?

Blade Runner, the cyberpunk genre, and the other noirish sci-fi dystopias tend to foreground a heavy Japanese and, more recently, Chinese aesthetic.^1 Which makes me wonder about the causality there. Is cyperpunk's Asian flavored aesthetic simply a reflection of its birth in the eighties, when Japanese culture was just entering chic, or did the Asian economic development trigger the anxiety that led to cyperpunk?

I'm asking because I flipped through some political writings from the eighties and it is remarkable how scary the "rise of Japan" was seen as.

^1 Firefly being perhaps the most clumsy example.

Couple random questions rattling around in my head:

1- 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 commonly make widespread use of flares/fireworks for signalling?

2- 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. And 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.

3- Joan of Arc/Jeanne D'Arc was (she thought) 19 and unmarried, how common/unusual was this for mid-15th century France? I'm guessing since she was born a peasant the answer will be "we don't know".

Did people in ancient Rome ever attempt to deceive the censors about how much money etc they had? How would the censors stop this from happening?

Thanks.

Didn't get an answer on the main page:

Was Cyrano de Bergerac as good a duelist as popular culture depicts him?

Recently I heard about a group of Americans that were the first to land on D-Day in order to place explosives on the beach. Only 1 of 11 survived.

Anyone have more information on these guys? Did they have to hide out until the main invasion force arrived?

Does anyone believe that Anne Boleyn was behind the attempted poisoning on Bishop John Fisher?

Does the saying "paying the boatsman to cross the river Styx" have a definitive origin?

How much would it cost in modern currency?

National Novel Writing Month is coming up soon and I wanted to research the Indian caste system and potentially even authoritarian governments as a basis for the fictional societies concept of governance. A lot of sources I've seen downplay or even demonize these systems. Could anyone recommend a few sources to learn more on how these systems are made, how they function, and what good they do for people in that system?

Is there any evidence that the Alexandrian Serapeum used magnets/lodestone to trick people into believing that some of its ritual objects could fly (or are e.g. wires etc more likely)?

Thanks.

How many people (especially how many combatants) died (whether from disease or wounds) during the Paraguayan Civil War of 1922-1923?

Inspired by this gif from /r/educationalgifs, what sort of makeup would an American woman in the 1950s own and use regularly? How big an expense would these be?

Hello, I'm currently seeking a reliable book covering the War of the Currents.

It seems like eye disease was one of the more prevalent problems in ancient history/medieval history based on the number of votive finds and remedies/talismans we find.

Is this the case and why? I presume its from more exposure to smoke fumes.

Hi, I am doing a ww1 propaganda poster analysis for school. It's going pretty well, but there is one detail that makes me doubt. In the poster: 1778-1783 : America owes France the most unalterable gratitude. We can see Lafayette on his horse, and the soldiers in front of him wearing crosses. Why are these soldiers carrying crosses?

Why do history books Anglicize monarchs names especially guys from Spain and Portugal?

Hi all, I wanted to research into Victorian society with special focus on women, crime and general day to day life from the poorest in society, to those moving in the aristocratic circles.

Can anyone recommend me a few books or even documentaries to go for?

I recently discovered that I had a semi-famous ancestor in Italy named Isabella de Rosales. I also found this Latin text about her, which has an English translation underneath.

The text says that she is descended from a group of people called the princes of Ordoni. I have tried to search online, but I cannot find any record of them. Does anyone know of any records or information about them?

I have asked this question a lot but I never received a good response. Is it because there hasn't been enough scholarship on 1980's American public opinion or is the question just hard to answer in long terms?

Were spear-infantry actually ever called spearmen in the past? I've noticed many traditional armies gave all the melee-infantry the same weapon. It would be weird calling them spearmen rather than infantry or soldiers. When i google spearmen, its mostly pop culture strategy games rather than historical pictures. My autocorrect also doesn't think spearman is a word.

I have a question relating to the history of the rulers of post-Qin China (~220 BCE): was there at any point a 'puppet' emperor whose power was controlled by one or very few members of China's administrative class? I.e. a prominent administrator or advisor.

I've recently started learning armizare at a HEMA gym based around Fiore dei Liberi.

I am interested in reading, in parallel, anything anyone modern has written about ancient Greek or Roman combat techniques. I doubt there's a guide anywhere to using a sarissa or anything, but maybe a gladiator wrote something down that got translated?

The medieval stuff is really cool but if I could learn how to be a hoplite too, that'd be the tits.

Would a knight have his own coat of arms or his lord's on his surcoat?