Ayo, medievalists. Would one of you be so kind as to know and share a citation to the particular vita of Bernard of Clairvaux where he is said to have called his sister a sack of shit?

Did either HUAC or McCarthy actually manage to catch any Soviet spies? The nearest I have been able to find is Alger Hiss, and as I understand the evidence for that is still pretty murky.

How thick and dense medieval wool felt get?

I recently learned that the Watergate burglars were apprehended in possession of weird spy gadgets like pen-shaped tear gas canisters and a large amount of cash. Do we have any idea what the purpose of these were or why they thought they were necessary? Tear gas and the 2018 equivalent of $100,000 in sequential bills would be unusual in any arrest, let alone potential burglary, so why did they run the risk of carrying it? WTH did the burglars on their second intrusion of the Watergate Complex think would happen that required carrying so much incriminating gear?

What are some great/seminal articles to read if I wanted to gain a greater understanding of Gender history and its use as a historical tool?

What was the last area humans colonised successfully? Not places like Antarctica that require a massive amount of external stuff to survive there. Some place where we had no problem living in

This is probably the wrong subreddit, but I didn't really know where to ask this. An older aunt moved from her home and some books she had came into my possession. Inside one of the books was a Christmas card from 1945 sent from Maryhill Baracks in Glasgow. On the frontside were two emblems, one a Scottish flag with an inscription of 'primary training centre', the other the emblem of the 'Koninklijke Landmacht'. Inside it is a Christmas greeting printed in English and Dutch. Written beneath that is a name, likely an older brother of the uncle that passed away. It's dated with 'Xmas, 1945'. I thought it was an interesting card seeing it's just after the war. I know it's a long shot but has anyone heard of these cards before and is there more to know about?

Did the Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Angevin aristocracy speak with their own dialect of French?

Would it have been unique to the French spoken in Normandy or Aquitaine?

The influence of trade with India and the Far East is apparent in the culinary history of the UK. Nearly every English or Irish pub serves some type of curry. Are there any noteable examples of this type of culinary influencing occuring in other nations that heavily traded with those regions? I'm primarily thinking Portuguese and Dutch.

When and why did the Knights of St. John stopped being known as Hospitallers and changed their surcoats from black to red?

When I was in Courtenay, BC I bought a 1/4 reel to reel and discovered it contained a recording of a country/folk band playing at a restaurant. However I couldn't figure out what band it is despite some information being on the track

The link to the audio track https://youtu.be/q6uY0D90n_c (I've made transcriptions to make it easier to hear)

Some interesting things that might help from the audio:

There are four songs that are played in the track, of which two of them are named. The first song is called "I can't die because I'm too busy crying" and the second song is called "Quiet Sedate". The third and fourth songs names are not mentioned in the track. I tried looking up the songs but unfortunately nothing came up

In the track the singer says that a man named Rick jokingly refers to the second song as "Quiet Sedate Pretty Shit". So I am assuming that this Rick is a member of the band.

The time of the recording can be narrowed down to after 1955 as someone in the track says that someone can live in a "55 chevy panel truck".

According to the track 50 cents for parking at a paid parking lot is considered a ripoff

There is a Main Street in the town they play in (I am assuming its in the USA by some of the song lyrics in the 3rd and 4th songs where terms like miles and interstate are possibly used)

Does anyone here possibly know either the time period or band that is in this recording?

When letter correspondence was a main form of long distance communication, was it more normal to send the letters in an accumulating stack of the whole conversation? or would each person keep one half of the conversation (the letters the opposite person wrote)?

Were bulletproof vests using multiple layers of silk practical? They seem to have been generally recognized as at least sometimes effective, but were never widely used even by people valuable enough to make it worthwhile to protect them from bullets at any cost, never mind by common soldiers. Was there some reason other than “no one thought of it” that they weren’t used as widely as modern bulletproof clothing?

I’m on Amazon right now looking for a Kindle copy of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War. Amazon has lumped all of the reviews for every version together, and hasn’t bothered to list the translator for (m?)any of them.

So, lovely historians of antiquity, any of you buy any of em? Or better yet, able to point at one to say “It good,”or to another, “it bad?” Amazon details page length disparities by as much as 400 or more pages, so clearly not all of Thucydides’ histories are created equal.

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Cowpens.

Why were the two grasshopper artillery pieces in the battle so ineffective? They seem to make no real contribution to a battle which is on relatively open ground and I would assume be good terrain to apply artillery.

What was written Gerald Ford's Thank You Letter to Oliver Sipple when he saved his life?

Does anyone know what the draw weight of an ancient Japanese yumi bow is?

I recently read a book that discussed how Charles Lucas and George Lisle were executed by firing squad after the Siege of Colchester ended in 1648. I know that firing squads conducted by archers predate firearms by at least a thousand years. I also know that early firearms were notoriously inaccurate. So that led me to wonder: when and where did accurate firing squads with firearms originate and why?

What was the first prescription pill in the United States?

What did Northern Europeans (U.K., U.S. Germans) use to eat food before forks? I read about forks on Wikipedia, and it said forks become popular only round the American Revolution. I thought forks had been a long traditional essential tool for Europeans.

I thought of spoons, but a spoon alone, it is difficult to eat food with, unless it is some kind of liquid. I mean, imagine eating ramen with a spoon alone. Japanese use mostly only chopsticks, Koreans use spoons and chopsticks equally often. Chopsticks are easy to make. But Europeans never used chopsticks. Spoons can be made of wood, but I think it would take more time. I think a normal person could not create their own metal spoon in the old days. So, it must be bought. But there probably were many poor people or living in isolated area where there were no shops. So, what did the old Northern Europeans use to eat food?

I apologize of this is too broad of a question.

I recently read Alex De Jonge’s The Life and Times of Grigorii Rasputin (a truly wonderful book, in my opinion) and De Jonge often mentions Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra’s interest in spiritualism, even stating that Nicholas would go so far as to try and contact his dead father to seek guidance on how to run the country and handle the various uprisings. This seems so incredibly strange for something that happened barely 100 years ago. Believable for the Babylonian or Assyrian empires? Definitely. But for the last of the Romanovs, in an era that had fully automatic weapons and automobiles? It seems laughable.

What evidence do we have to support such claims? How did something like spiritualism get so popular in such a devotedly Orthodox place like the Russian Empire? And do we know of other fairly recent political figures that have taken to such odd views?

Who lead medieval villages that were detached from manors/castles? I’m getting confused between the terms alderman/ealdorman, reeve, baron, etc.

With the success of the Longbow in many battles during the Edwardian era of the Hundreds year war, Did any other kingdoms, lordships, or Military Orders attempt to copy the English model of war?

Does anyone know the length, from bow to stern, of 19th century (1800s) whaling vessels?

How many women died during ww1 & ww2?

Does anyone know what manuscript Albert Ulrik Bååth used for his translation of the Jomsviking Saga into Swedish? There was an edition published in 1925, text is available through Heimskralinga (as the only Swedish translation)

How did siege engineers before Newton calculate the trajectories of the siege weapons, since they had no math with gravity?

I have a friend whose grandfather fought in WW2 and has a German army helmet. To this day he will not say how he got it. Was it forbidden to take the other army’s belongs? If so was it widely done or generally looked down upon?

How did governments like the Roman administration decide who built major projects? Were the builders directly employees of the state or was there some organization with a leader who would sign a contract with the government?

Canadian Residential Schools have been hugely in the news in this country over the last decade. 30 years ago I lived in the north and many of my friends were indigenous, but no one talked about this.

Was the abuse and difficulties with residential schools known prior to the revelations of the last decade? Was this known, but simply ignored by a culture less sensitive to the abuse of marginalized populations?

I'm looking for a good map of ancient Greece (classical era), that would include cities in Asia Minor, north Egypt, and Magna Graecia. It doesn't have to be a political map, mostly just cities and landmarks. It'd preferably something with some style, and available in a good resolution, since I'm looking to print it up and put it in my office to surprise my classicist officemate. So far, my favorite is the 1741 Homann Heirs one. Any hot tips, or is this the best I'll find?