I ended a long hiatus this week and talked about Cleopatra's mysterious suicide:

Hi! I read somewhere that Cleopatra probably didn’t die from a snake bite, since that would be painful and take a long time to kill her. Is this what most historians think? I realize any of the possible methods of suicide would be conjecture. Thanks for taking the time to read this. by /u/maripiri

I answered an overlooked question on "Japanese jugglers", mentioned in Rousseau's The Social Contract (1762), which turned out to contain a very early description of what's now known as the Indian Rope Trick. What's odd is that Rousseau's version is unknown not only to me, but also to the main authority on the subject of the Rope Trick. There's an early version of the same trick, set in China, in the Travels of Ibn Battuta (1346), but since this source remained unknown in Europe till the early C19th, and full accounts of the IRT date to later in the same century, I am currently baffled as to how Rousseau got hold of the story. Any suggestions welcomed!

I blathered on a bit about this very specific question regarding pre-contact/epi-contact NW California native religion. I did not find it until quite a while after its submission so it was short on visibility.

Been so busy I feel like I barely read anything this week! But did have a small list of highlights at least.

/u/thefourthmaninaboat on "During the Falklands War, the 2 Para was used as an amphibious force alongside Royal Marines. Why were they not used in their intended airborne capacity or replaced with another Marine contingent?"

/u/yodatsracist on "History teacher claimed, "every event you learn about Western history from the past hundred years is a result of the Russian revolution.""

/u/mikedash on "It took J Edgar Hoover just two years to go from a legal clerkship to a division head. What did he do his first two years of law enforcement to stand out?"

Kudos to u/NMW on his answer to my question about WWI poets and their applicability to the opinion of WWI by soldiers as a whole.

I was a bit late with this answer on sale of offices in Spanish America, with a part on corruption in British India thanks to OP's follow up.

I really enjoyed /u/bobba_q's post discussing the divergence of the Roman and Eastern rites.

It's Tuesday everybody, which means it's time for me to remember to post in the Sunday Digest thread!

This week I really enjoyed /u/cdesmoulins answer to the question Was Othello's marriage to Desdemona in Shakespeare's Famous Tragedy a Scandalous or Bold Topic?.