Since I don't see a sidebar link for where you want this kind of meta-comment, I hope it's ok in a free-for-all to add a vote of appreciation for how high quality you all keep this sub. Your moderation comments sometimes sound a little apologetic to me, but as a non-historian casual reader this is one of my favorite subs precisely for the way you've thought through and maintained the rules. Don't know if with all the deletions you get as much flak as mods in other subs.

I just wanted to share my paper that I gave at the annual Society for American Archaeology conference this year. The paper is titled From Cooperation to Competition: An Architectural Energetics Analysis of Labor Organization for the Construction of Circle 2 at Los Guachimontones, Jalisco, Mexico. It isn't a very long paper since we only had 15 minutes to speak. Nonetheless, for those that check it out, I hope you enjoy it.

The new series The Terror on AMC is wonderful and you should all try it.

I may have some nitpicking but this, shall we say, 'enhanced' telling of the fate of the Franklin Expedition is top notch.

Wonderful acting, set and prop design, and directing add up to great period survival horror. The book it is based on is equally enjoyable.

Although everything was spinning perilously, I tried to start in the right direction and hack my way ahead. My route must have been far from straight, for it seemed hours before I was free of the mirage-plant’s pervasive influence. Gradually the dancing lights began to disappear, and the shimmering spectral scenery began to assume the aspect of solidity. When I did get wholly clear I looked at my watch and was astonished to find that the time was only 4:20. Though eternities had seemed to pass, the whole experience could have consumed little more than a half-hour. -H. P. Lovecraft, "In the Walls of Eryx"

Coincidence is one of those things historians have to watch out for - not simply to make note of them, but to beware drawing any particular conclusions or inferences from chance associations without further research. Case in point, which seemed appropriate for the day.

I recently found out about the website of the Southworth Spanish Civil War Collection at UC San Diego. It has a large number of digitized primary sources, video interviews with survivors, and online exhibits of visual media from 1930s Spain. One of the exhibits that was especially interesting to me displays drawings made by Spanish children depicting their experiences in the war.

A lot of the material was originally collected by Herbert Southworth, an American journalist who sympathized with the Spanish Republic during the 30s and worked for the state's information bureau. After the war, he wrote a number of books, including The Myth of Franco's Crusade (1963) and Guernica! Guernica! A Study of Journalism, Diplomacy, Propaganda and History (1977), debunking Francoist propaganda.

If you haven't seen it already I highly recommend taking a look. It's fascinating stuff.

My fun bit of history I learned this week:

In the 1930s edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word teenage was defined as "brushwood used for fences and hedges." The concept of teenagers as a separate social group did not exist until well into the 1950s. There were only children and adults.

The word itself as we know it joined the language as "teen age" in the January 7, 1945 issue of the New York Times Magazine.
In her memoirs, Souvenir (1956), Margaret Truman wrote that she "was still called 'the little Truman girl'--a designation for which I had the usual teen-age distaste."

The rise of the teenager as a social (and marketing) force really came with the advent of rock and roll, especially the movie Rock Around the Clock in 1954. The movie was largely ignored in the US at first, but was a smash success in Britain. Coinciding with the rise of "Teddy Boys" who favored longer hairstyles while their fellow teens in the US still wore crew cuts. (Interesting to note that the ubiquitous 1950s "Duck's Ass" hairstyle which the Teds wore can actually be traced to wartime Los Angeles.)

After rock and roll, the "DA" hairstyle and Rock Around the Clock conquered England, it crossed the Atlantic and took over in America. Then marketing executives realized there was a whole new social group with separate tastes in clothing and music they could sell to, and the teenager was born.

Source: The Glory and The Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932-1972 by William Manchester. A terrific book.

While researching the Oregon Trail for a class, I stumbled upon an interesting and true, first person account of that time period. The Journal is a bit sad and might make some uncomfortable, and follows the story of the Sager Orphans, from Catherine Sager-Pringle's account. Here's the link if anyone is interested- The West Across the Plains in 1844

What's the deal with airline food?

Perhaps it's not as common today, but I distinctly remember being served hot meals on domestic US flights in the 1990's. Meals were typically included with the fare, so I can't imagine they were a profit generator. On the contrary, they cost money to develop, and they take up weight, both in the food itself and the equipment to reheat it.

Additionally, a 4-5 hour flight will get you most anywhere in the US, and that's not an unreasonable amount of time to go without a full meal. Whether the food always had the Seinfeldian reputation, I don't know, but even if the meal quality was much better prior to that, why did airlines bother with them? Were there regulations that required them to provide meal service?

This has probably happened to someone else before, given the volumes of people reading Reddit and medieval lit, but I was just considering the possibility of an answer about a medieval inn involving something from the bit about Sloth in Piers Plowman; I looked at a modernised version of Passus V and there was "Robert the Robber · on Reddite looked".
I don't think English has a word for simultaneously amused and spooked...