Hi, everybody! So, you've probably clicked on this thread because it has so many upvotes and you assume that means there's an answer - but that's not how /r/AskHistorians works. In general, people upvote threads here because they want an answer. The thing is, it can often take time for a good answer to be written. Our mission is to provide users with in-depth and comprehensive responses, and our rules are intended to facilitate that purpose. That's why we remove comments that are very short, based on speculation, or just plain inaccurate. If you know a single fact about this issue or you have a guess you think makes sense, don't post: that's not what we're looking for. Making comments asking about the removed comments simply makes the problem worse. So please, before you try your hand at posting, check out the rules: we don't want to have to warn you again or give you a temporary ban for ignoring them.

While you wait, you can check out places our already-answered questions are featured, including Twitter, the Sunday Digest, the Monthly "Best Of" feature, and now, Facebook. It's very rare that a decent answer doesn't result in due time, so please do come back to this thread in a few hours. If you think you might forget, send a Private Message to the Remind-Me bot, and it will ensure you don't!

Finally, while we always appreciate feedback, we ask that any comments about our moderation style and rules be sent to modmail, or a META thread. Please be aware that we've considered and discarded the idea of an "answered" flair and an automatic "free talk" comment thread many times already. Thank you!