I was a few days late with this multi part answer on the development of the Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations - which took place just this week! As per usual with Mexican religious traditions there are connections to pre-Hispanic, European and colonial precursors that were fun to look into. Biking skeletons and cemetary tours feature somewhere in there also.

Woo the one time of the week I can really contribute to such a wonderful board. It's a busy day, so I might be adding more later or tomorrow. So buckle up for a hearty dose of knowledge.

How do we know if history is made up or not? asks some potentially awkward questions for the board, but luckily we've got some great answers from /u/Superplaner and /u/Instantcoffees. As well as plenty of discussion!

/u/Alkibiades415 shines a light on When reading about Caesar and Pompey's wars, we see them "raising legions" in places such as Greece, Africa, Spain, etc. How many Roman citizens would actually be present in these provinces during the Republic?

I wrote up a short post about the impact the Vikings had on Ireland.

Thanks to u/Gankom for highlighting my 14th Amendment answer! I'd also like to point people to my Saturday Showcase on whether Alan Moore's The Killing Joke was originally meant to be canon when it was written, as it's really quite a fascinating event in comic book history.

My post about Austrian officers in the Napoleonic Wars went up late last night.

/u/monsenorTickles on "Larry Flint faced considerable backlash against his publications and became a political lightening rod in the '70s (a relatively liberal cultural time); why didn't Hugh Hefner face similar backlash establishing himself in a seemingly much more conservative time (the '50s), or did he?)"

/u/erissays tackled a three month old question about "I've seen some critics argue that 2005's "Revenge of the Sith" was, at least in part, a commentary on the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. This got me thinking: did critics in the late 70s/early 80s make any parallels between the original Star Wars films and the political events of that time?" and also was a little more recent with "During the passage of the 14th Amendment, what was the understanding regarding 'birthright citizenship'? Did Senators anticipate that it could be used to grant citizenship to children of immigrants? How soon after it's passage was it used to grant citizenship to non-slave immigrant children?"

/u/PaxOttomanica on "Ottoman historians - help me understand a story about my Palestinian grandfather"

Amongst former colonies in Africa, Botswana stands out for growth, political stability, etc, despite suffering massively from the AIDS epidemic. Why is Botswana so unusually successful? OR WAS IT!? /u/Commustar takes a slightly different look at the question as well as giving a brief comparison on a number of locations in Africa.

And finally for now I just want to shill the Saturday showcase. It was another great week with fantastic stuff from /u/erissays on Alan Moore's The Killing Joke and it's relation to the DC canon, and the continuing epic of Italian Fascism being weaved by /u/Klesk_vs_Xaero. (I don't even know if simply calling it Italian Fascism does it justice or if it's better to say Italian Politics or something. Either way check it out! We're on Week 54!)