I did it. I'm graduating tomorrow with my Master's in History (Public History concentration). I did the two year track but it feels like it's been forever.

Kicking myself this week.

About three years ago, I was looking at pictures from the it-hasn't-been-incorporated-in-120-years town my family is from, and I found a picture I'd never seen, likely of the old General Store. It was a close up, and I could read the sign in the window, and it confirmed something I've strongly suspected but never attempted to prove--the sign was bilingual English and Gaelic.

But, since this is a story about me kicking myself, I didn't think to save the picture or the website and figured, meh, found it once, I can find it again.

Spoiler: Can't find it for the life of me, and this is now shaping into a whole research project to prove that one point.

I’ve been waiting for this thread because I had an AskHistorians related dream the other morning.

I was visiting an archaeological site which was open to visitors. It was on a flat, arid plain in the US somewhere. There was nothing remaining on the surface any more apart from the outlines of an old settlement. A trench a couple of metres wide and long had been dug down to where an assortment of native american objects had been buried centuries ago, inside a large box.

A guide, who was one of the AH experts, probably either /u/itsllfolklord or /u/Snapshot52, was reaching down into the trench and lifting up a flap, explaining that what was underneath was not what many people thought it was – they probably imagined it was some kind of object that had been ritually buried. In fact, it was a stopcock for the water supply for the nearby houses.

What can we learn from this dream? Is it that supposedly ‘primitive’ peoples were in fact more advanced than people often think? That history is a constant process of investigating and reinterpreting the evidence? That I should stop reading AskHistorians before bed? Do we even have an expert on dream interpretation on the sub, and if not, why not?

I've learned that I didn't get PhD funding today, but that I am first on the reserve list. I have to hope that someone who did get funding in my history department decides not to go. I know who one such person is, and they have an offer from Oxford but don't know about Oxford's funding yet. Let's hope Oxford is feeling generous. They go to Oxford, and I get a fully funded PhD - everyone wins!

Anyone else internally cringe when Herodotus is mentioned confidently as fact?

How do you determine the quality of a historical podcast/documentary/docuseries without individually researching the historians cited?

I’m a big fan of historical documentaries but have come across some questionable content, especially on YouTube, so until now I’ve stuck to PBS/NOVA, BBC, NatGeo. In the past I would’ve automatically considered History Channel content to be good, but now I’m not sure about it. I know the best way to know what’s good is to have a thorough understanding of the content and the individuals presenting it along with their place in the overall field, but if I’m a novice, how can I tell what is good and worth my time?

I'm a MA student in History and I'm working on 1960s Southeast Asia political history on the West Coast of Canada, and I have to go to Kew to look at PRO documents and some smaller archives in southeast asia this summer and the whole idea of doing archival work for the 1st time scares me. I want to maximize my time at the archives but I don't know how to :/

Ok. What are some lesser known rights and responsibilities of European nobility during the the period of about 1200-1600? Yes, I know the question is broad, but I've pruned it as much as possible.

Today, I was a trash scholar.

Well, sortof. Primary sources for pulp scholarship is usually limited to manuscripts and letters, which are rarely reprinted and held in a few institutions or private hands. H. P. Lovecraft has received decades of attention and they're still published his letters - only a fraction of those he wrote during his lifetime - and many still reside in private hands, inaccessible to scholars.

Unless, y'know, they post it to ebay to sell it. Or on facebook to show it off.

So I just wrote an article based on what I could decipher of two letters posted on Facebook and eBay, to see what there was of value there.

I was reading about the "criterion of embarrassment" in biblical studies and the various issues related to it, and was curious if there was were similar, less shoddy historical principles/rules of thumb. Is there a good article or book that focuses specifically on the use of historical logic?

I have a deep love for the Monastic Military Orders, especially the Teutonic Order and this love extends to several fictional organizations like the Jedi and Night’s Watch;

Do you as historians have a historical love that extends into the fictional realm?

Does anyone have a good book to recommend on the war in the Vendee during the French Revolution? Looking for a narrative I can read through to get a better idea of a pretty grisly part of this era that I only just discovered - it's not all about Madame Guillotine!

Minor, kind of dumb question. In the movie Pearl Harbor there's a scene where FDR stands up from his wheelchair to prove a point about going to war. This totally never happened, right? It just seems so silly, and I know it's not considered an accurate film by any means. A moment like that is so over-the-top, though, that I thought... would they really make this up from nowhere?