I'm still in England, combing archives. Thank God for the National Archives's awesome air conditioning yesterday, arguably the hottest day in the entire history of the United Kingdom by 0.2 Celsius.

A few weeks ago, I discovered--and settled--a coverup that's been misinforming the public and then historians of the South African War (1899-1902) for nearly 120 years. It involved the secret purchase of maps of the Transvaal and the fabrication of a story of seizure so that the involvement of British consuls and secret intelligence within Europe--the map printer was there, though the cartographer lived in Pretoria--would not become public. They spun the lie to the Royal Commission on the war, and with good reason, because the Germans and the French were convinced that the British had done something underhanded to get a hold of the maps a year before it was on the open market. In fact, the contract that British Intelligence signed with the printer prohibited them from printing any more copies until the War Office declared that the war was effectively over (which they did in mid-1900, underestimating the next two years).

It left my head spinning. Now I have to find out just how far their dragnet for information actually went. Did they block or buy out anything else? The records are mostly gone, and it was sheer luck that this stuff survived. It's going to be quite an article, I think.

One of the things I'm curious about is what some of you personally experience as the most widespread bit of misinformation where it concerns your area of expertise?

An example would be that in my area of interest (a bit hesitant to call it expertise in my case). the low countries in the middle ages, is that there is this perception that the basis of the modern day Netherlands was laid solely in the early modern period during and after the Dutch Revolt, whereas the entire framework of the provinces had its foundation in the high and late middle ages.

I visited the 17th century manor Östermalma today, which provided today's depressing sight There's not a lot of damage more depressing than that caused by incompetently done repairs. But I thought I'd share it as a 'teaching moment' because the image makes a very clear example of the mistake.

The mistake being: Never, ever use concretecement-based render on old brick! It is much stiffer, stronger and harder than the brick itself is. So when the bricks then expand and contract with temperature, moisture and settling, the surface of the brick is held solidly - too solidly - in place by the cement as the rest of the brick moves. As a result, the surface of the brick is broken off by the shear forces. The ground here was littered with chunks of concrete+brick surface.

This particular case is a good illustration because you can see there are no spots at all where the render has fallen off and left the surface of the brick unscathed. There are only bricks with broken off surfaces and spots where the render is still there. At the same time you see the surrounding rock areas are undamaged because the rocks are harder than the concrete, and don't move as much as brick does.

On a happier note, I met this moose so it was far from being all bad.

(EDIT; Meant to write Portland cement-based render rather than 'concrete'; that includes but is not limited to concrete.)

So, just to throw this out there but at the time I write this the sidebar says AskHistorians has 994,492 readers. Do y'all have anything planned for when the sub hits seven figures?

What are some recommended textbooks for teaching the history of modern Europe (say 1789-now)?

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If Julius Caesar was such a political genius, how did allow himself to be assassinated?

Wouldn’t he have had bodyguards? It’s not as if assassination wasn’t a tangible threat (Tiberius Gracchus, Lucius Saturninus, etc.).

What's the most interesting historical fact you learned recently?