Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
The German motto “Gott Mit Uns” was found on army gear in both WW1 and WW2.
One joke told by the Tommies in WW1 was “Gott Mit Uns? We got mittens, too!”.
Not a dad joke - a great-granddad joke. 😉
u/sunagainstgold was knocking it out of the park this week.
Great answers! Should change their username to MidasTouched
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, October 11 - Thursday, October 17
| Top 10 Posts | score | link to comments |
|---|---|---|
| In 1966, Beijing's Red Guards seized, "denounced", and destroyed the 350-year-old corpse of the Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Do we know what the corpse was accused of? | 3,088 | 35 comments |
| Were "Hitler mustaches" popular in nazi Germany? Did people try to impersonate the Führers looks or was this frowned upon? | 3,060 | 117 comments |
| How were people blackmailed for 'improper' relationships (affairs, homosexuality, etc) in times before camera/video? Would it just be someone's word that they were caught in the act? | 2,825 | 59 comments |
| How were sewers created in already established cities like London and Paris? | 2,735 | 75 comments |
| When and where does the "stereotypical" image of a caveman come from? Why do we seem to all agree that cavemen wear cheeta skins, wield clubs, and say "ooga booga?" | 2,621 | 111 comments |
| In 256BC the Roman consul Regulus fought and killed a dragon, sending a 120' long skin back to Rome. What actually happened and how did Rome take his report of combat with a dragon? | 2,539 | 27 comments |
| In medieval England, the Wool trade was considered the backbone of the English economy, being exported throughout Europe. Why was English wool so sought after, and why couldn’t the rest of Europe just raise their own sheep and make their own wool? | 2,390 | 82 comments |
| Were Romans broadly aware of the First or Second Triumvirates at the time they were active, or would they have sounded like conspiracy theories? | 2,121 | 45 comments |
| The Netherlands seemingly went from cutting edge to obsolescent and backwards to cutting edge again in our modern day. What happened there? How did the Dutch, who industrialized quite late, surpass the Belgian early adopters? | 2,089 | 65 comments |
| When did Horses become a "thing for girls"? | 1,892 | 79 comments |
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Every once in awhile I get some vertigo thinking about certain things related to history, I guess "historiography."
Like I just saw in a thread, modern historians making (or not) a distinction between 'literary' and 'non-fiction' works. Really the biggest thing that gets me dizzy is the idea that we're constantly creating more history, and in order to document it and especially to pass it down, we have to keep condensing it, in a way.
Like, it would take 24 hours at minimum to "accurately" recount my personal experience of last Tuesday. That's a kind of theoretical limit though, I might condense some sleeping time to "I slept for the next 7 hours" or something. This would leave out my various tosses and turns, snores, etc.
So, basically, I keep returning to how history is necessarily a kind of fiction. And I don't see that as a problem, it's just clearly true.
So, I'd love to get some resources on these kind of topics, or other prompts that might blow my mind similarly.
I'm on mobile so I am having trouble finding what I was looking for in the wiki and FAQ. I believe somewhere in the section on Native American and genocide there is mentioned a quote from General Sherman? Sheridan? Regarding slaughter of bison meaning the end of the plains tribes. I recently heard that a biological sciences student went looking for the quote and was unable to find any primary sources. Has the history community heard this information?
Not sure if this is relevant or not, but there's a relatively new sub called r/thepast where redditors role-play as living in a certain year in history, for a week at a time. For example this week has been 1863 (last week was 2001).
Pretending to be in 1863 has been fun, and a way to learn about some relatively obscure history from that time that was overshadowed by the big-ticket items (Gettysburg, Emancipation Proclamation, etc.).
The sub got a shout-out on a front-page post, so it went from 0 subscribers to ~12k overnight, and is relatively active right now.
Can anyone give me the name of a book or book (not too dense) that could give me a basic primer of the Bronze Age and it’s ending?
Can anyone recommend a detailed biography on General George S. Patton? Thank you :)
I really wish someone would translate and publish Cinânî's Bedâyi̇u'l-Âsâr to English or at least modern Turkish. It's an Ottoman storybook, which contains gems from pirate romances to scary ghost stories.