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Ugh - well, this is embarrassing.. the Swedish Wikipedia page for Classic/Early Old Swedish leads with a long example from "Hednalagen" a medieval law fragment on dueling.

Problem is, the fragment in question is only known from two early modern sources (1530s, 1607), both of which differ and seem to have made different sets of changes to the same lost original. So the text actually cited is not an actual medieval text but a reconstruction (by Läffler, 1880). The page history reveals some random unregistered user decided was a better text 9 years ago when he replaced the previous sample from the Chronicle of Eric (which is a better example as we've got manuscripts of that as far back as the early 1400s).

But what makes this a really embarrassingly bad example is that it's not even in Old Swedish!! It's mainly in Old Norwegian/Old West Norse. The original seems to have been (per Läffler) a Norwegian copy of a Swedish law (possibly Äldre Västgötalagen, although the fragment isn't in any extant manuscript of it.. the wiki page states as fact that it's from ÄVgL), to explain the fact that it's got a lot of obvious West-Norse words in it. (e.g. the pronoun "ek" is Old West Norse. it was only ever "iak" in Old Swedish, this vowel breaking is one of the defining differences between the East and West dialects of Old Norse) The reconstruction is also older than Classical Old Swedish (e.g. maðr" became "maðer")

Ouch. Shocking that's gone unfixed for almost a decade.

Hello everyone,

Just for fun, I was perusing the lyrics to the song "Seven and a half cents" from the 1957 musical The Pajama Game. In the song, the characters are listing out things they could buy on a salary of 7.5 c per hour, and detailing the calculations of how they "figured it out". So that got me thinking, "what really would these things have cost in 1957?"

I went ahead and itemized, and in some cases quantified, the things mentioned across the verses of the song, as I show below. However, quickly I realized that simple google searches are woefully inefficient for figuring out exactly what these things used to cost in the past, let alone at any specific date.

I'm not expecting anyone to go exhaustively through the list, but I'm just looking for some ideas or explanations of what sources or methodology I can use to try to obtain that kind of information.

• Automatic washing machine
• "A year's supply of gasoline", that is the yearly gas consumed by the average American in the year 1957
• "Carpeting for the living room", or just the amount of carpeting for a decent sized room, say 80 sq ft
• Vacuum cleaner
• 40 in. television set
• "A trip to France across the seas", that is a round-trip flight from New York to Paris
• Motorboat
• Water skis
• "A foreign car", I guess it doesn't matter what kind of car, as long as it's European
• "A charge account at the corner bar" - I have no idea what this means???
• Ping-pong set
• "With paddles made of gold", or just enough gold plating to cover said paddles, say 480 sq cm
• "A Sultan in the Taj Mahal" - Well, the Taj Mahal is priceless (ignoring the fact it's a tomb and not a palace), but it originally cost 32 million rupees to construct, which would have been $98 million in 1957
• "Every room a different doll" - considering the Taj Mahal has 120 rooms, I would presume this to be 120 prostitutes
• " I'll buy a pajama factory, then I could end up having old man Hasler work for me!", or basically enough stock to own 51% shares of some pajama company that existed in 1957

Question: How was yeast discovered for bread?

Question: Did kamikaze pilots equip their planes with explosives for higher damage?

Just finished the second volume of Volker Ullrich’s Hitler biography. Ordered it from the UK as the us printing isn’t available till September! I really enjoyed the first volume and Thought this was a worthy follow up. The one new thing I learned was that it was confirmed that Hitler had a non descended right testicle according to the Landsberg jail physical he underwent! Lol

As sort of a meta question, is there any procedure in place to archive the discussions in this sub? The internet is the internet, so I know we colloquially talk about how once you put it out, it’s out there forever. Also, obviously this sub hardly even approaches the status of a secondary source... BUT I can also see it as a resource for scholars centuries from now in terms of historiography. How did historians in the early 21st century vie x, y, and z. Is there any archival project?

A question about guided tours in historic places:

I tried guided tours at many places before, both famous and not quite as famous. However, I invariably walk away feeling like they are very superficial, targeted at people who have no idea of historical background; and that I could've learned at least about as much just going on my own. They start from zero ("Did you know the Romans used to rule parts of the British Isles?" / "This is a prime example of Gothic Architecture. Let me explain to you the most important features of it"), and run out of time before they ever get to where I'm learning a lot of new things. I totally get that those are valuable to people who don't have a lot of background, just... not to me.

Does anybody have good hints on how to reliably find more "advanced" guided tours that actually will point our interesting details and provide in-depth insights? I found it very hard to find those. I feel like they must exist, even if they probably end up being more niche and thus more expensive.

Why is it every time I see a great question and the # of comments seem high enough so I click only to be disappointed. All comments are deleted and there's nothing there.

Are there any photos of World War 1 Zeppelin raids over Britain? I can't find any photos of the actual zeppelins in the UK online, only photos of the aftermath.

A photo of a zeppelin over London or something like that is what I'm looking for, purely for personal interest. I have read that over time the raids started to take place at night, to protect against air defenses.