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.
Hello all-
If you'd like to distract yourself with something completely trivial in this time of stress and uncertainty, you might enjoy the latest video in my ongoing series "Questions about Ancient Greece and Rome (you were afraid to ask in school)." This one discusses Greek and Roman delicacies, and ends with an ill-starred attempt to deep fry some Roman honey fritters.
You can watch the video here.
As always, comments and suggestions for improvement are welcome.
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, March 06 - Thursday, March 12
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 5,781 | 63 comments | A common saying goes "Society is three days of food away from anarchy" referencing the low food stocks in modern cities. How much food was stored in cities in the past? Was it more than today? |
| 4,026 | 63 comments | In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes has a little band of “street Arabs” (homeless kids) he pays to be his eyes and ears. Was giving a homeless kid a sixpence to run an errand commen back then, or does this just show how “bohemian” Holmes is in the stories? Why are they called street Arabs? |
| 3,869 | 88 comments | Due to the enormous size of Russia, are there any villages / areas, was there ever instances of people unaware they lived in Russia? |
| 3,309 | 156 comments | What did a huge battle smell like? |
| 3,058 | 36 comments | Is it true that during the 1960s there were Chinese villages that still believe the Qing were in charge? If so how were these communities so isolated for so long ? |
| 3,001 | 51 comments | Apparently, the first time Julius Caesar saw Britain, during his first invasion of Britannia, a large, battle-ready enemy army stood on the White Cliffs of Dover to greet him. How is this possible? |
| 2,925 | 82 comments | Let's say I'm in Berlin, Germany - how far back in time do I have to travel before the beer being produced here is no longer recognizable to a modern person as beer? Or has it always been roughly the same but with minor variations over the centuries? |
| 2,491 | 60 comments | In the biblical story of the Flood, Noah takes two of every animal onto his ark to ride out 40 days and nights of flooding. Do we have any idea how many animals bronze age hebrew people were aware of? Do we know of any examples of ancient jewish natural philosophy? |
| 2,279 | 49 comments | What were roads like in Medieval Europe? Were they almost nonexistent between smaller settlements? Did some serfs spend time maintaining a manor's roads as part of their labor tax, or were the roads kept functional only by the traffic that used them? |
| 2,248 | 48 comments | How did rebellious German young people avoid participating in the Hitler Youth? |
###Top 10 Comments
If you would like this roundup sent to your reddit inbox every week send me a message with the subject 'askhistorians'. Or if you want a daily roundup, use the subject 'askhistorians daily'
If you would like to customize the roundup, and give me keywords to search for, send a message with the subject 'custom askhistorians' and in the message: specify a number of upvotes that must be reached, and then an optional list of keywords you want to search for, separated by commas. You can have as many lines as you'd like, as long as they follow this format:
50, germany, africa, europe
You can also do 'custom askhistorians daily' And you can replace askhistorians with any subreddit.
See my wiki to learn more: click here
####Please let me know if you have suggestions to make this roundup better for /r/askhistorians or if there are other subreddits that you think I should post in. I can search for posts based off keywords in the title, URL and flair. And I can also search for comments.
You ever think about how weirdly similar the fall of Second French Empire and the fall of the German Empire are? Of course these are stretches
• Both have 3 monarchs, with a really short lived middle monarch; Napoleon; his baby son Nap2; and Nap3
-Wilhelm, Frederick, Wilhelm 2
•Both 3rd emperors had long successful reigns despite the monarchs being relatively incompetent.
• both empires getting into the colonial game to gain a place in the sun, to mixed results.
•Both emperors picked a premature fight between France and Germany that ended with the abdication of the empire and the establishment of weak republics that have to put down socialist rebellions.
• both have to deal with humiliating occupations and pay large reparations.
• both lost eastern territories that while not ethnically the same as the core nation, were vital to the national prestige ( Alsace-loraine being mostly german/nic| posen being mostly polish)
•both becoming revanchist with the return of the lost territories becoming major national focuses in all aspects.
There's a lot more little stuff and of course it's all circumstantial, I just thought it was weird.
There was a very good question once about why government's have to use wartime loans and secure funding and cannot just utilize all the countries ressources.
Does anyone have the link to that? Cannot find it.
Did Japan have any ancient cults? Whenever I Google I only go d ones that date back to the 50s. I'm talking feudal Japan ancient. They got to have one, everyone had a cult back then