If France were to suddenly decide to restore the monarchy, who would get the throne? Has anyone been keeping track of royal descendants (like Britain has 50+ people in the line of succession) or did everyone just completely forget about the royal family once Louis Phillipe skipped town?

Do you have any introduction recommendations on the divergence of Nordic economies?

Despite their lower insistence on high production, relatively late industrialization, harsh climate, etc. they became even richer than other European nations whose divergence we’re often taught of as the default path of growth. I can’t understand what set the Scandinavians apart.

Why did most US states and the federal government decide on "25 to life" as a sentence for serious crimes? Why not 20 or 30, 42 or any other number?

I keep on reading that Warren G Harding loved poker but can't find which game. So my question is what poker game did Harding normally play?

From the Wikipedia article "Concordance", emphasis added:

The reconstruction of the text of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls involved a concordance.

Access to some of the scrolls was governed by a "secrecy rule" that allowed only the original International Team or their designates to view the original materials. After the death of Roland de Vaux in 1971, his successors repeatedly refused to even allow the publication of photographs to other scholars. This restriction was circumvented by Martin Abegg in 1991, who used a computer to "invert" a concordance of the missing documents made in the 1950s which had come into the hands of scholars outside of the International Team, to obtain an approximate reconstruction of the original text of 17 of the documents.[5][6] This was soon followed by the release of the original text of the scrolls.

Why would researchers conspire to keep the content of this important historical find secret from the public and other researchers?

Were spy novels a popular genre in the Soviet Union? Was there a Soviet "Tom Clancy" or "John LeCarre"?

Can anyone recommend a good book to learn about food wealth in feudal Europe? I’ve been reading the A Song of Ice and Fire series and I’m very interested in the way lords and kings collected taxes from mills, the methods they determined how much food would be put away for winter, how that food was then distributed. Who got to hunt in the lord’s woods and who in the lord’s hall got what food. What did it mean socially to be above or below the salt, If that is a historical reality and not just a term of the books I’ve been reading.

How many seats in Germany's Reichstag were occupied by Jewish politicians in 1930?

What about other important government positions? How well were Jews represented in Weimar Germany's political system?

European kings are famously intermarried because the pool of suitable spouses was so small for them. Did lesser nobles marry ‘internationally’? How far down the hierarchy do you have to go for it to become rare or maybe even unacceptable? For example would the couple dozen English dukes be more likely to intermarry, marry down or marry foreigners?

On the page of Declassified photos of the Winter War on Wikimedia, a couple of photos have captions containing words "Desantti" and "Matroosa". Are these calques from Russian? Did USSR really extensively use airborne or marine units in the invasion, so their names became colloquial?

Do we know where the phrase "The floggings will continue until morale improves." Comes from?

Are there any good Greek Prophecies? Reading Oedipus Rex with my class and a student asked if any prophecy actually predicted anything positive.

I asked recently but didn't get any responses; I'm wondering if it's true that police abandoned their posts/jobs during the 92 LA riots? If so, how many? And what happened to them afterwards?

please help me figure out the author‘s name and title of the book that I can’t remember that had a yellow cover. I remember that the author was a British scientist or philosopher who lived during the time that Mary anning lived and made her fossil discoveries. I also remember that the book was a book of letters written by the author to the Catholic Church denouncing the church authority over science and listing grievances that science had with church doctrine when it came to the age of the earth and the age of the fossils that were newly discovered. Can anyone help me figure out which author and book that I’m thinking of...?

Does anyone know if archaeologists have discovered remains of Hannibal's elephants? It was asked in this thread but not answered.

I read that Napoleon's wife Josephine had black, rotten teeth from eating sugar. Weren't there artificial teeth out there that she could replace them with, especially with the resources of her husband?

I'm reading Ian Toll's Pacific Crucible right now and as part of his chapter he mentions that

Later in the war, it would become a court-martial offense to refuse to act on good intelligence, but for now it was Fletcher's privilege to ignore his intelligence officer if he so chose, and he did.

Can anyone give any context to this statement? He seems to just kinda gloss over it but is there any more information about that?

Does anyone know any books I can read about Vikings and their use of mushrooms before battle?

I saw in Osprey's book on the infantry of the Dutch armies of the 80-Years' War that rank-and-file soldiers were forbidden from using wheellock and snaphaunce firearms. Can someone elaborate on why, since the book does not.

[meta] This is a question about how to ask a question.

I watched this interview with South African Staatspresident B.J. Vorster from 1974 with William F. Buckley. Most of the interview consisted of Vorster defending Apartheid ("separate development"), and Buckley mainly pushed back on the philosophical points (e.g. "Is this moral?," "Is this fair?," "Assuming all of that is true, so what?" etc). He seemed less familiar with the particulars of South African politics.

Vorster makes a number of specific claims I'm rather skeptical of (e.g. "[Black and white people] settled different portions of South Africa...[the Bantustans] were not 'reserved' for [non-white people], they settled that land and they still have it to this very day and the whites settled the rest....we didn't put them there...they settled that land and they picked that land, and let me say, from an agricultural point of view and a rainfall point of view, it is the best land in South Africa." ).

There's maybe 6 or 7 of these I'd like to ask about specifically, and I would obviously provide full quotes and timestamps.

I'd like to ask how true many of these claims are, or if he's leaving out some important context, but I can't just say "Please refute B.J. Vorster." What is the best title for this?

So I'm a bit of a WW2 buff and as I was reading some material I thought about how the books always refer to the United Kingdom as Great Britain. This got me curious so I went and watched an FDR speech and sure enough he calls it Great Britain. When did it enter the cultural zeitgeist to call it the United Kingdom instead of Great Britain and why?

Asking for a friend, are there ways to access Lebanese newspapers from 1975-2005 without using a library?

What resources should I start with to learn about military tactics in the mid to late 19th century (e.g. US Civil war, Spanish American War, gunforts, revolver & rifle advances)?

i assume there is, but I'm not sure where to find it - is there any record of James II's thoughts, feelings etc while in exile on how he was essentially 'betrayed' by his daughters Mary and Anne? I know he was critical of Mary at the time in 1688, but later in exile did they ever reconcile? Did he ever say, write to his daughters again?

Any recommended biographies on Louis XIV? I tried looking at the booklist but couldn't find anything.

How many slaves went to each country or region?

I was reading around and I saw that only about 388k slaves landed in the USA during the Atlantic Slave Trade out of the 10.5 million that survived the journey. I am wondering where did the other 10 million + spaces go. If you could give me the specific stats of about how many per country that would be great.

What are the most objective beginner level books on ancient history?

I’d also be open to any videos you might recommend as well.

Thank you in advance.

Before the invention of oven gloves, how did people handle taking out boiling hot cookware from the fire/oven? Thinking especially in England and 18th/19th centuries but anywhere at any time would be fascinating.

Why wasn’t the southern French speaking part of Belgium part of France?

Whenever a Japanese Emperor had the same name as a previous one, they would add go to their name, what would they call themselves if they were the third emperor of that name and were there ever any examples of this occuring?

I would like to better understand Russian Government, politics, and society from the 1980s on. Im open to all types of media, but would prefer video-documentaries, etc. I realize a little background is useful, If i said 1990s on, im not sure where the background would start (1980s?) but I would like to keep the background closer to the 1980s vs 1940s

Can you guys recommend me a series of biography about historical persons?

There has been a few times in United States history where a vice president has taken the role of president due to the death of the president. In those cases, How smooth or chaotic was the process of picking a new vice president?

Who was the last person to describe a personal encounter with the Greek god Apollo?

When did the basic 'shoelace knot' become a thing. Have we always tied our shoelaces this way?

Were the Stone Age inhabitants of Finland genetically related to those of Sweden?

Hi everyone! I need some help chosing a topic for my roman law class project. Basically I can choose any topic that's at least somewhat related to roman law.

All the basic topics like slavery, marriage, punishments have been chosen and I can't really find something interesting.

Could you help me with some ideas? Thank you in advance!

Hello, I was watching historical films and a question came to my mind.

How did people in the middle ages avoid food cross-contamination without access to constant clean water and soap?