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-
I recently posted a new (and rather topical) video about elections and voter fraud in Ancient Greece and Rome. Feel free to check it out!
Have a good weekend.
I just noticed this week that /u/sterling_mace died earlier this year.
For those who don't remember, he was a world war 2 veteran who used to be involved in various history subreddits, including this one. It's been years since he last posted, but I don't think he has been totally forgotten.
I don't know if it was noticed or commented on at the time, but I didn't see anything when I searched and thought it worth mentioning.
Hey, I think I made a post like this before in another such thread, but have the mods considered moving all book recommendation questions to the short answers to simple questions thread? Book recommendations are very common and very rarely answered. The issue, I suspect, is that nobody wants to write out some in depth review for a book. I think more of these requests would be answered if people were asked to limit their questions to those threads.
Anyone knows a good or newbie-friendly online magazine for an undergrad/amateur history writer to send his writing to? Thinking of History Today but it seems the bar is high
EDIT: Maybe ones regarding stories/writings in general? Though I'm not really confident in writing anything else other than history, so maybe pop-history?
I read that atomic secrets weren’t shared by the Americans with the British after WW2 because Roosevelt died and the British lost their copy of Roosevelt agreeing to share the secrets. That a copy showed up later in the files of a retiring admiral because Tube Alloys sounded vaguely nautical and so it was misfiled with the navy.
That sounds too absurd to be true. Given the cost of a nuclear program surely someone would have argued the point before the British started from scratch. Churchill and Truman must surely have known of the existence of the agreement, even if they couldn’t find a copy of it. They could verify it with others who were there. And an agreement of that importance shouldn’t be getting lost at all. You’d keep copies in multiple locations with key individuals.
Folding Tube Alloys into the Manhattan Project was a big deal with transfer of top secret research, materials, personnel, and so forth, it’s not plausible that it happened but the agreement under which it happened wasn’t documented.
Was the loss of the agreement an excuse for American refusal? If so why did the British accept this betrayal?
How are all you find folks doing this week?
Halloween is going to be just a bit different this year, but anyone planning some historical costumes? This season is always one of my favorites and even if I'm not going out (Likely just sitting inside and watching horror movies) I have some half baked intentions to at least do it in some kind of a costume!
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, October 16 - Thursday, October 22
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 6,290 | 152 comments | The Nazis attacked and occupied France, but only 10% of the population supported the French resistance. How could freedom fighters trying to liberate their own country be so wildly unpopular? |
| 4,903 | 157 comments | How did the mispronunciation of Caesar begin? Everything I've read has indicated it's pronounced Kaiser, but See-zer is still the common pronunciation |
| 3,986 | 76 comments | Did any ancient Greek, that we know of, at any point try to climb Mt. Olympus? and if so, what happened? |
| 3,967 | 113 comments | Did Hitler ever visit concentration camps? |
| 3,809 | 73 comments | In the 1940s, women took up masculine social roles while men fought in WW2. In the 1950s, however, women were marginalized back into traditional roles. Were people aware of this reversal? Did memory of that add to the social change of the 1960s? |
| 2,873 | 286 comments | [AMA] I’m Katie Barclay, a historian of emotion and family life and I’m here to answer your questions. Ask me anything. |
| 2,765 | 19 comments | The Gokturk founders( Bumen andIstami) united the Steppe land above China, defeated the Chinese Sui Dynasty, and conquered the Western Steppe into Crimea/Hungary all within 30 years to create the largest land empire ever at that time. Why don't they get more attention in history? |
| 1,805 | 28 comments | Did Karl Marx and Victor Hugo ever wrote to each other or about each other? |
| 1,350 | 43 comments | In Victorian period dramas and the like, oranges are treated as rare delights. How did the orange go from becoming a rare, expensive commodity to the ubiquitous fruit we know today? |
| 980 | 26 comments | Did Caesar have some sort of endgame in mind? Were there any specific policy goals he wished to enact as dictator? Did he want to restore the monarchy and declare himself King of Rome? Or was he just kind of winging it the whole time? |
###Top 10 Comments
during the middle ages (europe)
How bright were inns - day and night time?
Im wagering lots of candles and windows with shutters probably played a role in lighting interiors, but is there a way to visualize it today? Im wagering glass wasnt as clear, so the closest today would be any modern house with lights off during day?