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.
This week's Lovecraft research saw me tackling Relatione del Reame di Congo (1591) by Filippo Pigafetta on my blog - a 16th century Portuguese account of the Kingdom of Kongo, Angola, and surrounding regions. A bit out of my bailiwick, but it is fascinating sometimes to read these old books and realize that for many Europeans, this was as far as their knowledge went - tales of cannibalism, the slave trade, and two-legged dragon-like cryptids.
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, November 13 - Thursday, November 19
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 8,647 | 76 comments | [Great Question!] Some states have legalized marijuana and are now having to make decisions about how to handle people in jail for marijuana convictions. What happened to moonshiners, rum runners & other intemperate folks in jail when Prohibition ended in 1933? |
| 8,642 | 244 comments | How did Germany de-radicalize its people after the fall of the Nazi party? |
| 7,160 | 165 comments | How did Oregon, a state founded exclusively for whites and a hotbed for the Ku Klux Klan, become one of the most liberal states in the US? |
| 5,251 | 101 comments | While modern culture often portrays men as obsessed with sex and women less so, I had a professor who said that it used to be widely believed that women were ravenously sexual beings and men were often taught to behave as the gatekeepers of sexuality. Is this true and if so, when/why did it change? |
| 5,076 | 79 comments | Do diaries from 1918 bemoan the worst year ever due to war/pandemic in the same way we have this year? |
| 4,583 | 117 comments | How come there isn't a large group of languages descended from Greek? |
| 3,470 | 76 comments | The “myth” goes that Columbus believed that the world was round. The churches and state were sceptical of these claims and demonised Columbus. I now understand this wasn’t the case at all. Where does the story of a sceptical flat-earther Catholic Church trying to denounce Columbus come from? |
| 3,334 | 144 comments | Was Gen. Washington a tactically good General? |
| 2,349 | 64 comments | People have tried to find evidence of various events in the Bible, such as the Hebrew Exodus and the United Monarchy. But has anyone ever tried to find the remnants of the million-strong Ethiopian army described as being destroyed in Judah in 2 Chronicles 9-14? |
| 2,122 | 40 comments | History of sex abuse — when did society start publicly acknowledging it’s wrong? |
###Top 10 Comments
I've recently been fascinated by the story of Walter Reuther and his brothers, who were raised by a German socialist immigrant and went on to lead one of the biggest American auto unions, the UAW. What brought him to my attention was how he saw the union as a means for social change, and eventually lent support to Martin Luther King and the civil rights struggle.
Perusing YouTube, it seems like a lot of the resources out there valorize the Reuthers. Can anyone recommend a fairly even-handed biography looking at Walter and his brothers? Also interested in other ways in which unions were involved in broader social changes, and whether that was always specifically linked to socialist politics.