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.
Just wanna say I appreciate this sub a great deal along with the way it’s moderated.
Glad I run no risk of being banned for expressing this today (hopefully).
So I have a big move coming up in less than two months, and today I ruthlessly purged four boxes of books. One book I was going back and forth on was a signed memoir written by Charles Sweeney, who flew the atomic bomb mission against Nagasaki.
I picked it out of a box of books someone was getting rid of 20 years ago, and I never actually read it. Part of why I kept it is because I mistakenly thought it was a signed copy of Paul Tibbets' memoir! Anyway apparently Sweeney's book (which was ghostwritten by two other authors) is incredibly controversial and factually disputed, even by Tibbets, so even though part of me kept it for all these years because of some supposed historic value, I'm kind of wondering if I actually just got rid of a monkey's paw/cleaned my karma out a bit.
Today is the 206th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, but it is also the 200th anniversary of the first Waterloo Banquet. On this day in 1821, the Duke of Wellington hosted the first iteration of what would become an annual tradition until his death in 1852. Between 30 and 40 (The Morning Post gives the total attendees at 42, while Wellington’s clerk at the Ordnance Office, W. Holdernese, who witnessed portions of this first banquet, puts the number at 34) of Wellington's closest comrades and officers of the Royal Horse Guards (Wellington was the Regiment’s Colonel) gathered in the State Dining Room in the north-eastern corner of Apsley House to dine and toast the King, Wellington, and the victors of the battle.
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, June 11 - Thursday, June 17
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 5,090 | 54 comments | Gonzalo Guerrero was shipwrecked and then captured by the Maya in 1511; when found by other Spaniards about 20 years late, he had been made a warlord and refused to return to Spain. Why would the Maya make a low-born European sailor a warlord? |
| 3,594 | 45 comments | Why did so many ancient cultures consider the heart, rather than the brain, to be the seat of the mind? Surely they must have noticed that head injuries frequently result in mental impairment and personality change, but chest injuries never do? |
| 3,307 | 90 comments | In fairy tales, there is a popular trope of beautiful damsels being locked away in a tower, only to be rescued by a clever beau. Was it really that common in the medieval period to trap women in obscure towers? If so, for what reasons were they put there? |
| 2,970 | 61 comments | [Snooday] New Snoo Sunday: Introducing Snoor Inayat Khan, Snoollarawarre Bennelong, and Chief Snooseph |
| 2,921 | 40 comments | In 9 AD, Wang Mang abolished slavery in China. Considering that slavery was universally normalized in the ancient world, what led Wang Mang to abolish slavery? |
| 2,813 | 90 comments | [Great Question!] "Traditional" English food is stereotyped as bland and unhealthy. But I've heard the popularity of this style of food is a consequence of rationing in WWI and WWII. What was home English cooking like in the 1890s-1900s? Did WWI/WWII change it? |
| 2,710 | 64 comments | "The Last Emperor" was filmed in Beijing in the the 1980s, and has a scene that portray the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards in a decidedly negative light. Why was this permitted by the Chinese authorities at the time? |
| 2,704 | 21 comments | [Great Question!] In 1947, a group of 33 Japanese Soldiers on the island of Peleliu finally surrendered, three years after the US won control of the 5 square mile island. How were these individuals able to stay undetected and supplied for three years? Did they have any contact/support from the outside? |
| 2,466 | 83 comments | Why was switching rations from wheat to barely an effective punishment for a Roman soldier? |
| 2,240 | 36 comments | Where do the 'Western Fonts' come from? |
###Top 10 Comments
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Did any Roman villas continue to be inhabited after c.600 AD?
How did people people clean carpets before hoovers/vacuum cleaners?
I feel like this question scream I'm Gen-z lol. I have no idea when hoovers were made.
With Juneteenth coming up and a lot of people on holiday today, what are some good organizations to donate to that educate people about, preserve, and/or support research into the history of Black Americans?
Why do monkeys playing with cats frequently feature in medieval manuscripts and seventeenth century Dutch paintings? Is there a specific symbolic resonance, or did the artists just think (and I wholeheartedly agree with this) that it looked damn cute?
This might be a stupid question and the answer might be obvious to all more familiar with reddit and not as new as me:
Some questions have already been asked and do not need a new post or thread, as the answers will then only refer to the old questions. Is there a way to search/google already ask questions, so that I do not post anything that has already been asked and answered before, only for someone else to find those answers, when I could do it myself?
What were the most important industrial companies (Factories, Oil Plants...) east of the Ural (mainly Omsk, Novosibirsk & Yekaterinburg) in the late 70's early 80's? And how were they managed? I know everything was state-owned but what were the requirements to become a manager of one of these?