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.
Been awhile since I posted some random discussion topics, so lets have some fun. We've done movies and video games before, but why don't we talk about some of your favorite history places?
There's a mountain of variety here. Got a favorite museum? Art gallery? Living history site? Heck maybe there's just a place out in the field somewhere that has deep historic vibes, you can tell us all the reasons why!
Historians, is Indiana Jones cool or what?
I'm fascinated by figures like Joan Quigley, Choi Soon-sil (too current to discuss here but mentioned as additional context for my query), and Grigori Rasputin -- shadowy religious figures relied on by superstitious heads of state and despised by the other ruling elites. Anyone have other interesting examples of figures like this?
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, July 23 - Thursday, July 29
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 4,604 | 111 comments | During his lifetime, Julius Caesar had been to both Egypt and Britain on military campaign. In summer months, a day in London lasts about 2hrs longer than one in Alexandria. Did Caesar or any of his contemporaries have an explanation for this? Did they even notice it? |
| 4,573 | 53 comments | Wikipedia says forced and mostly public anilingus was used as a form of punishment, usually of prisoners, during the Thirty Years War. How did this work? Who was having their ass licked? How did this practice originate and how did it die out? Did it happen elsewhere at any time in history? |
| 4,289 | 54 comments | In Ancient Greece, did unmarried pregnant women ever claim Zeus or another god to be the father of their child to escape scrutiny? |
| 3,838 | 48 comments | I'm a career Roman legionnaire who has just finished his 25 year term and been granted a plot of land on the frontier. What happens now if I have no idea how to farm, or how to work that particular soil? |
| 3,519 | 102 comments | Many younger people today are pessimistic about their futures because of existential threats such as climate change. Was there a similar sentiment among younger people in cold war era America because of the threat of nuclear war? |
| 3,489 | 111 comments | People say they want historically accurate "medieval fantasy". |
| 3,012 | 78 comments | In the first season of The Sopranos, one of the male characters was hesitant about performing oral sex on a woman. He said if any of his peers found out, they would think less of him and view him as a possible homosexual. Was this actually the case in mafia culture? If so, why? |
| 2,597 | 32 comments | Disagreements between the citizenry have caused extreme polarization where it seemed that civil war would certainly result. In your period of focus, what examples exist of such groups becoming so enraged at each other that fell short of civil war, and how did they end up mending their differences? |
| 2,593 | 103 comments | I'm closing a ten year old internet forum. Are there any best practices for the preservation of web forums? |
| 1,822 | 41 comments | Rome’s origin story, of a town founded by criminals and vagabonds, replete with constant war and duplicitous betrayals such as the Rape of the Sabine women, sounds almost barbaric compared to the proud statesmen senators in the later Roman republic. How did the romans themselves view their origin? |
###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'. Or send me a chat with either askhistorians or askhistorians daily.
####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 find the top comments overall or in specific threads.
How will the modern day be studied in history hundreds of years in the future?
Currently we sort of scrape together what we can find from the past, but (especially) since the internet, so many things are backed up and documented and filmed and tracked.
Say it's the year 2400, what will the landscape for historians look like, if you're researching, say 2020? Will we have archives of data you can comb through? How will this era of information change the profession of 'historian'? Will misinformation or rewriting be a potential issue?
I had this thought a while ago and would be really curious what you guys think the future looking back on us will look like. I know not everything is backed up of course, but certainly a lot of important things are.
Ok, so I kinda made a little archaeological discovery in my yard, I can’t seem to find a lot of information to back up my theory maybe you can help, during the first official minting year for the U.S. , 1792 the pattern coins introduced weren’t actually done at the mint, is there any solid story on where they were struck that year? Names have been tied to the pattern coins of the year, is there any data on the dies themselves? Master dies, composition, where they ended up? What’s the legality of owning one now? Say 1792-1798 ended up in a private collection, does the mint still officially own them? I know certain coins that weren’t supposed to be struck and got out can’t ever be legally privately owned. Sorry kind of a lot for one question but I’m having trouble getting anywhere on the subject, thanks .