Hope this belongs in this sub...

My kids and I were watching something with cannons attacking a beach. Not sure of the timeframe but think wooden ships, pirates, 21 cannons on the port side, etc. Master and Commander type stuff. When the cannonballs hit the beach, there was an "explosion" with sand and bodies flying. I explained (hopefully correctly) that there wasn't anything explosive in the cannonballs, it was just the force of impact that caused the tumult. Is that correct? When did it begin to change that the thing you shot could go boom upon impact? Was that ever true with cannonballs? Thanks!

My history class had silk roads by Peter Frankopan as a book to read. I didn’t mind it but I was googling it and came across an article in the guardian dismissing it and it made me wonder why my class would choose it. I just would like to know if it is a good book for history or what historians think of it

What is geonegia? John of Morigny lists it as a type of divination/magic along with geomancy, pyromancy, etc., but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is…and neither can google. (As referenced in u/sunagainstgold ‘s new book, which I’m quite enjoying by the way.)

I heard a little while back that Kaiser Frederick of Germany wanted to be styled Frederick IV, as a continuation of the previous Fredericks of the HRE; the "medieval Empire".

But Bismarck talked him out of it, saying it would cause legal issues for Germany.

What were these legal issues? Or was Bismarck bullshitting Frederick because he had no romantic nostalgia for the HRE and he wanted to keep his new modern nation-state empire separate from the past's complicated history?

Has there been any countries that have gained and lost territory over time to the point that there were different periods of time in that country that had no land in common with each other? Not counting countries that ended then started again between these two periods of time

Last week we had this popular question and answer about how Afghanistan destabilized through the 1970s to 1990s. However, the question was based on the premise that, "50 years ago it was a stable nation that many tourists visited." I didn't see this point directly addressed in the thread, so I'll ask here: Is it actually true that Afghanistan could've been described in the recent past as "a stable nation that many tourists visited"? Are there any travelogue accounts of what it was like to visit at that time?

In "Homage to Catalonia", Orwell says that that were two English expressions the Spanish knew: "OK, baby" and one used by the prostitutes of Barcelona when dealing with British sailers, one "he doubted the composers would print". What was it?

As an aside, why would the Spanish be familiar with "OK, baby"?

What happened to the plaintiffs in Pace v. Alabama after they served their sentences? Did they travel to a different state to get married to each other or did they end up marrying somebody else?

Looking at Wikipedia's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_ancient_history

We have

"2700 BCE: The Epic of Gilgamesh becomes the first written story

1800 BCE: The Epic of Gilgamesh is written. Possibly the oldest great work of literature[contradictory]"

So they acknowledge it's contradictory and are looking for someone to clear it up.

But in the article itself it says "Written c. 2100-1200 BC"

So now we have a 3rd date, 2100BC.

Is the 2700BC way off? What is the earliest known date that it existed?

Thanks

Is it true that in 1560 the Grand Mufti of Constantinople declared public clocks "haram"? If so, why? If not, where did this claim come from?

Owning an estate with tenant farmers in the late 18th/early 19th century came with substantial responsibilities for land management, one's tenants, etc. When someone leasing an estate, for instance like Mr Bingley does in Pride and Prejudice or Admiral and Mrs Croft in Persuasion, would they also take over responsibility for the tenants and management of that estate, or would they just be renting the manor house to live in? My instinct would say it's still the owner who has that responsibility, but I haven't been able to confirm it with my own googling, and wonder if my instinct is right or wrong.

I asked my history teacher today for a brief definition of communism, and he said (not completely accurate just what I wrote down): radicalization of the proletariat, the destruction of capitalism, and a subsequent classless society. I'm just curious to how accurate this is and if it is missing anything else that is core to communism.

does the "NUTS" letter from the siege of Bastogne from Gen McAuliffe to the German commander still exist?

How powerful/influential were Portuguese pirates along the South China coast during the 1500s? The Wokou were active there around the same time; are there any recorded interactions or conflicts between the two?

Anyone know where I can find a reddit to find out a pendant that holds a religious figure. I don't know where to post a picture to find the answer ?

Does the common figure of WWII death toll (60-66 M deaths) include or exclude the Second Sino Japanese war death toll?

What is going on in the painting behind the pics of Taliban in the Afghanistan Presidential Palace? https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1426979105938059269

Can someone recommend a resource for me (not living in the UK) to learn about the London Library during the 1920s? I have some questions about when the additions were built and ideally what the layout was at the time.

I'm looking for an Illustrated history of the Middle Ages. Something similar to this picture of a page out of the times history of the world I took, but specific for the middle ages. I already have a few courses and many books on the middle ages, just nothing for visual reference and laden with maps.

I've found The Cambridge Illustrated History of the middle ages and The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe, though I don't know how good either of these are.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Has any dictator/member of a totalitarian regime ever publicly expressed remorse for their actions and tried to make reparations to their victims?

I am looking for a answer to a question that was posted here.

It was a discussion of European combatants during WWII, specifically around the state and it's ability to force it's citizens to defend the nation with their lives. It basically defined the nation by it's ability to send it's citizens to their death.

If someone could point me to that post I'd greatly appreciate it.

During the antebellum period of the U.S. there was a large reliance on enslaved black men and women for domestic work by the planter class. This dynamic also plays out in the colonies of European imperial powers such as British Barbados or British India and Ceylon. My question is whether metropolitan Europe also relied on enslaved and colonized people for domestic work during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in France and Britain.

In the novel Devil's Guard a French Foreign Legion unit captures one Soviet and two PRC officer advisers while raiding a Viet Minh tunnel.

The book is obviously fiction, but did any Soviet or PRC operatives actually get captured while operating in Vietnam, whether by pro-French forces in the First Indochina War or by pro-American forces in the Vietnam War?

I read about manumission laws in Mississippi where a slave could only be freed by an owner if approved by courts. If a last will says a slave can choose their own master in 1862 does this mean they were free at that point? Would their children also be free?

As historians yourselves...

What's some historic element or writing that would be key to understanding current history in general?

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I was reading a lot of older posts today because this sub is always amazing, and I was thinking about how limited our understanding of history is always gonna be, we don't know a lot of things, and we might never know... unless suddenly a greek hidden library appears or new manuscrits filled with stuff we don't know... do such documents that are non public exist?

Is there hope for something like that or at this point we are stuck with what we have

How literate were European nobles from the 8th to 11th centuries?

How common are blood stained swords and weapons?

In movies or games like kingdom come deliverance set in medieval or ancient times, when stabbing or slashing someone with a sword or any other, there’s blood on it. How is it possible to do so when the opponent is wearing armor like a shirt of mail and is it common to see blood during melee, on weapons or armor?

How many Jews held seats in the German parliament in 1930?

In a documentary I watched about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan called "Bitter Lake", the narrator makes the claim that political science majors from Kabul studying abroad in America learned about communism from American students and spread it in Kabul, leading to the Sowr revolution. Is this true? It seems more likely the USSR did something to cause communism to spread in Afghanistan.

Where did the communist influence that lead to the Sowr revolution actually come from?

Do we have an approximate count of the number of distinct cultures destroyed, conquered, or assimilated in the entire history of Rome from its beginnings as a Kingdom -> Republic -> Empire -> Byzantine?

Does anyone know the name of the Roman Catholic chaplain at the Battle of Maiwand, Afghanistan in 1880?

Does anyone know what age did sea captains, in the 18th century (more specifically 1790s-early 1800s), retire?

So, one of my ancestors, Nathaniel Packard, born in 1730, was on record as a privateer ad captain during the Revolutionary War. However, he and his wife, Abigail, had a son in 1771 with the same name. More to the point, I ask this question because there are records of slave voyages on Enslaved.org by a "Nathaniel Packard, Jr." (in 1799) and a "Nathaniel Packard" (from 1797-1802). However, considering I'm skeptical that Nathaniel, who was born in 1730, was a sea captain in the 1790s, as he would have been 67years old in 1790, and 72 years old in 1802. My common sense tells me he wouldn't be sailing a ship at that age and some scattered sources about this, when I did a quick search, did point to that. However, I couldn't find anything from the 1790s or 1800s and I don't know where I should look, what resources I should use or that are available, which can answer this question. I know its a strange question and I apologize for that, but anything would help, so I could make an educated guess on which Nathaniel made the voyages (currently my guess is that it is the son), and go from there.

When was autocorrect invented?

I looked it up and could not find the answer.

How did American, British and Canadian forces select troops for the first wave on D-day?

There is currently a twitter spat going on over a claim made by a twitter user who says that if he was transported back in time he would undoubtedly be an elite warrior because he would be a foot taller after spending a lifetime on a high protein diet. There was a lot of pushback on this point...So is he correct? Would he be an elite warrior in say, 10,000BC, 200BC Greece and 1000AD France?

How does one speak the title of King James VI and I? Google and wikipedia are failing me here. Is it said as "James six and one"? "James the sixth and the first", or what?

Whom did the Shang Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty trade with throughout their histories? Surprisingly I can't find much free information about this online. In a similar vein, whom did the Jomon culture trade with, if they did?

Why didn't Steppe nomads like mongols raise cattle? Are the steppes not a good enviornment for them?

Did people think Isaac Newton was insane when he told them about gravity??

Hello everyone! I have a question concerning the third Napoleonic invasion of Portugal: does anyone happen to know the size of the french cannons during the invasion? I know there was horse and line artillery, but I can't find whether they used 8 or 12 pounders, even though I consulted the Peninsular Atlas by Colonel Nick Lipscombe...

Did pre-Islamic Arab Christians, such as the Ghassanids and Lakhmids, refer to God as Allah?

When and why did they start putting handles on mason jars?

Which royal court was the largest in number of person ? (Courtier ?) I’m thinking Versailles or Vienna but I have no clue ...

How easy would be it be for a Roman soldier (say 45 B.C.) to have a weapon repaired or replaced prior to a battle?

Don’t know why it won’t let me post, but I don’t know a better thread to ask. It seems to me that the technological and societal difference between ancient Sumaria (3500 BCE) and Rome (0 BCE) is roughly similar to the differences in 1920s United States to current US. Is this a fair comparison? It’s amazing what the Sumarians achieved and it’s why I wanted to come here for opinions.