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.
Hey, everyone!
I'll be doing an AMA on /r/fantasy next Friday, in honor of my new book How to Slay a Dragon: A Fantasy Hero's Guide to the Real Middle Ages! In honor of the book, which uses actual medieval history to help you solve problems like "how to find the inn," "how to save the princess," and "um, so, the princess saved herself," come ask me how you can survive your next dungeon crawl or self-insert fanfic!
When did Wikipedia become about shameless self-promotion?
I remember a time when the articles offered clarity and the neutral, balanced tone of print encyclopedias, with a length and scope appropriate to the subject matter. Now, it seems as though many articles have had either someone's term paper or a budding scholar's fringe theory pasted in. Many articles are needlessly polemical, even when they cover niche topics that are without much controversy. And the bibliographies are cluttered with irrelevant or speculative sources added to harvest views or manufacture academic cachet.
I think about trying to undo some of the damage done, but the tremendous volume of articles affected by this problem makes it seem overwhelming.
I didn't know where to place this but I'm simply amazed at everyone and every question there can be!
I'm still not decided on having historian as my career (maybe 50% sure?) but the more I read answers and here about the work historians do here, the more it inspires me and motivates me honestly. I wish I could address to everyone my thanks for all the dedication put in this sub, whether questioners, historians, or mods!
I love history either way so I just hope I can learn more and earn a flair on here lol. I'm def gravitating towards some historical areas and regions but I keep on discovering more topics so we'll see what eventually happens in the future.
So I was checking the fundrazr page for the conference and I've got a question: if the goal is not reached, then what? Is it gonna affect anything? It's not even at 50% mark yet ಥ_ಥ
Also, my copy of How to Slay a Dragon is supposed to arrive by Wednesday. I was hoping for my cakeday tomorrow but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I checked the amazon page and apparently someone already gave it 5 stars, and I am awfully tempted to read the sample but I also want to wait for the copy to arrive. Urghh...
Any thoughts on applying for history PhD programs with a STEM undergrad?
Is anyone going to explain why sweet tea is so prevalent in the American South?
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, August 13 - Thursday, August 19
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 7,570 | 139 comments | Considering Muhammad had several wives who were well-educated and scholarly, how did sects of Islam become so hostile to educating women? |
| 3,975 | 161 comments | How did Afghanistan go from being relatively stable 50-60 years ago to the constantly-devolving mess it is today? |
| 3,751 | 113 comments | Soap was first invented around 2800 BCE. This was literal thousands of years before we discovered bacteria and viruses or came up with germ theory. Did we just get really lucky that soap kills these microorganisms? |
| 3,670 | 88 comments | Poisoning wells was a common practice in times of war, but then, at which point the well becomes drinkable again?, are there well still poisoned from past wars? |
| 3,505 | 24 comments | Tent cities are increasingly common in the US, but I don't remember any from when I was a kid (80s-90s); I know they were common also at the heights of the Depression (or was this a myth?); how was this remedied then? Was it addressed by government action, private actors, or a mix? |
| 3,415 | 106 comments | In Jarhead, a marine trainee in the scout sniper program stands up during a crawling exercise and gets shot. How common were such training exercise deaths from live ammunition at the time? |
| 3,108 | 22 comments | How common was ‘second sleep’ really in medieval Europe? |
| 2,266 | 52 comments | [Great Question!] I'm a twentysomething in East Germany in 1978, and I want to see this 'Star Wars' movie that west german TV is so excited about. Do I have any options to do so? What happens when the Stasi finds out about my intentions? |
| 1,306 | 28 comments | My great grandfather was in the SAS, serving in Norway in WW2. He brought back a polar bear skin coat, which according to family legend came from a U-boat captain. Is this plausible? Can anyone identify it? (Image in text) |
| 1,036 | 55 comments | In HBO's Rome there is a dedicated man who reads announcements in the Forum for the public. Did such "forum announcers" exist? Were they commissioned by the Senate? Did they belong to a specific organisation? |
###Top 10 Comments
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Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can look up how Japan portrayed itself during the Showa era? I recently attended a meeting about the parallels between China today and the Meiji to Showa eras. I was wondering how far that analogy can go.
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