I just finished reading Linda Porter's The Myth of "Bloody Mary": A Biography of Queen Mary I of England last night. (Good book, I recommend it.) The epilogue is an excellent coda, and it has a line about how Mary is popularly seen as a "sad little woman" who would have been better off as a housewife. Which is true (that it's a popular perception, I mean) and spurred some more of the thoughts I was already having about how the Tudors are thought of. Namely, that there's this unspoken assumption somewhere deep down inside a lot of people that, essentially, some sort of Providence guides historical happenstance, or that bad things happen as "punishments" for doing the wrong thing.

That is, in this case, Mary I is the bad queen and Elizabeth I is the good queen. Mary died of a fever five years into her reign (their younger brother, Edward, also died of illness before even attaining the age of majority and ruling in his own right without a regent), while Elizabeth had a long reign and managed to survive smallpox. Now, nobody today says "God/the universe was getting them out of the way for Elizabeth, the Rightful Queen," but that is often the subtext of discourse around the siblings and of fictional depictions of them, imo. Going to cut myself off before I spill too many Hot Takes, but just know that I have many more of them.

As I'm researching my thesis, the more I find how impressive that the Ottomans are managed to garner such influence in the Muslim world, specifically in my focus of South East Asia. Considering all the handicaps and problems they faced back home compared to European Imperial Powers, they managed to make use of their self-proclaimed status as the leader of the Muslim World and make it to their advantage while investing relatively minimal resources. It's telling how there are rebellions that hinged on the belief that a 'Kapal Stambul' (Ship from Istanbul) will arrive and support their movements. If they could have completely destabilized some European colony or two that would've been great. They largely failed, but they tried and it did a good bluff. There are also still leftovers from the Ottomans around to this day; I once visited a mosque that was most likely built with donations from the Ottoman Sultan.

I'm aware there was a conference going but sadly I can't attend because things have been really hectic lately, with research for my thesis, my ongoing internship, and the various college org I've been involved in. Currently, I'm helping my uni with creating a documentary about a regional king - a pretty famous and influential figure widely regarded as a paragon of leadership (and I think for a good reason). I hope you all will have a good weekend.

It has been a long but fun week folks with the conference. I had a blast, and churned through more videos this week than I usually do in a month.

Did anyone have a favorite? Any panel particularly strike you or get you thinking?

Some questions about colonial America from my 8th graders that I can’t find satisfying answers for:

-Is there any truth to the idea that coffee becoming Americas hot beverage of choice instead of tea is because of the boycotts against British taxes that took place before the Revolution?

-When Alexander Hamilton left the Caribbean it was because of donations from people on the island. Was he expected to return someday so Nevis could benefit from his education?

-They had some political differences, but how close were John and Sam Adams as cousins?

What's the name of the rectangle with two triangles on the sides in which Roman inscriptions are often written?

#OTD in 1454, Gutenberg prints the earliest known document on his printing press, an Indulgence for the church. I figured this thread might be interested in watching this video that just came out, which is an accurate digital recreation of Gutenberg's print shop and the surrounding medieval germany area in the 1450s. It shows the shop as it would have looked as he printed his most famous work, the Gutenberg Bible.

Gutenberg Recreation Video Link

"This radiocarbon dating is sponsored by British Petroleum: when documenting your research, always use BP!"

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Hi! A good friend of mine is looking for a Russian historian who also speaks Spanish. It's for a podcast about Laika, the dog. Would anyone be so kind to point me in the right direction to find someone like that?

Thanks!

Edit: English works too.

Thinking of creating an api about presidential administrations. A little project I’m working on though I think I’m a little out of my depth (I’m a web developer not a historian):

• were executive orders always written and catalogued? If so, I think it’d be cool to stream that kind of info in a web service for historians/researchers.
• are nominations by US presidents recorded in congress? Like, for example if James Monroe nominated some obscure judge that never got approved by the senate for partisan reasons, is that nomination recorded somewhere as a matter of record?
• are there any instances where the occupier of some executively nominated/Cabinet position was totally unclear for legal/partisan reasons? I’d like to think that every person that has held a Cabinet had a precise start and end date but just wanted to make sure given that there is sometimes controversy between administrations (I.e. Marbury and Madison).

Things I think the api could be used for:

• how many executive orders did X president make?
• in which presidential speech did “x” term or phrase first appear?
• what proportion of presidents came from or had previously held a seat in the House? From the Senate? And how did this change over time?
• what profession did each president have prior to holding office?
• how many vetos did each president exercise? (Are pocket vetos something that can be formally measured unambiguously ? Should they be distinguished between a regular veto?)
• how many of judicial nominations did a president make? How many were successful?

General idea would be to have a service that returns quantifiable stuff that may be of interest to researchers or hobbyists; and also primary source material (stream original text of executive orders and speeches) if that stuff is publicly available, just spitballing ideas. I have a general impression that early US history a lot of stuff wasn’t properly or consistently recorded.

Mongolians got gout because of their meat-heavy diet, but did the Manchu bannermen get it with the similar type of diet?

I recently rewatched "Warlock", and while the most likely answer is bad writing, a conversation where the word "queer" is equated with pedophilia has me wanting to know if the word had a definition I'm unaware of (besides strange & its modern definition)

The protagonist's gay roommate is killed in a ritualistic way by the warlock & the police bring her in for questioning. They ask stuff like if he went to public restrooms or was a pedophile, and she reacts to he last question by saying "He's gay, not queer".

Did queer have a darker definition in the LGBT community in the 80s? Or was that just bad writing?