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.
A few years ago I was in a lecture series regarding British foreign policy before WWI. This particular one dealt with the death of Queen Victoria and the professor listed all the various nations which had sent ships to participate in a naval review which was essentially part of the funeral. Most of the participants were unsurprising, but there was an odd one in the list, Japan. The funeral took place only ~ a week after Victoria's death, so how did a Japanese navy ship make it to the English channel?
I forgot asking about it then and it slightly annoyed me ever since, that I couldn't find information about it. Well, randomly googling keywords can be more succesful than reading articles about the funeral itself, the one Japanese participant was the Hatsuse, a ship which had been built in the UK and was completed just 4 days before Victoria passed away. I'm still not sure whether there were any Japanese on board, or whether the British manned it.
Don't forget to check out the Holiday Book Gift thread to ask for ideas or offer your own!
But on that topic, and because I always love getting more ideas, what are some other good history themed gifts you've gotten or wanted before? I myself do like me some fossils and smaller knick knackery things.
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, November 26 - Thursday, December 02
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 3,699 | 27 comments | Black soldiers ordered to guard supply depot so German spies would have no way to infiltrate? |
| 3,019 | 25 comments | To what extent was FDR supportive of Eleanor's love of lesbian women? |
| 2,543 | 145 comments | Athens, a small city of 250k, gave rise to a miracle in 500 BC and produced Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Sophocles, Archimedes, Euclid, Pythagoras, Thucydides, Herodotus, Solon, Pericles, etc — it seems so unlikely! What juice were they drinking? What birthed such brilliance? |
| 2,168 | 32 comments | The Inca were famous for their qullqas storehouses filled with enough food to see their subjects through years of famine. Were such vast food reserves particularly notable in the premodern world? Did European or Asian civilizations manage a similarly effective famine-fighting strategy? |
| 2,125 | 33 comments | The film Breakfast at Tiffany’s includes portrayals of sex work and infidelity that are a) barely disguised, and b) not particularly negative even if not very positive. How was this possible under the Hays Code? |
| 2,034 | 42 comments | How Long Did Islam Survive Among Slaves in the American South and How Did it Impact African American Culture? |
| 1,976 | 27 comments | In 1871, the British Army, which had been using breechloading field artillery since 1859, reverted to using muzzle-loaders. What lay behind this change, especially given the demonstrated effectiveness of Prussian breechloading guns in the Franco-Prussian War the year before? |
| 1,807 | 31 comments | Of the twenty-five Einsatzgruppe commanders, a shocking fifteen of them had Ph.Ds. Why did the SS insist on having their Death Squads run by credentialed academics? |
| 1,791 | 7 comments | [Great Question!] The Iron Confederacy was a highly multicultural Great Plains polity that dominated Western Canada, and at its height, controlled the trade coming out of many British forts. Yet little information is available about them online. What was their history, & what are some good sources to learn about it? |
| 1,785 | 21 comments | July 14th, 1789, the Bastille was captured. Only a few weeks later in August, slave uprisings in Saint-Domingue proclaimed, “the white slaves have killed their masters, and now we are free.” How did news make it so quickly to the Caribbean, and how did slaves stay informed on political issues? |
###Top 10 Comments
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How did pirates react to the slave trade during the Golden Age of Piracy?
Were pirates more likely to steal slaves to sell themselves, free them, recruit them? Were any famous pirates notable for their actions regarding slaves, or were they just generally regarded as cargo?