Today:
Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Sunday Digest (formerly the Day of Reflection). Nobody can read all the questions and answers that are posted here, so in this thread we invite you to share anything you'd like to highlight from the last week - an interesting discussion, an informative answer, an insightful question that was overlooked, or anything else.
We’re back (like the Dinosaurs) for the very FIRST Sunday Digest of 2022! It’s a bright new year, fingers crossed, and let’s open it with a bang! We have a wide selection of hand crafted, carefully curated history threads for you to enjoy as we ring in the year. Don’t forget to thank the wonderful writers, upvote all the contributors, and check out the weekly features as well!
Thursday Reading and Rec, last of 2021!
And one last Friday Free for All.
And that brings the first digest of a year to a close, and wraps up the last of 2021 at the same time! If that’s not efficiency I don’t know what is. Keep it classy out there folks, I’m wishing all of you nothing but the best for the times to come, and I’ll see you next week with even more!
It's a New Year! But it's still the first Digest of the month, which means it's time for another installment of "The Real Questions", where we take a look at the wilder side of r/AskHistorians! Here, I give a shout-out to people asking the more atypical questions on this sub: questions that investigate amusing, unique, bizarre, or less common aspects of history, as well as ones that take us through intriguing adventures of historiography/methodology or niche/overlooked topics and moments in history. It's always a wide (and perhaps confusing) assortment of topics, but at the end of the day, when I see them I think, "Finally, someone is asking the real questions!"
Below are my entries for the last month - questions with a link to an older response are marked with ‡. Let me know what you think were the realest questions you saw this month, and be sure to check out my full list of Real Questions.
As always, Sunday is also the perfect chance to shout out some fascinating questions that still remain unanswered. Feel free to post your own, or those you came across in your travels, and maybe we’ll get lucky and catch the eye of a wandering historian. My list is somewhat smaller today because of the holidays, but it’s just to get things rolling!