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.
I got my first answer on this subreddit! And it’s annoyed me ever since.
I knew I was condensing a lot of the background trying to find a balance between rambling and getting to the point, then got to the main part and had spent the bones of an hour on it at this point trying to rejig my memory and ended up rushing to the finish. Then there was the nagging fear of coming off as biased.
Mods did give me useful feedback, huge appreciation for anyone that goes into depth in their answers.
I've been having a great time reading court documents for my home area encompassing what is nowadays the border between Sweden and Finland (that national border didn't exist at the time). It's been giving me loads of ideas about articles to write or even to record parts of transcripts and make YouTube videos like the channel Voices of the Past does.
I must say, that I get a bit too excited when I find a murder case, though.. I have noticed that I have a big fascination for the morbid.
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, January 07 - Thursday, January 13
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 5,235 | 52 comments | [Great Question!] My grandmother once said that, as a young woman in 1930s New York, she would chat with her friends in French when their husbands were around, because all the young ladies in her social circle learned French in school but all the young men learned German or Russian instead. Was this a common split? |
| 3,900 | 60 comments | How valuable would an OK modern kitchen knife be in middle ages? |
| 3,169 | 37 comments | Roosevelt used the WPA and U.S. Forest Service to plant a wall of trees from the Great Plains to Texas to slow the growth of the dust bowl. How successful was this initiative, and where are these trees today? |
| 2,562 | 109 comments | In the TV show 'Seinfeld' which takes place in the '90s, the titular character who is a small-time stand-up comedian live 129 West 81st Street which is really close Central Park. Could an artist like Seinfeld afford such a place in the NY in the '90s? |
| 2,561 | 56 comments | I just read a medieval text in which a man claims the human soul does not exist and that there is no afterlife. How common was such atheistic thought in the Middle-Ages? |
| 2,447 | 55 comments | Are there any theories regarding why and when humans decided that their genitals shouldn't be publicly exposed? Were there any ancient civilisations that preferred to be completely naked? |
| 1,980 | 40 comments | Many ancient polytheist religions are presented today as having a single widely accepted pantheon, mythology, etc. in their heyday like modern religions. Is this accurate, or were they more like disjointed and inconsistent local cults whose stories were merged and codified after the fact? |
| 1,916 | 50 comments | I've heard that the majority of cuneiform tablets have never been studied by a trained expert due to the sheer number of them discovered. How do historians prioritize which tablets should be studied and translated first in large collections like that? |
| 1,826 | 92 comments | [Best Of] Announcing the Best of AskHistorians 2021 Winners!! |
| 1,787 | 27 comments | It's the 1880s. I'm a Russian school teacher and I want to buy a copy of The Brothers Karamazov. How much does it cost? Do I need to travel to a large city to find a bookstore? How easily can I find this (or any) particular book for sale? |
###Top 10 Comments
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How large was the White Ship using something modern for scale?
How do I celebrate MLK day?
Just listened to a history podcast about the Gunpowder Plot and of course Guy Fawkes. Their plan was to blow up Parliament then kidnap the King's daughter.
Was there any chance at all that such a small crew of less than a dozen would instigate a successful coup? Or was their goal merely terrorism and a hope that Catholics across Britain would rise up?
I find it really interesting that Japan's top commercial partners in the start of the XXth century included Germany. I knew the industrial revolution was important in Germany but I didn't expect it to be among the top 4 commercial partners (if my memory is correct, along with the US, France, and England). I also learnt that a silkworm illness in France was the cause for advanced silk knowledge and industry in Japan, and to counter the french silkworms' illness, japanese silkworms were imported. Which of course french economists later saw as a threat since silk exportations from Japan were massive and it drew anger from the french silk industry, even though french silk producers were the ones to push silk machinery in Japan. Something I didn't expect to encounter during my latest reading!
I'm wondering about a book recommendation if anybody has one.
I'm looking for a biography of FDR, with a particular emphasis on anything that talks about the "Switch in Time that Saved the Nine" or FDR's efforts to get his New Deal legislation past the Lochner-era Supreme Court. I'm also open to academic articles on the same (ideally, I'm looking for historical articles or monographs, as the legal academic journal landscape doesn't have the same peer review process).
Any tangential recommendations that touch on the fall of the Lochner court would be welcome as well!
Ceaușescu as it is well known, was very vocal regarding the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. What did he have to say about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? How about the Vietnam war?
all the leftists on twitter talk about materialism. do most pro historians see themselved as materialists, idealists, or something else
In his Cartoon History, Larry Gonick makes reference to an ancient Roman slaveowner's manual being read and used by (some of) the American founding fathers. Did they read this book in the original latin, or was there an english translation available in the day? Also, to what extent did slaveowners in the south justify the practice because Romans did it? Did they see themselves as carrying on a well established cultured ancient tradition?