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'm a PhD Candidate in History and sometime-poster on /r/AskHistorians (on another account). I host a podcast called Off-Campus History that I think might interest folks here! The focus is on popular portrayals of history (films, games, museum exhibits, etc.). On each episode I interview another historian about a popular depiction of the history they study. Recent episodes have discussed Ken Burns's documentary series on the US national parks, The Revenant, Wonder Woman, and The Lighthouse!
Here are a few links if people are interested in checking it out! It's on other podcast apps too if people prefer something else.
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, May 06 - Thursday, May 12
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 7,604 | 82 comments | [Great Question!] Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman served as co-chairs of Planned Parenthood. Barry Goldwater’s wife was a founding member. George H.W. Bush, as a congressman, spoke in support of family planning on the house floor. When did Planned Parenthood and family planning become toxic to politicians? |
| 3,012 | 93 comments | [Urbanisation] In 400 AD Rome hosted a population of well over a million people, 200 years later the population of the city was counted in low tens of thousands. So, was there just a gigantic empty ghost town located in the center of Italy? What happened to all that infrastructure? |
| 3,008 | 37 comments | Given Nazi Germany’s hatred of disabled people, what happened to soldiers with debilitating war wounds? Were they seen as heroes to be celebrated, or burdens on society to be thrown away? |
| 2,837 | 35 comments | The American Revolutionary War hero and Frenchman Marquis de Lafayette said, “I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery." He must have known the colonies had slavery. Did he think the new nation would ban it? |
| 2,526 | 66 comments | What did the Habsburgs think about the 'Habsburg jaw'? |
| 2,304 | 23 comments | Did ancient cities like Babylon, Athens, and Rome have NIMBYs? |
| 1,979 | 43 comments | Domitian (CE 81-96) is the only Roman emperor who seems to have understood inflation and took measures to correct it by revaluing the currency. Why did later emperors not do this? Was the knowledge of the concept of inflation lost or something? |
| 1,791 | 50 comments | In Ken Follett’s “World Without End” he writes that when medieval people would travel on roads they would use a system where they would run for twenty paces, then walk for twenty paces, and so on. Is this accurate? |
| 1,615 | 35 comments | In the movie The Northman, a woman deters a would-be rapist by smearing menstrual blood in his face. Did the Norse have some superstition around menstrual blood, or was she just doing it to gross him out? |
| 1,380 | 84 comments | Why do we say Union Army instead of American or US when discussing the Civil War? |
###Top 10 Comments
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My first academic article has been published in a peer-reviewed journal! "'Tam o' Shanter 's Geansaidh Snàith': The Innovative Work Songs of Gaelic-Speaking Herring Gutters"
Who is the fourth man in this political cartoon?! (Korea, Anglo-US friendship foundation stone of peace)
I’ve got Truman, Atlee, and Stalin. Who is the 4th!! library of wales Cartoon: Korean War
In Adam Curtis’s docuseries Can’t Get You Out of My Head, he quotes Jiang Qing as saying this line after she is sentenced during the Gang of Four trial: “I am without heaven and a law unto myself. It is right to rebel.” I can’t find references to the quote anywhere online. Did she really say this? Is this a good translation?
Does anyone have a good entry level comprehensive material about Central Asia? I know very little about the region and its history and am looking for a good jumping off point.
Does anyone know the origin of the phrase “don’t pet a burning dog”?
The earliest I know is from the tip section of Warcraft 2 which came out in 1996. I’ve heard it mention as a term from the US Marines but the earliest mentions I can find on the internet for the Marines are in the 2000s with ‘Generation Kill’. The internet seems confused as it even mentions the movie ‘A Good Year’ in 2006 as the origin.