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.
Reading Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, and man…I don’t think she accomplishes what she sets out to accomplish? Like, far be for me, a non-academic, to call her out. I know nothing, I am a worm. But she starts out the book by saying it’s gonna follow the life of a guy (Engerraund de Coucy) and the writes a book about…well, everything else! He pops up now and again and basically serves as an entry point to a bunch of different discussions, but he could just as easily not been centered and you’d read the same book.
Also, man. Book is just claim after claim after claim. I dunno.
Why the southerns didn't sold their slaves to cuba or puerto rico during the civil war?
Has there ever been an African American spy? In particular one for Russia? Surely there has to be one with all of the propaganda and fake allyship they've targeted us with over the decades.
Hi - I will be travelling to France - Belgium - Netherlands in September this year. Does anyone have recommendations on podcast episodes about the history and culture of those countries? I would like to have a general grasp of the background of the places I will be seeing.
Also, if you have any tips on great historical places that fly under the radar that I should be going, it would be much welcome!
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, May 13 - Thursday, May 19
###Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 4,420 | 39 comments | Before I leave my house I make sure I have things such as my keys, wallet and phone. What would someone in the late Roman republic (or other time period) make sure they had with them every time they left there house? |
| 3,359 | 114 comments | The Catholic church claims to know the complete list of all 266 popes who reigned from the 1st to the 21st century, starting with St Peter himself. They also give exact dates for the duration of their papacies for nearly all of them. How credible is this from the perspective of a historian? |
| 3,327 | 84 comments | My 60ish year old mother once told me she finds it strange that a lot of young people still listen to classic rock from her youth (50~ years ago), when pretty much nobody her age during her youth was listening to music from 30-50~ years before then. Is that true? If so, why the change? |
| 3,154 | 71 comments | [Great Question!] [NSFW] Mozart wrote "Leck mich im Arsch" ("Lick me in the arse") in 1782. Are there any historical references to eating ass that appear earlier than Mozart's? |
| 2,791 | 53 comments | How do you fight Historical Revisionism? |
| 2,387 | 19 comments | Portugese records report that cannabalistic maurauders called Jagas raided as far as Somalia, Angola, and Sierra Leone. That's a range bigger than the continental United States. Who were these people? How did they operate over such a large distance? |
| 2,213 | 43 comments | Ukraine has excellent soil. Today it's a major food producer, and that was the same under the USSR. Yet in the middle ages, when agriculture was the largest part of the economy, Kievan Rus was not famed as the richest land in Europe or anything like that. Why not? |
| 2,139 | 54 comments | 89 years ago the Nazis burned the library of the Institute of Sex Research. What research was lost and what survived? |
| 2,016 | 60 comments | What was the deal with the important of cleaning behind the ears? In many old TV shows, and other media, I've noticed picky parents always getting on their kids about them being filthy behind the ears. |
| 1,701 | 39 comments | How accurate is David Graeber's claim that the Indigenous critique of European society kick started the Enlightenment? |
###Top 10 Comments
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How can the economic model of fascist Italy be described?