How were soldiers paid during WWII?

• Hard cash that they carried around?

• Cheques?

• Into a bank account back home?

How was it different for different armies?

By the mid 19th century potatoes had become a staple in American and European cuisine but would your common potato farmer in Germany/Great Britain/Ireland/etc have known that the potato came from South America after Columbus and all that?

Would the uneducated farmer have known that this staple & vital foodstuff wasn't always there?

Did the bells of Notre Dame ring hours during the French Revolutionary period and, if so, were the hours different because of decimal time?

The French Revolution nationalized the Church estates. I'm trying to find what happened to Notre Dame during that period.

While I would like an overview of the status of that Cathedral during the Revolution (many church properties were just used for warehouses and stables), I'm particularly interested in early 1794 in Paris when the Revolution also tried to promote their decimal clock and calendar. Even if the bells of Notre Dame were ringing, were they ringing at the same times?

It seems the bells would remain the only citywide type of sounding device, so I wondered whether the sound of them offended Revolutionary sensibilities so much they stifled them or whether, like the properties themselves, they appropriated them for their own use.

Thanks

I’m curious, where can I find historical accounts of people trying foreign foods? Like I wonder what a British person’s reaction was to eating stuff like sushi, Indian food, etc for the first time.

What do we know about the attitudes of previously-isolated countries towards outsiders involved in lifting the isolation? For instance, Japan was (mostly) isolated during the Edo period until forced to open by USN Commodore Perry and this event seems broadly to be favoured by the Japanese. Is this favour real and, say, born of positive changes in the country after the opening or is it an illusion born of how the event has been portrayed? Another example is Kiribati which was named after a British captain (Gilberts) by a Russian captain in a series of events I'm not entirely sure I understand. Are there other examples I may be interested in? Thanks.

This started as a question about other Eiffel Tower-like objects from the World's Fairs, primarily from the beginning until 1914 however I noticed something weird.

Why wasn't there a single World's Fair held in Germany (1871-1914)?

It was a Great Power and leading industrial and cultural nation, but besides a single expo held in Vienna, no World's Fair was held in the german speaking world, let alone Germany proper.

That's weird, right?

Can anyone suggest any non fiction on Renaissance period or industrial revolution or both? I want something that a non history person can read but still goes into technicalities.

Does anyone know which Mesopotamian king it was who decreed a number of major goddesses would henceforth become male? I can’t remember it for the life of me. Think possibly Babylonian or Akkadian?

What are some good books about the Baltic theatre of the Russian civil war that cover events

Looking for historical myths, legends and tales to read, what stories do actual historians love?

Working on a bit of a collection. I’ve got things like the legend of King Arthur, the knights of Charlemagne, Greek mythology, etc. and I’m waiting on a copy of the Mahabharata.

If you historians have any stories of the past, real or fiction, I would love to hear your recommendations

I was reading a document from 1955 stating that "Nikolai Lenin" died in/around 1924. Googling this gives a result for Vladimir Lenin/Ulyanov with little indication of why he would have been best known by a different first name 70 years ago. Does anyone know why it was written like that?

Are there any Catholic Church documents about North American aquatic animals as fish for lent?

It's something of an internet meme that "In the 16th (or 17th, or 18th) centuries, starving Venezuelans (or Bolivians, or Quebeqois) asked the Pope (or their local Bishop) for dispensation to consider the semi-aquatic Beaver (or Capybara, or guinea pig) a fish for Lent. The first reference I've been able to find is the 2002 Rasputina song "Rats" on their album "Cabin Fever!"

To me, this song is much more like Poisoning Pigeons in the Park by Tom Lehrer in terms of tone, intent, and, frankly veracity. So with this song being 20 years old, is there any earlier history that would make the song's events true? Or is this song actually the birth of an internet meme?

The first-ever album released simultaneously worldwide (1973, 1982 or some other year) and what was the name of the album?

Who started the shootout that ended in Bobby Hutton's death?

I've been reading Black Against Empire and cross-checking it as I go, and one section that really stands out to me is their portrayal of the shootout between Eldridge Cleaver. The book's narrative in short is that armed panthers were driving around two days after MLK's death when they pulled over and Cleaver walked out to pee. Then, "a moment later, several police cars pulled up and shined a spotlight on Cleaver. Words were exchanged, then gunfire." Then it talks about how Bobby Seale "described the shoot-out as an ambush by police", which is basically what the book's narrative implies.

However, when I looked it up on Wikipedia, it led me to an interview with Eldridge Cleaver where he claims the complete opposite, that he deliberately ambushed the police, which seems to corroborate with other testimony. Is this a case of "the author's lack of critical distance from their subjects" or is there still some question over what actually happened? Is Cleaver considered an unreliable source?

Also, as a sub-question, I don't get how there were so many panthers in the caravan but somehow only Cleaver and Hutton at the end when Hutton is killed.

Did the Spanish ever ally with or fight alongside the Umayyad or any other Muslim forces during the age of Reconquista? And if so when and to what capacity?

Would children ever have gone hungry in the GDR during the 1960s? Would families rely on their school-aged teens having a job so they could afford bread? My understanding is that the state subsidized a lot of basic material needs.

(I've recently read a children's novel, A Night Divided by Jennifer A Nielsen, and am concerned about its historical accuracy.

It takes place in East Berlin, about 1963. It's about a 12-year-old girl whose father wound up on the other side of the wall when it went up. She determines to dig a tunnel so she can see him again.

A major plot point involves her 15/16 year old brother who loses his job as a bricklayer. As Gerta and her brother dig the tunnel, their shovel breaks. Because their mother is out of town visiting their grandmother, who has broken her leg, they're forced to choose between buying groceries and buying a new shovel. Their hunger worsens as they dig the tunnel.)

Did Chinese anarchist guerrillas operate in the mountains of Yunan, China, up until the 1950s?

This is a pretty bizarre claim I found today. Here's the sentence from the history book Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870–1940:

Chu Chapei led anarchist guerrillas in southern Yunan, China, in the 1950s.[footnote: Interview with H.L. Wei in Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988, 214 et seq.]

As it happens, this book is available on the Internet Archive, but page 214 doesn't seem to talk about that at all. No mention of Yunan in the text. Now there's a book by the same author, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America which is also on the Internet Archive (bless this resource) and as it happens, it does mention the elusive Chu Chapei, making the footnote a mistaken citation.

On page 409 it says,

I also knew Chu Cha-pei, a sort of Chinese Makhno from Yunan province in the south, near Burma and Indo-China, the son of a soldier. Following his father's occupation, he too became a soldier and attended Whampoa Military Academy. He read Pa Chin's translations of anarchist classics and became an ardent anarchist. He later met Pa Chin and visited me and my wife in Nanking in 1936. He told us that some day he would welcome us in an anarchist utopia in the south.
Chu Cha-pei actually knew about Makhno from Bao Puo,[581] who wrote about him in the paper Kuo Feng (National Folkways) after returning to China from Moscow in 1923. Chu was tall, strong, intelligent. Like Pa Chin, he was a man of few words. He fought in turn against the Japanese, the Nationalists, and the Communists, just as Makhno had fought against the Austro-German occupiers, the Whites and Nationalists, and the Communists. Again like Makhno, his base of activity was in the mountains of his native district in the south, from which he continued to launch attacks against the Communist authorities throughout the 1950s. He is probably still there, still alive, hiding in the mountains of Yunan, though his precise whereabouts are unknown.
[581] Bao Puo was one of a group of young Chinese who attended the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow, where he met Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in 1921. By translating Berkman's writings on the Russian Revolution, he alerted his comrades in China to the dangers of Bolshevism. He returned to China in 1923. See Bao-Puo, "The Anarchist Movement in China," Freedom (London), January 1925.

This seems to be correct citation, as the person speaking is indeed H.L. Wei, interviewed in New York City, January 11,1975.

But this seems to be the only source of it at all, which begs the question, did Chinese anarchist guerrillas operate in the mountains of Yunan, China, up until the 1950s?

What was the average marriage age in 15th century Dutch cities?

The British artist Edmund Blair Leighton has some amazing medieval set paintings, including "stitching the standard from 1911

What standard is the Lady stitching? Looks like it could possibly be the HRE standard or maybe a griffin?

Did he commentate on any of these paintings on who, what, and where these events are?

When are the first accounts of abortion related medicines in history?I’ve heard the Egyptians had some herbal remedies, but I was wondering if there was anything earlier?

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(i was redirected here from a stand alone post so i hope this is the right place)

Why do English speakers tend to pronounce Beijing with an exotic soft J sound, when the correct pronunciation is the regular English J?

Edit: to clarify, I'm wondering whether there was a political reason for this pronunciation, given the controversy surrounding the renaming of Peking.

So I am writing a Dieselpunk novel and I am wondering, what were the most popular technologies spanning from the 1920s to the 1950s?

Anglophone colonists in North America seem to have been fairly unhappy with having to rely on corn rather than wheat, which isn't incredibly surprising given its very different characteristics. Why didn't they gelatinize it through nixtamalization to improve its texture? Was it not a practice among the Eastern Seaboard Native Americans, such that colonists wouldn't encounter the technique when learning how to process Indian corn (and there being a new question on how those groups avoided pelagra), or did Europeans just insist on adapting the techniques they already knew with as little modification as possible.

Similarly, why is cornmeal so much more common than corn flour? If it a modern phenomenon, such that colonial Americans were grinding finely enough to not have that textural difference from white flour?

Does Carthage and Tunisia share the same name?

I’ve been interested in Carthaginian history recently and I noticed that both in Carthage and Tunisia their capitals are just the country’s name shortened somewhat. So this leads me to my question; does Carthage and Tunisia mean the same thing? I may be grasping at straws here

Why did mystery writer John Dickson Carr write some of his novels under the pseudonym "Carter Dickson?" The names being so similar, together with the common impossible crime themes, suggests that he wasn't trying to fool anyone.

How would gunpowder be kept dry while in humid climates?

Is it true that the US reneged on it's debts to France (for aid in their revolution) when Louis XVI was overthtown?

This is a common narrative you see online, but in the Glorious Cause by Middlekauf he explains how John Adams and others were adverse to becoming in debt to a European power, and he implies that France's desire to see Britain weakened was so great that they basically helped the colonists pro bono.

Clarification would be appreciated

Did people rush to the stores after 9/11 or during Cuba Crisis to buy toilet paper and pasta the way people rushed to the stores when covid-19 happened? Is that a 20s phenomenon due to digitalisation and omnipresence of news, or did people react like that in the past too?

I read that the first US Presidential election was primarily done by state legislature vote. State legislatures would vote on electors, who would cast their vote for President.

Now the Presidential election is done by statewide voting. Residents of the state will vote for which candidate will get the state’s electoral votes.

But when did the states transition to this form of voting, and what instigated the change?

A TikTok claimed that the 30% rule for how much of one's income should go to rent originated with the US government's response to the Great depression. The video claims that the rule was decided on because when low income people were paying significantly more than that, they were a lot more likely to become unhoused. While my attempts at researching online do you seem to show that this guideline DID crop up with a 1937 housing act (originally 25% of income I think), I'm having trouble finding anything related to the exact rationale for why that number was decided on.

If you have any resources you'd recommend or are able to share your expertise, I would love that.

(Probably too late to this thread but worth a try!)

Im looking for a source for a quote thats allegedly from Ghenghis Khan. Im not even sure if it's legitimately from him. It goes something like:

"Anyone who does not submit to me will share the fate of a stone dropped in water: they will simply disappear."

Ive looked online and all i found was a single forum post from years ago with no source listed.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

What, if any, is the consensus on the efficacy of Nixon’s Wage and Price freeze in 1971?

Where are Metacom's remains now, or where were they as of 2002? Were they ever returned to the Wampanoag?

Hello! I'm looking for good resources on the Meiji Restoration and the Taisho era in Japan. Could anyone point me to some? English or Japanese sources are okay.

In classical cultures with a lot of stories in their mythologies (Greek, Roman, Norse, etc), what was the explanation for how people learned of those stories that happened before humans were around? Was there ever some account of the gods telling someone these stories in the first place, or was it just assumed to be known without explaining how? I guess this is the case with the Bible, too. Who told humans the Genesis story?

Did Phobos and Deimos have a Roman equivalent? Did Mars have any children in Roman mythology? Thanks!

Is their any information on how large the populations of precolonial Native American tribes were?

A few years ago someone was telling me about a pre Inuit group that went extinct. He said that they knew they were going extinct because all their art started depicting screaming faces. Anyone have any idea what group he was talking about?

Did the soviet pilots during ww2 have parachutes and emergency escape? The thing that shoots you out of the plane.

Just watched a ww2 movie from the soviet perspective and they just crashed without taking any action.

is the Maya by Michael D coe a good and (more importantly) faithful book. as in, no taking personal liberties and does the book try to be as accurate as possible (to a reasonable extent).

This is for historians of South Africa.

My father recalls how my grandfather (in the UK) had a black South African friend who visited the house. Some time after, two white South Africans tried to get into the house (he can't remember if they tried to force entry or just asked to come in, either way he wouldn't let them in).

What was going on here? Was it common for members of the SA secret service to try to intimidate foreign members of the public? Where can I read more about this?

What is the earliest artistic depiction of raccoons after the arrival of Europeans to the New World?

anyone know who this is? a friend has been wearing this for years with no ideas

any book recs for how Western Europe transferred from monarchy systems to more democratic style rule?

I'm looking for a "gay" equivalent to Sex Before the Sexual Revolution, which is a set of interviews with straight people who got married 1930-1960. Are there any books that are testimonies of LGB people who lived during the same time period?

Thanks!

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This image shows a pendant worn by Chauvelin and at least one other deputy of his department in this production. It is oval with a hemisphere in the middle. The metal is plain, perhaps steel or pewter.

Since more than one person in the same office wore it, I assume this was an attempt at period costume accuracy. However, I can find no other images representing that period with it.

Chauvelin's attire was kept very plain and dark, even the tricolor ribbons he wore were minimal. This pendant seems to have been intended as a mark a Revolutionary office.

It is so simple, but I can't discern the symbolism (revolutionary?), the function (seal/stamp?), or other purpose.

Thanks

Did Jews believe that the Torah was written by Moses? If so do certain Jewish sects still believe so today?

I'm looking for a case in which factional interests within a nation exploit either the weakness or illegitimacy of a regency government leading to a war of succession. Can anyone think of one?

Because sign language is not a universal language and there are variants for various different languages such as Spanish Sign Language, Japanese Sign Language, and American Sign Language to name a few. While it might not be universal do we have definitive documentation of where and by who sign language was started , what Deaf Community was the first to have a standardized alphabet for signing .

What were the recorded instances of Cannibalism in Western Europe?

Outside of those destroyed by foreign conquest, which past religions have effectively ceased to exist?

I've seen posts and discussions about how WWII is viewed in modern day Germany and Japan, as well as how they treated their veterans. But what about the Italians? How have they perceived their role in the war, and how did they treat their veterans, especially those who fought for the Fascists?

Need to find an old South African newspaper. Die Sondagstem - 2 November 1965. I’ve scoured the internet with no luck. Has anyone got any leads? Specifically the article on the Congo Crisis. It contains photos of my grandfather who was a mercenary.