We spring back into action with a fantastic Sunday Digest, opening up November with a bang! We still feel the reverberations of last weeks gigantic Fact Thread, which attracted thousands of comments and still has people posting in it over a week later! So settle on down for a sprawling collection of fantastic history threads!

Don’t forget to check out the usually weekly fare, as well as the special stuff!

• We get a superhero level team up in AskHistorians Podcast Episode 209 - Public History and Outreach with Bret Devereaux and Roel Konijnendijk!

• Start by checking out the Fact Thread that just keeps on giving! AskHistorians has hit 1.5 million subscribers! To celebrate, we’re giving away 1.5 million historical facts. Join us HERE to claim your free fact! A ton of folks are still contributing, but particular shout outs to /u/Takeoffdpantsnjaket, /u/thestoryteller69 and others who have been writing some pretty impressive facts in there!

• Tuesday Trivia: Halloween! This thread has relaxed standards—we invite everyone to participate!

• The Thursday Reading and Rec thread!

• It’s a quiet party in the Friday Free for All but that wont stop us!

• Than /u/thewrestlingnord continued to feature in the Saturday Showcase with an answer on the results of this deregulation and Charren and ACT’s sustained efforts to combat it.

• There was a very interesting META question this week. How do you all know these answers?

• Plus the return of a classic. Hope this is ok. How come so many posts show multiple comments but when I open them up there zero or fewer or deleted comments?

• And then, because the internet fates are fickle, I woke up to another sprawling META post this morning. This is one of my favorite pages on Reddit. But I’ve always been curious - What is the history / origins of r/AskHistorians? How did such a specialized sub get established and maintained? Who are some of the early or influential people who made it what it is today?

And that’s it for me! I’ve got to run to continue my own busy weekend, but enjoy the wealth AskHistorians has prepared for you! Keep it classy out there history fans, and I’ll see you next week!

We also spend some time every week showing some appreciation for those fascinating threads that captured our curiosity, but still fight for the attention of experts. Hundreds upon hundreds of questions get asked each week, and no one has the time to see them all. So feel free to post up your own, or those you came across!

• A deleted user asked In honor of spooky season -- when did people transition from dressing up as scary things to dressing up as various pop culture characters?

• /u/ZydecoOccultist asked Why Is It So Hard Not to Chase An Enemy and Fall Into and Ambush or Some Other Mistakes Involving Breaking Out of Ranks to Chase Troops Who Seem Like Fleeing? Why Is This Error Seen Even In Disciplined Armies?

• /u/Remote_Table_1847 asked Rice is one of the most efficient food sources on the planet. Why did rice never become popular in Europe, even though they adopted plenty of other food stuffs from other parts of the world?

It's 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.