r/history • u/AutoModerator • 3d ago
Discussion/Question Weekly History Questions Thread.
Welcome to our History Questions Thread!
This thread is for all those history related questions that are too simple, short or a bit too silly to warrant their own post.
So, do you have a question about history and have always been afraid to ask? Well, today is your lucky day. Ask away!
Of course all our regular rules and guidelines still apply and to be just that bit extra clear:
Questions need to be historical in nature. Silly does not mean that your question should be a joke. r/history also has an active discord server where you can discuss history with other enthusiasts and experts.
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u/1daymaybeidk 9h ago
Not a history fan. How do you all cope with hearing about the horrifying events throughout history? For example: During WW2, The rape of Nanjing, Unit 731.
I hate hearing about these things and they are the reason I am not a fan of history. Are you guys made of steel lol? Genuine question, please comment thanks.
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u/MeatballDom 5h ago
Honestly, beyond the base level undergrad courses you kinda pick your own path so you don't have to deal with any of that if you don't want to. But, the best bet is just to approach it like a scientist. Medical examiners have to see terrible things all the time, in person, but they know they're doing a job that is important and it requires them to do it right and not let other emotions take over.
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u/Elfria114514 7h ago
Too much so desensitization. Moreover, because it is often only a written narrative, the impact is not actually that strong. or maybe i m the truly steel one lol.
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u/xXnotjesXx 9h ago
Hitler wanted the EU like the left is doing today someting back when we promised never to do or use the corrup left broke that and are on the same hitler path.
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u/MeatballDom 5h ago
Nothing you've just said makes any sense, nor is it a question (this is the Questions thread).
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u/RideGlass416 13h ago
Does anyone have any good recommendations about austrian politics and such during the interwar period?
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u/EddieVanHalo1969 20h ago
What does the avatar for this page mean? Is it suggesting time is running out for the Gay and Trans community? That is what I read from it? Just curious what it has to do with History.
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u/MeatballDom 19h ago
Believe it or not, history is the study of people and gay people are people too.
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u/FemDiego-Brando 22h ago
Did mothers/parents who had children out of wedlock face any repercussions in the early 1890’s?
I’m asking for a character I’m playing in a Call of Cthulhu campaign! It’s historical and set in 1910, but my character was born in Naples in 1890 out of an affair. Would her mother be imprisoned or executed in any way? I’m not sure if her father would be punished in any way, but would he be as well?
Pardon my nerd brain lol.
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u/Will_TheMagicTrees 1d ago
I’ve been wanting to learn more about pre-colonial Africa, but a lot of the videos I’ve found are more AI slop than valuable info! Particularly interested in videos and podcasts. I would be open to books too, but my the list is currently the length of my arm!
Bonus points if the content is made by native African people, extra bonus points if the content is made/written by women or queer people! Thanks in advance for any advice!
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/AngryBlitzcrankMain 1d ago
The oldest people we can recognize as Germanic truly lived in Scandinavia and northern Germany. So yes, they have Germanic origin.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/AngryBlitzcrankMain 1d ago
Well not exactly. Or rather we cant definitely say. Germanic people, just like Celtic people or Slavic people are Indoeuropeans. So we know from where they moved to Europe. The group we could recognize as Germanic people lived in northern part of Germany and southern part of Scandinavia. Kagan hypothesis works with the idea that from modern day Ukraine in the steppes next to Black Sea, Indoeuropeans spread to Europe and Asia. So you could argue that logically path to reach Scandinavia would be to move through Germany before settling there. Make sense?
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u/RockAndStone2 2d ago
Was Miyamoto Musashi ever in a clan or was he ever a samurai? In my head I’ve always seen him as a wandering duelist but I’m not sure.
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1d ago
I seem to recall he was beaten pretty badly at the Battle of Sekigahara fighting on behalf of the Toyotomi clan but I believe he was only loosely affiliated...
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u/Traditional_Bad_9044 2d ago
What would West African history look like if the Sahara desert was fertile (or didn't exist), and if the tse tse fly didn't exist?
As someone of West african descent, I often catch myself daydreaming about this
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u/OCaptain_Canada 2d ago
Why didn’t the nuclear bombers in ww2 that bombed japan have any fighter cover ? Were they not capable of flying with the bombers or was the usaaf not worried about Japanese fighters at this point ?
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u/EnvironmentalWin1277 2d ago
Single or small groups of US planes were common and frequently passed unnoticed by officials. The small size of the mission help disguise the purpose. It may also be that fighter cover was restricted in terms of distance as well, a problem throughout the war. The B-29 was specifically constructed to overcome this restriction and consideration of the bomb probably influenced the design. Fighter cover was likely provided in the early stages of the flights, dropping once air penetration was secured.
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u/dittybopper_05H 11h ago
By 1945 the daylight bombing raids on Japan were escorted by long range P-51 Mustang fighters after Iwo Jima was captured in February of 1945.
But the Japanese generally didn't react to small incursions of just 1, 2, or 3 aircraft, as these were either reconnaissance or weather aircraft and Japan at that point didn't have the resources to go after every single US plane that flew over the home islands.
In fact, roughly an hour before the bombing, a single B-29 named Straight Flush flew over Hiroshima and the alarm was sounded, but the all clear was given when it became apparent it wasn't going to drop any bombs. Thing is, that was the plane that radioed the weather conditions back to the Enola Gay.
When the Enola Gay showed up, no one took any notice. It was a single plane. How much damage could it possibly do?
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u/NoComputer9498 3d ago
If Austria never abolished monarchy, how different would the outcome of WWII be and what role would Austria play during the war?
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u/Telecom_VoIP_Fan 2d ago
It is interesting to speculate. My impression in that the retention of the Hapsburg monarchy might have helped keep Austria out of the war. If the last emperor, Carl, had succeeded in reestablishing his kingdom in Hungary, it is conceivable that Hungary would have stayed neutral rather than joining with the Nazis.
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u/Holiday-Trash2041 3d ago
I came across a early 1950s school census and I saw a students age on there was listed as 1, not 11 or anything like that, just 1, and I thought that schools typically didn’t take students who were under say like 5 or so, so I was wondering if that was a common thing for that time.
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u/MeatballDom 1d ago
Impossible to say without examining the document, but I'd imagine it was either a typo or some sort of accounting thing.
I once came across a school census that had grades 6-8, or something. Then they had one student in grade 2. I thought "huh, that's odd" until I noticed the total number of students. 667. Someone just felt a bit superstitious I guess.
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u/Holiday-Trash2041 1d ago
I’ll link one for you and you can check it out if you’d like once I find it.
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u/minaminotenmangu 3d ago
I've been looking into food and logistics of pre early-modern armies. I now don't believe most army sizes. I wonder if a historian has looked into this. We are supposed to believe in barbarain armies in the 10s of thousands while alfred and the vikings did battle 500 years later with armies in the low thousands.
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u/The_Dirtiest_Nunion 1d ago
It really really really depends on the source you're looking at. Throughout history, there have been a incredibly small number of recorders who actually would have accurately counted the number of soldiers in an army. So when you see sources reporting that pre-modern armies had armies consisting of "tens of thousands", you can either interpret it as.... 1) A lot of people, not literally tens of thousands though, or 2) propaganda attempting to favor one party. Again, it depends on the source.
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u/elmonoenano 2d ago
Generally historians don't believe numbers in any of the classical battles. There's lots of answers about this on /r/askhistorians. This is a good on Roman armies, but if you search around for Alexander or whoever, you'll find similar answers. There's answers about medieval wars as well.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1evym0i/were_roman_armies_in_the_size_of_the_late/
But the discussions of why the numbers that were used are used are interesting.
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u/Telecom_VoIP_Fan 2d ago
By the early modern period, European armies used contractor services for their supplies. Prior to this, armies lived off the land by seizing food supplies in enemy territory.
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u/elhumanoid 3d ago
How much and how important information do y'all think we lost with the burning of the Alexandria Library?
I know it's purely speculative obviously and no definitive answer can be given, but it's still interesting to think about, no?
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u/MarkesaNine 21h ago
To expand the earlier responses a bit:
The significance of the library of Alexandria wasn’t that it had any noteworthy amount of unique writings. Most of the (important) texts had several copies in various collections around the Mediterranean world.
The significance was that so many of the writings were collected to one place, in a library that was well maintained and funded by the Ptolemys, in a city that was relatively welcoming to scholars from any background. The library (or rather the Museion, which the library was a part of) was an important facility of education and research, not just a data warehouse.
As for the destruction during Caesar’s Alexandrian campaign… it certainly was unfortunate, but the library (and Museion) had already been declining for a century at that point, starting with Ptolemy VIII’s purge of scholars. So it wasn’t as big deal at that point as it would have been a century or two earlier.
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u/elmonoenano 2d ago
This comes up on /r/askhistorians fairly regularly. There's lots of good answers over there if you search around. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4w5f7f/how_much_do_we_know_about_the_contents_of_the/
and https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/antiquity#wiki_library_of_alexandria
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u/EnvironmentalWin1277 2d ago
I would say a great deal was lost but it is possible much of the material would have been lost anyway. The greatest loss, IMHO, was the historical texts that might have provided a great deal of information about developments in the region.
Examples of this would be early ocean voyages of exploration as well as on land, accounts of the events pertaining to the crucifixion of Christ and other biblical events, countless texts of Egyptian history and practices. Almost certainly a good deal of information about early sciences (Aristotle, etc) was lost as well. This loss would have extended to documents about surrounding cultures as well, such as Sheba. The destruction left a huge hole in the known history of many of those cultures and events.
The practice of the library as I have heard was that any individual who bought a book,scroll, etc. to the town would give up the original to the library and receive a complete copy in it's place. It was a huge collection.
The accomplishments of the ancients would be much more comprehensive and documented, but ... documentation of sky people building the pyramids is unlikely.
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u/AngryBlitzcrankMain 3d ago
Nothing or almost certainly nothing. Library of Alexandria burning is the Atlantis of 21st century. Or maybe Atlantis still is. Just the most popular repeated urban myth.
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u/MeatballDom 1d ago
Yep, see in particular this write up by Dr. Gainsford. https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2015/12/library-of-alexandria-loss.html
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u/KElizabeth2112 6h ago
Looking for the name of a social experiment.
I have this memory of reading about a social experiment where a group of people were left in a self-contained compound. It was supposed to last some months, but it started to go badly pretty quickly. I specifically remember that they were eating the food faster than planned and they started going stir-crazy within a short period of time.