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{ "a_id": [ "d5g2jv1" ], "score": [ 6 ], "text": [ "**Rifle Division Reconnaissance**\n\nPer Shtat (table of organization) 04/400 of May 4, 1941, each Soviet Rifle Division had in its headquarters a 285-man motorized reconnaissance battalion of:\n\n * A 2-man battalion headquarters\n\n * A 26-man battalion headquarters detachment of staff, a signal platoon, and a quartermaster detachment\n\n * A 44-man armored car company consisting of a headquarters and three platoons\n\n * A 45-man amphibious tank company of a headquarters and three platoons\n\n * A 124-man motorized rifle company of a headquarters and three platoons, each platoon having three rifle squads and a mortar squad\n\n * A 34-man battalion trains of a headquarters, truck company, and field kitchen\n\n * A 5-man ordnance workshop\n\n * A 5-man medical detachment\n\nBelow, I will list the men and major equipment of the unit\n\n**Battalion Headquarters**\n\nPersonnel|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|1\nCommissar|1\n\n**Battalion Headquarters Detachment**\n\nStaff\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|4\nCommissar|1\nNCO|1\n\nSignal Platoon with 3 radio squads and a messenger squad\n\n3 radio squads. Per squad;\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nNCO|1\nEnlisted man|2\n5-AK radio and vehicle|1\n\nMessenger squad\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nNCO|1\nEnlisted man|4\nMotorcycle|5\n\nQuartermaster detachment\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|4\nNCO|2\n\n**Armored Car Company**\n\nHeadquarters\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|2\nCommissar|1\nNCO|2\nEnlisted man|3\nMotorcycle|1\nArmored car|1\n\n3 armored car platoons. Per platoon; \n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|1\nNCO|2\nEnlisted man|9\nArmored car|3\n\n**Amphibious Tank Company**\n\nHeadquarters\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|2\nCommissar|1\nNCO|1\nEnlisted man|2\nT-38 tank|1\nMotorcycle|1\n\n3 amphibious tank platoons. Per platoon;\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|1\nNCO|4\nEnlisted man|5\nT-38 tank|5\n\n**Motorized Rifle Company**\n\nHeadquarters\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|1\nCommissar|1\nNCO|1\nEnlisted man|1\n\n3 motorized rifle platoons. Per platoon;\n\nHeadquarters\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|1\nNCO|1\n\n3 motorized rifle squads. Per squad;\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nNCO|1\nEnlisted man|11\nMachine gun|1\nTruck|1\n\nMortar squad\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nNCO|1\nEnlisted man|3\n50 mm mortar|1\n\n**Battalion Trains**\n\nHeadquarters\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|1\n\nTruck company\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nNCO|2\nEnlisted man|27\nTruck|13\nStaff car|1\n\nKitchen\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nNCO|1\nEnlisted man|3\nField kitchen|1\n\n**Ordnance Workshop**\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|1\nNCO|2\nEnlisted man|2\nTruck|2\n\n**Medical Detachment**\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|1\nNCO|2\nEnlisted man|2\nAmbulance|1\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Rifle Regiment Reconnaissance**\n\nEach of the Rifle Division's three Rifle Regiments had a horse-mounted 32-man Reconnaissance Platoon, consisting of; \n\n* A platoon headquarters\n\n* Three reconnaissance squads\n\nBelow, I will list the men and major equipment of the unit\n\n**Platoon Headquarters**\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|1\nNCO|1\n\n**Three Reconnaissance Squads. Per squad;**\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nNCO|1\nEnlisted man|9\nRiding horse|10\nLight machine gun|1\n\nThe Rifle Regiment also had a 53-man Scout Platoon, consisting of;\n\n* A platoon headquarters\n\n* Four scouting squads\n\n**Platoon Headquarters**\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nOfficer|2\nNCO|1\nEnlisted man|2\n\n**Four Scouting Squads. Per squad;**\n\nPersonnel or equipment|Quantity\n:--|:--\nNCO|1\nEnlisted man|11\nLight machine gun|1\n\nSource:\n\n[Soviet Rifle Division organization](_URL_0_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.niehorster.org/012_ussr/41_organ/div_rifle/rd_00.html" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ch6sr6w", "ch6t8n7", "ch6ty5x", "ch6v5pl", "ch6v74o", "ch6vtq7", "ch6xp5m", "ch71p5q", "ch728zt", "ch72i2u" ], "score": [ 67, 616, 473, 10, 53, 58, 6, 42, 3, 6 ], "text": [ "Piggy back question. I've heard it said New Deal programs were an pressure release to the working class that undermined radicals & prevented the US from going communist. True?", "Before answering this question, please note the subreddit you are in. This is AskHistorians, not /r/Politics or /r/Economics. As such, answers are expected to be historical in nature, as well as both in-depth and comprehensive. All answers that fall into discussions of economic theory or contemporary political points have been and will continue to be removed.\n\nThank you for your cooperation.", "I can comment on the macroeconomic history part of this. Most programs like the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), WPA (Work Projects Administration), and similar had a very small (almost insignificant) but net positive direct benefit to the economy. You could make a case for spillover/multiplier effects from training people in a trade but I'm unaware of any such work from that period. E.g. one small part of the New Deal was increased regulation of utilities. This led to mandates like the electrification of rural areas. It's hard to objectively measure how much economic benefit that had, but obviously that opened up rural America to further economic development. Speaking generally, infrastructure improvement has one of the highest [multiplier rates](_URL_1_) of any type of government spending (food stamps, which is an FDA program, [is generally found to have the highest](_URL_3_)).\n\nThe real change was the creation of Social Security. Prior to its creation many low wage workers became increasingly destitute after they retired (read: no longer able to work). It was extremely common to see homeless elderly. As in, for most people if you didn't have viable family to take care of you this was your fate. Social Security has reduced this to the point where such a situation hardly exists today. Social Security also covers widows/widowers, children with dead parents, etc. These were people who not even a century ago would find themselves in a very precarious position if they were injured on the job or their husband died. So at least in macroeconomics it's understood to have mitigated some very serious social issues.\n\n**Edit:** many industries were regulated under the New Deal. Specifically telecommunications (FCC created in 1934, how relevant) and pharmaceuticals (new powers to the FDA in 1938). There was also a moratorium on farm foreclosures (Rucker & Alston 1987). Not sure what effect this has had for better or worse.\n\n**Source:** *Lessons from the Great Depression*, pages 122-129, Peter Temin, MIT Press 1989.\n\nHere's an excerpt from the above source:\n\n > Herein lies a paradox. Conventional wisdom asserts that high wages raise costs and reduce international competitiveness... The Americans passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act and began to reduce tariffs, drawing back the protectionist stance adopted by Hoover. The paradox is deepened by American business support of the high-wage component of Roosevelt's policy. Industrialists had never been as staunch deflationists as financiers, and they supported the imposition of high wages. Their argument, never clearly stated, was that high wages promoted longer job tenure, the acquisition of job skills, and innovation... High wages and low tariffs were the keys to their success in their eyes (Ferguson 1984).\n\nAlso, I forgot to answer the WWII part of your original question. WWII absolutely brought the American economy back. The New Deal and the massive government spending during WWII are unrelated though. The importance of large scale government spending in this situation is a property of macroeconomics. The larger economy is a closed loop; my spending is your income and vice versa. If the general public doesn't have money to spend and businesses have no incentive to spend since they have few consumers then only the government is left to fill the shortfall in spending. If the government decides not to spend then we know aggregate spending will decrease, and since your spending is my income the economy will operate below potential (i.e. a recession or depression).\n\nBut what about the debt this creates? After the war the US Government had massive debt obligations, but since the economy was booming as consumers spent, after years of pent up demand due to rationing, the debt largely dissipated due to the rapidly growing economy. To explain, say the government's debt is 100% of GDP. If the economy grows rapidly then the debt as a percentage of GDP is reduced. Add to this a healthy amount of inflation that accompanies upswings in the business cycle and the debt burden is even further reduced ([Krugman talks about this stuff a lot](_URL_0_), not the greatest source but if you dig around he has many other articles with great data ([here's another](_URL_2_)).\n\nWars, their debts, and the taxes they lead to are a treasure trove for macroeconomic historians and economists. A prime example of this is the US Civil War. Since there was no income tax at the time the government had to implement a tax which it later abolished once the war debt was paid. IIRC it took seven years to pay back. In fact the history of modern finance can largely be traced back to the creation of bonds by the English so they could fight the French. They set the payoff dates past the life expectancy at the time, so many were never claimed. Some of those who did receive their payouts created a whole new class of super wealthy in Britain. I don't have a source for this other than my macro history classes so if someone can chime in, please do.", "After reading the replies (some of which have been deleted), how are we even defining economic health in answering this question? Umployment/unemployment rates? Stock prices? GDP/GNP? Etc?", "[Here's](_URL_0_) an article from the JEH which tries to track the timing of the recovery. Vernon finds that the majority of the *output* recovery happened between 1941 and 1942 (and could be ascribed to 'fiscal' policies, i.e. gov't spending, not central bank actions). You can contrast this with [DeLong and Summers](_URL_4_) (Vernon is explicitly disagreeing with their analysis) [WARNING, that PDF is giant like woah, the section Vernon cites starts at page 167]. Though I would recommend reading Romer's [1992 JEH article](_URL_3_) alongside Vernon to judge the competing claims against each other. If you want someone else to attempt to do that for you (with new data, methods and a lot more technical bits), try [Gordon](_URL_2_).\n\nIf we're just comparing the New Deal and WWII military spending, I don't think the question of which worked is all that enlightening. Or at least it shouldn't inform too many policy debates. Think of it this way, the case for or against the new deal relies on reasoning about the fiscal multiplier. Keynesians say that the fiscal multiplier is > 1 so government spending can produce a positive change in output. Monetarists argue it's < 1 so that when the government spends a dollar to build a bridge output doesn't go up because they had to tax a dollar to do it. If we think the new deal failed because the fiscal multiplier was < 1, we should likewise think that WWII military spending should fail to stimulate the economy. In fact, we should be more suspicious of WWII spending because it explicitly crowded out private investment and the like (see parts of *[Keep From All Thoughtful Men](_URL_1_)*, I'm not happy with the book overall, but it has a lot of good info). If instead we imagine that the new deal failed but WWII spending succeeded (and we don't have an answer to the multiplier question) we have to conclude that if failed for being insufficiently large! We're not making a (small-c) conservative case about spending if we state that a total wartime mobilization is the government action necessary to wrest a country from a depression. \n\nThere are historical reasons why the new deal couldn't have approached the scale of WWII mobilization (again, see *Keep From All Thoughtful Men* for many of these), but from an economic standpoint they're both large fiscal shocks from the government. \n\nEdit: Oops. > 1/2 of the recovery happened (according to vernon) 1941-1942, not post 1942. Doesn't materially change the answer but that's a dumb error on my part. Sorry.", "This is a question where I feel I can help. Unfortunately, you aren't going to like my help much since economics doesn't offer a straight answer. Economically much of the New Deal would be classified as **fiscal policy**, the use of government spending and revenue (taxes) to affect the economy. Deficit spending, spending increases and cuts, tax cuts and hikes are all examples of fiscal policy. Fiscal policy falls into the domain of **macroeconomics**. Where microeconomics looks at the structure and behavior of markets, macroeconomics pertains to the overall economy, be it national, regional, or global. The problem with answering your question cleanly is Three fold:\n\nFirst, the controversies that separate the different schools of though in macroeconomics run deep. Some are so deep that they come from disagreement over fundamental human behavior (like the debate over Lucas's introduction of rational expectation to macroeconomics^1).\n\nSecond, since macroeconomics deals with matters that are directly related to policy, the discipline is hopelessly tainted by politics and political ideology. Macroeconomic studies of the past have direct implications for present and future policy. If the New Deal was a success, then government spending looks like more effective *counter-cyclical* policy (don't worry, I'll come back to this) than tax cuts and is evidence that one of the US's two political parties is (sort of) right about the economy, and the other is wrong. Because of this, each side of the political divide has plenty of incentive to make a meal of any shred of evidence that bolsters their argument and spit out any morsel of evidence that discredits their beliefs.\n\nThird, while an objective, informed, and intelligent thinker doesn't need a whole lot of empirical evidence to sniff out the truly harebrained economic theories, among those that do have potential merit, good empirical evidence to judge them by is hard to come by. Macroeconomic theories deal with whole economies, so properly controlled experiments to test these theories are virtually impossible. Natural experiments are tough to come by as well, since policy is never simple enough for the effect of one fiscal or monetary policy to be isolated, measured, and neatly attributed to that one policy and we don't tend to have national policies that split the economy in two so we don't have good controls. To make matters worse, the economy has a life of its own and economists disagree on what influence monetary and fiscal policy has on the economy at large.\n\nIn the case of the New Deal, it wasn't just fiscal policy like the public works programs, rural and farm programs, the food stamp plan, or the WWI veterans bonuses. Those were also accompanied in the first wave (1933-34) by numerous other programs and reforms, including banking reform (introduction of FDIC, the Emergency Banking Act, and the Glass–Steagall Act), a huge monetary policy shift (suspension of the gold standard), new securities regulations (Securities Act of 1933, establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission), trade liberalization (the Reciprocal Tariff Act), and housing sector reforms. There was also the National Recovery Administration. In the second wave there was more fiscal policy in the Works Progress Administration and Social Security, but there was also a labor reforms, including the Wagner Act, which gave workers collective bargaining and established the National Labor Relations Board, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set maximum hours and minimum wages for many workers and sharply restricted child labor. The New Deal was the firing of both barrels of policy buckshot, and each policy had it own degree of success or failure which is sometimes hard to tease out from the whole.\n\nNotably, through the bulk of Roosevelt's presidency's Great Depression years, he had stayed at least somewhat committed to maintaining a balanced budget. It was only in 1938 that the government finally began significant deficit spending in response to the recovery stalling in 1937 and 1938. In that view, the New Deal was not Keynesian fiscal policy, at least, not enough so to be a good test case. It was only really with the onset of WWII and the unfunded wartime military spending that came with it that the US macroeconomic policy began to reflect Keynesian doctrine (even if that wasn't really the intention). Now getting into my own opinion: I believe that for this reason, while the New Deal was a net positive on the recovery out of the Great Depression, the impact it had on the US's long-term prosperity beyond the 1930's was greater than its short term recovery impact within the 1930s. The impact of taking the US off the gold standard was probably massive. The degree to which the money supply had been tightened in the US as the 1930's approached was pretty staggering.\n\nI actually have to take a break here, so I'll cover \"business cycles\" when I get back.\n\n1. Lucas, Robert (1972). \"Expectations and the Neutrality of Money\". *Journal of Economic Theory* 4 (2): 103–124.", "Comment I was replying to was deleted but I have a few sources worth looking at. \n\n I'd like to suggest a paper if anyone's interested in a particular test of the monetarist thesis. [Test of loose monetary policy on bank failures across Federal reserve border districts](_URL_0_) Do check the source papers if you're curious about the history. C Romer has a lovely article.\n\nI'd also add that you should probably be checking out [Barry Eichengreen's Golden Fetters](_URL_1_) if you're curious about the gold standard bit. \n\nLastly, you're looking for [the great contraction](_URL_3_). That's chapter 7 of Friedman and Schwartz's seminal book advancing the theory that the FED bears a great deal of responsibility for the crisis (along with some historical accident resulting in \"new guys\" being thrown into the hot seat.) \n\nI hope everyone is taking these answers with a grain of salt. They all feel a pinch incomplete (and understandably so). My APE lectures emphasized the idea that by 36/37, the US seemed to be on a recovery track when FDR eased up the gas (parallels to the history of the 90s in Japan[[Adam Posen's work is an excellent history of purely the 90s from an econ policy perspective.](_URL_4_)). Unfortunately, I can't quite remember the particular source for the story that the need to moderate and check the deficit severely crimped the recovery. I'd also throw out that some of our mobilization work for WWII began surprisingly earlier than I would have expected. Very cool stuff. \n\n[C Romer's Encyclopedia Brittanica summary](_URL_2_) Think it's pretty fair according to what I've read. Galbraith's another easy read on the matter. These are all pretty general. Bernanke has a very cool paper from the 80s where he talks about the \"balance sheet\" effects of the recession. \n\nedit: Man the monetary policy discussion is really fun. Looking back real bills is so insane yet that sort of moral thinking seems to still influence people. IMO both the Keynesian and Monetarist takeaway have value and aren't mutually exclusive. ", "Actually, most conservatives don't posit WWII as saving America's economy per se. Milton Friedman, who was a former key adviser to both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, effectively popularized the Monetary School of Economic Thought. \n\nCurrently, there are two main theories explaining the Great Depression: the First is **Keynesianism**, favored by Liberals, which argued that the Great Depression was caused by a drop in Aggregate Expenditures (also referred to as Aggregate Demand). The reasons for this were not entirely agreed upon. At the time, two major economists, [Waddill Catchings](_URL_7_) and [William Trufant Foster](_URL_1_), promoted a theory that wealth inequality was a major factor as the wealth concentration at the top caused major capitalists and the wealthy elite to overinvest in luxury goods and heavy industry that quickly outpaced the demand leading to a contraction. This theory had a predominantly important impact on both the Hoover and Roosevelt Administrations, as they pursued policies to alleviate this perceived problem. However, new credence has been given to an alternative cause, namely [debt deflation](_URL_2_), or basically that most middle Americans were too heavily burdened with debt and they suddenly stopped buying goods after a string of defaults. In either case, Keynes suggested that the United States government pick up the slack by essentially air dropping vast sums of money into the economy. The Government should start major public works projects to compensate for the lack of investment, and it should create jobs--even meaningless jobs--to workers to prevent their skills from atrophying. Ultimately, this had some measure of effect; in [Tennessee](_URL_3_) and [Nevada](_URL_9_), major dam projects were completed that were aimed at providing basic electricity. Other projects, such as the [Civilian Conservation Corps](_URL_4_), were aimed at doing largely public service initiatives that had little real addition to the United States' economy. The effects of these are largely debated.\n\nIn contrast to the Keynesian Viewpoint is the **Monetarist** Viewpoint. This viewpoint was largely spearheaded by Milton Friedman, along with his co-author Anna Schwartz, in their *Magnum Opus* [A Monetary History of the United States, 1857-1960](_URL_5_). In it, they argue that from 1860s onwards, the United States had a largely stable growth of the economy in large part because of the laissez-faire policies of the Federal Government, as well as a constant growth of the money supply, measured by [M2](_URL_0_). The growth in M2 was the result of firstly, a floating exchange rate for the US Dollar compared to Gold, and due to the issuance of Greenbacks, which helped the Money Supply grow rather rapidly. This was punctuated by the [Long Depression (1873-1879)](_URL_6_), which saw a major decline in M2. [The Government's response was to back the US dollar on the Gold Standard](_URL_8_), which caused a number of very major recessions throughout the late 19th Century and sparked the Populist Movement that sought to either 1) remove the dollar from the Gold Standard entirely, or 2) alter the Gold Standard by added on a comparable amount of Silver. Both of these initiatives failed by the election of 1896, but the underlying problems of the Economy continued. The resulting monetary situation in the United States continued to be unstable into the 1910s, when Woodrow Wilson established the United States Federal Reserve, which was an attempt to Federate the various State-chartered banks and create a centralized monetary policy to govern the United States. During the 1920s, the Federal Reserve artificially lowered interest rates to boost the economy after a Post-WWI slump. However, according to Friedman and Schwartz, the Federal Reserve was heavily hamstrung not only by its own lack of knowledge, but also by Congress and its stricter regulations. In 1926, the United States Congress slapped on a regulation that prevented the Federal Reserve from issuing out more money than it had in its gold stock. Thus, in 1928, the Federal Reserve started to contract its previous policy of loose money to meet Congressional requirements. According to Friedman, this caused the Stock Market Crash in 1929. When Banks expected the Federal Reserve to bail them out, being the lender of last resort, the Federal Reserve also reneged, due to its legal obligations, and instead pursued a tight money policy of higher interest rates to stave off possible inflation. This had the result of contracting the Money Supply (M2) by roughly 33%. In Friedman's eyes, this completely explains not only 1) the reason why there was a catastrophic failure in the banking industry, 2) why there was a collapse in aggregate demand (investors, farmers, and homeowners were lured in by teaser rates by the Fed that the Fed ultimately reneged upon), and 3) explained why it was extremely difficult to get out of the Depression.\n\nFriedman also notes that Roosevelt effectively eliminated the 1926 requirement by making it illegal to hoard gold and enabling the Fed to lend above the Congressional requirements. Almost immediately the American Economy started to recover. However, by 1936, the Federal Reserve once again pursued a tight money policy, afraid of inflation, and this caused another sharp recession.\n\nFriedman codified this analysis to suggest that artificial manipulations of the Money supply by any government or private agency (either tight, or deflationary, or loose, or inflationary) would have negative repercussions proportional to their size in the economy. Instead, he suggested that if there was a government intervention, you should move to compensate for the contraction or expansion. Thus, during the late 1970s stagflation, the US should have reduced the size of the money supply to match up with the economy, which would require Austerity (this is exactly what Fed Chief Volcker did, and was an integral part of Reaganomics). Likewise, when there is a deflation, the government should expand the money supply, which is what happened during the 2008 recession and was carried out by Fed Chief Ben Bernanke under President Obama. This later Policy is known as Quantitative Easing.\n\nUltimately, Friedman's explanation, largely a critique of Keynesianism, meets all of the major criteria for explaining the phenomena witnessed during the Great Depression.\n\n**Recommended Texts**\n\n*General Theory of Employment Interest and Money* John Maynard Keynes\n\n*A Monetary History of the United States (1857-1960* Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz", "Can I ask a followup on the main question? How did the loss of so many working men affect the economy? I would assume their would be a void in labor skills.", "What some of the other answers have started to get at is that there were many parts to the New Deal, and different parts had very different effects.\nThe most commonly discussed parts are the increases in government spending from new programs like the CCC, WPA, and Social Security. This goes under the heading of \"fiscal policy\", which standard* macroeconomics suggests helps fight recessions.\n\nAnother set of New Deal policies were regulations intended to increase prices and wages, or otherwise affect the behavior of firms. These include the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Recovery Administration. Destroying crops, reducing competition between firms, and trying to raise wages above market levels all have negative effects on employment and production in standard microeconomics. Repealing prohibition isn't always considered part of the New Deal, but it was one positive supply-side regulatory change by the FDR administration.\n\nWhile historians and ordinary people who have taken history classes mostly focus on the new programs and agencies of the New Deal, economists mostly see that the largest effect came from the suspension of the Gold Standard in 1933. In [A Monetary History of the United States](_URL_0_) (1962), Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz argued that the Great Depression was triggered and prolonged by monetary policy. The Federal Reserve reduced the money supply, and did not react when bank failures led the overall money supply to fall by 1/3. One of the main reasons the Fed did nothing was over concern about their gold reserves. Leaving the gold standard allowed the money supply to expand again (by 53% during the 1933-1937 recovery), which standard macroeconomics says is an expansionary policy which causes GDP and employment to increase.\n\nWhile the relative importance of fiscal and monetary policy continues to be debated (about the Great Depression and today), economists lean towards thinking that monetary policy is more important, especially in the Great Depression when the increase in total net government spending (government spending minus taxes for all levels of government) was small. Then there is the international context, where Barry Eichengreen showed in a [1992 paper](_URL_1_) that most countries began their recovery from the Great Depression just after leaving the gold standard.\n\n*Standard economics in terms of Principles of Macroeconomics textbooks. This is hotly debated among researchers." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/oh-what-a-lovely-war/?_php=true&amp;_type=blogs&amp;_r=0", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplier_\\(economics\\)", "http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/the-burden-of-debt-again-again/?_php=true&amp;_type=blogs&amp;_r=0", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_multiplier#United_States_of_America" ], [], [ "http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/dpaterson/econ532/11recovery/vernon.pdf", "http://www.amazon.com/Keep-All-Thoughtful-Men-Economists/dp/1591144914", "http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/economics/gordon/WPTheEndoftheGreatDepression.pdf", "http://elsa.berkeley.edu/users/cromer/What%20Ended%20the%20Great%20Depression.pdf", "http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Projects/BPEA/1988%202/1988b_bpea_delong_summers_mankiw_romer.PDF" ], [], [ "http://www.oxy.edu/sites/default/files/assets/Economics/Jalil_Monetary%20Intervention%20Really%20Did%20Mitigate%20Banking%20Panics.pdf", "http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Fetters-Depression-1919-1939-Development/dp/0195101138", "http://elsa.berkeley.edu/users/cromer/great_depression.pdf", "http://www.econ.ucdenver.edu/smith/econ4110/Friedman,%20Schwartz%20-%20A%20Monetary%20History%20of%20the%20United%20States.pdf", "http://bookstore.piie.com/book-store//35.html" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply#Empirical_measures_in_the_United_States_Federal_Reserve_System", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Trufant_Foster", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_deflation", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Monetary_History_of_the_United_States", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waddill_Catchings", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_Act_of_1873", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_dam" ], [], [ "http://www.nber.org/chapters/c6734.pdf", "https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CCsQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fbev.berkeley.edu%2Fipe%2Freadings%2FThe%2520origins%2520and%2520nature%2520of%2520the%2520Great%2520Slump%2520revisited.pdf&amp;ei=apViU_e-IMam2AWf8oD4BA&amp;usg=AFQjCNE8wwqa3pkwfrxKXg4c2VSqqTshTw&amp;sig2=9OnBiod5j3ckVRNHb1B6JQ&amp;bvm=bv.65788261,d.b2I" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9extjp" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I'm not a conservator, but my understanding is that the transfer is actually a mounting - basically, you cut around the painting to a certain depth. Then, working by removing the plaster from the back, as thin a layer of the plaster as possible underneath the paint is left remaining and stuck as an entire piece onto a canvas backing. It's a ridiculously delicate procedure, and (as evidenced by the current state of *Saturn Devouring His Sons*), can result in a lot of damage to the artwork. " ] }

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[ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son#Transfer_from_the_Quinta_del_Sordo" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "dukjk2m", "dukly9i" ], "score": [ 4, 4 ], "text": [ "Can you give us a whole sentence?\n\nOtherwise I'd just assume that \"red\" meant supplied by the Soviets and \"gold\" is another way of saying cash.\n", "You can never be sure without seeing the source, but I assume that was *червонное золото*, which can be directly translated as \"[archaic word for red] gold\", but the proper translation would be \"pure gold\"." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c3wvgu8", "c3wwbd1", "c3www0h", "c3wzhpk" ], "score": [ 4, 5, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "It was never really a case of monarchs having power because of the pope, but being able to legitimize their power through his endorsement. The Holy Roman Emperors stopped being crowned by the pope way back in the 1500's, centuries before the empire fell apart. The idea of the 'divine right to rule' has sort of fallen out of favor in recent years, so I'd say no, but I could be corrected by someone who knows more about small, obscure countries.", "No. \nThe Vatican is the last remnant of the Pope's immediate political authority. The other former holdings of the Pope (called Papal states) were annexed in the 1860's-1870's by Italy during the latter part of the \"The Resurgence\". ", "The Queen doesn't have power over Commonwealth countries. She is head of state (but not head of government) of a few countries that also happen to be in the Commonwealth, but most countries in the Commonwealth are republics. There are even a few countries with no prior connection to Britain that have joined the Commonwealth.", "Or the Pope granted them a certain title, because they had power. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c927fun" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "I am aware of this flip, but as far as I know it wasn't to make women more protestant because \na. The change happened throughout the western world, including Catholic nations.\n\nb. Women tended to be more involved in religion then men, making such a thing unnecessary.\n\nThe reason for the shift, as far as I know, is more related to the spread of liberal ideals and the switch to a more \"fraternity\" system of social conduct. In a liberal space, where men were deemed worthy of having the right to vote, concepts like virtue and corruption (when given too much power) meant that now the men, who could achieve power via election into a position, were the ones more easily corruptible and swayed by base needs. Women, on the other hand, were considered \"the moral compass\" of the family and were put in charge of educating the kids and reminding her husband of his duties.\n\nPart of this shift also meant that since men were the corruptible, sensual, body-oriented gender, women had to be the spiritual, moralist and passionless gender. So, while religion played a part in the passionless persona of the modern woman, it wasn't just religion but also the way liberal and modern society was shaped in general.\n\nSources:\n\nNancy Cott, Passionlessness\n\nStephanie Coontz, The Social Origins of Private Life.\n\nSteven Seidman, Power of Desire and the Danger of Pleasure \n\nJan Lewis, The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic" ] }

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[ "http://www.alternet.org/when-women-wanted-sex-much-more-men?paging=off" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "clpy2pb", "clq9wxk" ], "score": [ 7, 2 ], "text": [ "Knowledge of prehistorical medicine is limited, because of time and lack of records. However, we can draw assumptions from burial sites and also from some existing traditional cultures [drawing more from cultures without a written system, which would be similar to prehistoric humans].\n\n > Which ailments were common among prehistoric humans? \n\nA lot of people had illnesses suggestive of heavy repetitive labour, like osteoarthritis and spinal issues. Fractured bones were also common - and it largely seems prehistoric communities were not all skilled at setting bones - they had some knowledge of the anatomy by how body parts were arranged at burial, but bodies have also been found to have badly-set bones. Also infections and viruses, which were compounded by lack of knowledge regarding hygiene. \n\nHowever, due to the higher mortality rate back then, epidemics tended to burn out quicker.\n\n > medical techniques and / or rituals\n\nHerbal medicine would be the main one. Tonics and ointments would be made from various local plants and applied to wounds, or be ingested.\n\nAlso, the use of medicine men/shaman/spiritual person, due to the belief that illness was created by evil spirits. In many older cultures, there is a belief that everything happens for a reason [i.e. there are no accidents] so various rituals would be used to ward off bad spirits and to remove said spirits from a person.\n\nThere is evidence of trepanning - drilling holes and shapes into a person's skull, or scraping the skull using a flint. Most likely used in an attempt to remove evil spirits and to relieve things like headaches. \n\nA good starting article: [_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\nOlder article, but has some very good information: [Trepanation from the Palaeolithic to the Internet](_URL_0_)", "hi! it may be worth x-posting this to /r/AskAnthropology and /r/AskScience for additional information" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.princeton.edu/~cggross/trepanation.pdf", "http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/medicine/prehistoric-medicine.php" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dggzva4", "dgh0gbe", "dgh0lkp", "dghxsg3", "dgi8umr" ], "score": [ 32, 744, 38, 5, 9 ], "text": [ "Polynesia is particularly interesting. I've always wondered how a culture that sailed thousands of miles in one direction and colonized numerous small islands seemingly never sailed a few hundred miles in the opposite direction to colonize an entire continent. Is there any archaeological evidence for Polynesian peoples in Australia? Are there any working theories on why?", "I will try to answer your question in three parts: what we do know about exploration of Australia, and then the popular 'maybes', and then the 'why nots'.\n\nThere is no proven foreign exploration of Australia prior to the Dutch discovery of the Western Australian coast in the early 1600s; the Dutch discovered Australia (in the main part) through their attempts to utilise the 'roaring forty' latitude trade winds to reach their colonies in the Dutch East Indies/Malay Archipelago (modern Indonesia) faster than a coastal trip. \n\nThe Dutch legacy is easy to see in the maritime archaeology of the coast - the oldest building in Australia is the stone fort built by the soldiers of the Batavia shipwreck, to protect against the attacks of the mutineers of the Batavia Massacre on the Abrolhos Islands.\nAn incredible legacy and emotional human story, well worth reading about, and many of the artifacts can be seen up close in the Shipwreck and Maritime Museums of Fremantle, in Perth.\n\nThere are also several Western Australian place names in Dutch, named by Dutch explorers, such as the popular Perth holiday island Rottnest (Rat's Nest), named for its cute kangaroo-like quokkas by Willem de Vlamingh; or Dirk Hartog Island, the landing site of the second European to explore the area, who left a plate nailed to a post with details of who he was and when he came. This original plate is now housed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and a replica is in its place on the island.\n\nThere is plenty of proof of Indonesians visiting Australia, but this only begins a century after the Dutch, and in the tropical north rather than the fertile south or the desert west. Fishermen from the city of Makassar, on the island of Sulawesi, would regularly sail out in to Australian waters in the Gulf of Carpentaria. They came for trepang, which is sea cucumber flesh, which was a popular delicacy in Chinese markets, and would make temporary landfall on the coast to process the flesh for its journey.\n\nIn this landfall, they would negotiate for use of the coast, trading items like axes, boats, rope. This left a lasting legacy on the Aboriginal people of the area, who to this day still use the occasional Islamic name like Mohammed, practice circumcision, use some Makassan language and traditional Makassan boats, and even maintain contact with distant relatives in Indonesia.\n\nThere are no such relics or personal/business/scientific records of any other nation prior to the Dutch that we know of. We know that in this time period and earlier, the Portuguese and Spanish were also in the Dutch East Indies, and came incredibly close to discovering Australia (for instance, it was the Spanish who named New Guinea, and the Torres Strait which separates it from Australia, and they had made genuine attempts at discovering a 'terra australis'), but if they did there is no proof of it that survives.\n\nThere is also speculation that the Chinese imperial expedition led by Zheng He came close to, or did, discover Australia, but again, there is no real proof. In both the Chinese and the Spanish/Portuguese explorations, there is plenty of detailed documentation and evidence of travel to other nearby areas, but none yet found in Australia or about Australia.\n\nThere are no serious theories on Polynesian exploration of Australia, although it is important to note the connections between Sydney and the Maori in the 19th century - we have plenty of evidence of Maori visiting colonial Sydney, and plenty of evidence of Australians/Europeans heavily influencing Maori life in New Zealand (like sale of arms, whaling, proselytising). There is though the theory that Polynesians did travel to South America, and if that is the case, then perhaps it wouldn't be too far-fetched to believe that Polynesians had landed in Australia and left little material evidence behind.\n\nAs to the 'why nots', we could look at the many factors that Europeans had to consider when deciding whether or not to set up a colony, as they would likely be the same considerations for any Asian colonialism. \n\nWhen the Dutch investigated the coast of Western Australia, they found it to be entirely unsuitable for colonialism - the native peoples were hostile and had nothing worthy of trade, the coastline too rocky and dangerous, the fresh water sources small and difficult to navigate, the land either desert or thick scrub, and the climate too warm for them. They also had plenty of business to take care of to the north in the Dutch East Indies, a highly profitable land with desirable trade-goods, an enormous settled population and actively being pursued by other colonial powers.\n\nColonies are highly costly, dangerous ventures, and to the Dutch the costs far outweighed the benefits. This would likely be the same mentality of a Chinese/Indonesian/Indian/Polynesian outpost were one to have been considered. Even if the climate and geography had made colonialism easy, colonialism in Australia would still be unlikely due to the lack of any obvious wealth in the areas first explored, i.e. the north and west.\n\nThe modern city of Perth, founded as the \"Swan River Colony\", was actually surveyed by the Dutch and French and rejected as being too infertile and having too poor a harbour, but then approved later by the British James Stirling, who only looked around half as well as the Dutch and French explorers, and reported back to Britain and Sydney that it was a perfect site for a city. A major impetus for the settlement was to claim it before the French might later - global imperial ambitions of the 1820s are not a factor that would be relevant for 9th century Indonesians or Ming China. In the first decade of the city's existence it struggled to maintain settlers, as the land was far too sandy outside of the areas surveyed by James Stirling, and it was forced to take on convict labour to survive, and only really succeeded due to the discovery of gold a few decades later in the interior. 19th century engineering made a harbour and water pipeline to the goldfields viable (both by one man, C.Y. O'Connor), leading to the success of Perth as a major Australian city.\n\nIn the north, disease and the intense heat (and maybe even crocodiles?) kept Europeans back - the modern city of Darwin is in its 3rd or 4th attempt, the first having been wiped out by disease, the second by the Japanese, and the third by a cyclone. Almost all of the cultures you mentioned in your question are to the north of Australia, and yet even in modern Australia the north, west and center are very sparsely populated, with much of that population being Aboriginal in remote communities in desert landscapes, or fly in-fly out miners. Darwin itself has been described as nothing more than a military base for the Australian and US militaries.\n\nTLDR; the Dutch were first and we have plenty of evidence of them; the Spanish and Portuguese might have been the first Europeans, and we have evidence that they were extremely close, but none confirming they did discover Australia; the Ming Chinese Zheng He expeditions may have, but it is more likely that they didn't and we have no evidence of them coming; Indonesians did discover and interact with Australia independent of European influence, but only after the Dutch had found it;\n\nAlso TLDR; colonies are expensive and dangerous; an extremely rocky coastline; far away from everything; animals that eat you; agriculture in the north, east and west incredibly difficult; a lack of fresh water and navigable rivers; no obvious wealth; a hostile, sparse and nomadic population.\n\nSources:\nWA Museum\nThe Story of Australia's First People ~ Geoffrey Blainey.\nA History of Australia ~ Peel and Twomey.", "Hi there -- in addition to the answers that are here, our own u/mikedash has written a good blog post about early colonization in Australia. Since it is night there as I write this, they may not be around to answer or see this page for awhile, but I'll drop in the link for folks who may be on ~~FREEDOM~~ American time to peruse: \n\n_URL_0_", "I don't mean to be dumb, but where did the Aborigines come from? Weren't they they first settlers?", "First, The Indigenous people of Australia were the to first find, explore and settle the continent. Some of the artwork in the Kimberley's are at least 50,000 years old. \n\nI think an important thing to remember is that the aforementioned peoples were island dwellers that viewed the sea as a natural part of their culture. To settle a great and vast continent and colonise it would bring no great wealth, material, or power and would be counter to their culture and existence with the ocean. As /u/AnAngryPacifist has shown that for the vast majority of the south east asian cultures and economies, the sea was vital. It is possible large swathes of arable land was not. \n\nFor European's the water is hostile, it is something to be travelled, crossed and navigated to get to one's destination. It is not part of the eurocentrics view to value the sea, but the land for its mercantilist wealth it can provide. This why they colonised and other more local cultures did not. And why we still hold the idea that peoples who did not build cities or expanded were somewhat backward. \n\nMaybe they had all they needed to support their population, and not enough people to need to force an expansion A situation reversed in Europe in the early modern period, where it was experienced malthusian growth.\n\nFor more information try and track down Dr Gerhard Wiesenfeldt's work." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "https://mikedashhistory.com/2016/10/31/dreamtime-voyagers-australian-aborigines-in-early-modern-makassar/" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eab3zyy" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "The dominance of a classical curriculum as the norm for a Western-style education was coming to end at the turn of the 20th century. In effect, the answer to your question would vary wildly based on a particular child's gender, race, social class, or disability status. For example, the son of an titled or wealthy British man living in a colony would likely still be working on a classical curriculum - Latin, possibly Greek, logic, rhetoric, maths, and some sciences - with a tutor or a British run boy's school set up for the sons of British men in country. The boys may have studied history but it would be more a hobby or an incidental occurrence while studying logic and rhetoric. Odds are good their fathers intended for them to return to England for secondary or tertiary school. If a father was more interested in a \"modern\" education, a boy might be studying literature, sciences, maths, possibly Latin, and history. Their sisters, though, would likely have a very specific education depending on her social class and her parents' future plans for her. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking the daughter of a white British man would be receiving an education intended to prepare her for society, and being a mother or wife. In both cases, a modern education or a wealthy girl's education - the study of history would be dependant on class and could range from learning a personal family history related to England and the colony, to a general history of both countries. That education would likely cast England as civilized and \"normal\", and the colony as in need of civilization and exotic. \n\nLet's say, though, you're the son of a man native to the colony who has access to power - e.g., a job in government, a military leader, an office or clerical job for a large shipping company - your education would likely be similar to that given to the sons of British men in country. Your sister's education would follow a similar path as British daughters and the nature of studying history you'd experience would be tied up in class. There are, again, exceptions. \n\nIf we look at the education of children native to the colony outside the umbrella of power, a great deal would be tied up in who is providing that education. If the British presence in your community or village was religious in nature, your experiences of history might be related to the evolution of the Church of England. If you attended a secular, British-run school you would like be expected to memorize the names of all of the Kings and Queens of England (a very common recitation task in English-speaking schools around the world.) and would likely learn English using primers or textbooks that referenced British historical figures. If you were indigenous or aboriginal, you may find yourself attending a school intent on educating you out of your family history, culture, language, and norms - in that case, you'd like be taught a very British-centric history, in which England was cast as a helpful, nobel nation bringing you \"civilization.\" \n\nAll of that said, so much about a child's life was determined by perceptions of their race, gender, class, their colony's history, and the nature of the British presence, it's difficult to make generalizations as a group. If you have a question about an individual country, I'm happy to dive back in! " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cc103fr" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Hi there, there were many advances in technology between 1492 and 1775 (just setting those as the dates you mentioned). This list will be biased towards western Europe, because it's my area of expertise and also because it's implied in what you framed it with. \n\nThis should not be read as a linear progression! These technologies overlapped one another over time. \n\nTo start off with some major ones:\n \n* Columbus' ships were small but sturdy ships that were of two types: the Santa Maria was a nao, or carrack; the Nina and Pinta were caravels. Both types of ship had multiple masts; the caravels seem to have been originally lateen-rigged (that is, with triangular sails suspended from a diagonally running yard) but were re-rigged as square-rigged ships (that is, with rectangular sails suspended from a horizontal yard) before Columbus' voyage. All three were, likely not longer than 60' on deck and possibly as small as 40' on deck. \n\nThe caravel type was developed in the mid-13th century as a larger version of a fishing boat that, importantly, was able to tack into the wind. The lateen sails it carried enabled it to point up into the wind and make progress upwind much more easily than the square-rigged ships of the day. Caravels were used on the Portuguese voyages of exploration, but the hull shape they had made them unsuitable for carrying large amounts of cargo.\n\nThe nao or carrack was a ship that improved on a cog; the carracks were deeper (could carry more provisions) and had a higher bow and stern compared to a cog. They too could sail into the wind like a caravel, but with better space for cargo. They generally had multiple masts (3-4) and a high forecastle and after castle, which was used for boarding other ships/defending their own ships. Carracks were in use through the 17th century; the Mary Rose was a famous \"great carrack.\" \n\n* The next major development in large ship types was the galleon, which was a version of a carrack with a cut-down forecastle. The smaller forecastle combined with a longer/narrower hull width made the galleon easier to handle and less prone to having trouble beating into the wind (less wind force on the forecastle). There is some argument over how to classify exactly a galleon versus a carrack, but in the mid-14th century you could say that a carrack was a larger (but not necessarily longer), slower ship that was less weatherly and less well armed. A galleon would be longer, faster and more weatherly and better armed. Galleons were usually rigged with two masts having a square rig, and the third or possibly fourth having a lateen sail. The mixed rig is a major factor that distinguishes them from later \"full rigged\" ships of the line. \n\nGalleons were famously used for transporting treasure from the New World to Spain and Portugal, but were also fighting ships of the time. Both the English and Spanish fleets during the battles around the Spanish Armada used galleon types. Generally speaking, the English galleons were faster and more weatherly, as well as carrying more heavy guns, while the Spanish were slower and less heavily armed. \n\n* As galleons of different types were built all over western Europe, Dutch traders faced the problem that galleons are deep-draft ships (they displace and thus draw a lot of water, and can't operate in shallow waters). In response, the Dutch developed a different hull form that was pear-shaped (fatter in front than in back) that also had a broad tumblehome (the hull at waterline was wider than at deck level). The two combined to allow the ship to draw less water and operate in the shallow waters around the Netherlands. The type of ship developed here, called a fluyt, also had taller masts than the galleon, for faster speeds. It was never designed to be a fighting ship, but maximized for cargo carrying. The fluyt was square-rigged with possibly a lateen on the mizen (aft) mast. \n\n* The fluyt's design influenced the design of what came to be known as the line-of-battle ship, or man of war. This type of ship was armed with big guns on the sides of the ship, for use in broadside combat, and generally armed with guns of the same or similar caliber. The ship design drove or was driven by the type of combat that navies engaged in in the mid-17th century; particularly in the Anglo-Dutch naval wars, ships fighting in parallel lines came to dominate the era. In this period, ships with two gundecks mounting maybe 40-50 guns and ships with three mounting up to 100, but more normally 80 or so, were developed. They can be seen as close ancestors to the \"modern\" line of battle ships such as the HMS Victory. The Vasa is either a very late galleon (with low forecastle and lots of tumblehome) or a very early ship-of-the-line, depending on who you ask. \n\nIn the late 17th century, concurrent with these developments, the English navy started to standardize ships with a series of \"rates.\" Samuel Pepys credits himself with this idea, and he may be right, but in any case English ship construction started to conform to a set of semi-preset goals, with the top three rates able to stand in the line of battle, and the others used as scouting ships. By 1775, the English fleet was generally classified according to those rates. The fleet that fought at the Battle of the Chesapeake was comprised mostly of third-rate 64 or 74 gun ships, with two 98s. \n\nNOTE: This was a very broad overview of construction; feel free to ask questions! \n\nThis has been very heavy on ship construction, but there were other technical advancements that were important as well. One major one was the development of the chronometer as a device for finding longitude. Latitude was fairly well understood in Columbus' day, but a technique for finding how far east or west you were relative to something was not; this issue was not solved until John Harrison perfected a marine chronometer in the 1760s. \n\nAgain, this is a very high-level overview and only really applies to Europe. Feel free to ask follow up questions!\n\nSources that I have: \n\n[N.A.M. Rodger, \"The Wooden World: Anatomy of the Georgian navy.\"](_URL_1_)\n\n[N.A.M. Rodger, \"The Safeguard of the Sea.\"](_URL_2_)\n\n[N.A.M. Rodger, \"The Command of the Ocean.\"](_URL_5_) \n\n[Nathan Miller, \"Broadsides: The Age of Fighting Sail.\"](_URL_4_) \n\n[Neil Hanson, \"The Confident Hope of a Miracle.\"](_URL_0_)\n\n[Ian Toll, \"Six Frigates\"](_URL_3_)" ] }

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[ [ "http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Confident_Hope_of_a_Miracle.html?id=9oGJFLAEtC8C", "http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Wooden_World.html?id=og_PGwAACAAJ", "http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Safeguard_of_the_Sea.html?id=bYO2hAe1Db8C", "http://books.google.com/books/about/Six_Frigates.html?id=q9xfGcwEEqMC", "http://books.google.com/books/about/Broadsides.html?id=GuOZAAAAIAAJ", "http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Command_of_the_Ocean.html?id=xh4aUiwxnW0C" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cz2rpu9", "cz2zi1v", "cz3if2f" ], "score": [ 17, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "I think it really depends on what qualifies someone as a great military commander in your mind. When it comes to setting up and fighting battles and battle strategy in general I dont think theres any real way to deny Hannibal's brilliance he massacred every army Rome could throw at him (many times with far less men then Romans). When it comes to the general war strategy (Hannibal's strategy was entirely battle centric) I think its fair to cast doubts because he honestly never stood a chance at defeating Rome. He had no siege equipment to make attempt at capturing/buring Rome and simply by refusing to engage Hannibal in battle (preferring to harass his supply lines and forgers whittling his army down through attrition) Rome could not lose the war. In my mind he is a great battlefield tactician/commander but not the greatest of military strategists as his strategy for victory against Rome never really had a chance.", "In my mind, Hannibal was unquestionably one of the greatest military commanders of all time, comparing favorably against both Alexander the Great and Pyrrhus of Epirus, who he ranked ahead of himself.\n\nHannibal successfully led his army from Iberia into Italy, at a time that such a thing was considered impossible such that he audaciously appeared in the midst of the enemy when they least expected it, and subsequently defeated the two major Roman armies in the field.\n\nFrom there, he sustained a campaign in the heartland of his enemies' territory for *fifteen years* virtually cut off from any assistance by the motherland. In doing this, he presided over a multi-ethnic army that must surely have spoken a dozen languages, made up of different people that each had their own agendas and prejudices towards not only Rome but also other components of his army.\n\nRanged against him was the might of the Roman war machine, with its highly motivated and qualitatively excellent soldiers, able to continually replenish losses without ever a thought towards peace. It was Hannibal's misfortune to be fighting the Romans, when any other people in the world would have surely sued for peace a dozen times over.\n\nAnd even so, the Roman's ultimate answer for Hannibal was simply to avoid fighting him. That the most relentless country in the world would have adopted this attitude at all, towards Hannibal alone (never against Pyrrhus, or the Cimbri) is perhaps the most fitting tribute you could bestow upon Hannibal Barca.\n\nAgainst Hannibal, I'd only place Caesar himself as a greater commander because the latter sustained similar circumstances - a campaign lasting years and years amidst a hostile country with little support from the motherland. Even though Caesar was ultimately successful, you can't help but observe that *he* at least had the advantage of fighting with a highly homogenous, effective army against opposition that was oftentimes militarily ineffective. For Hannibal, the circumstances were often exactly reversed.\n\nI would say that of all the generals of antiquity, Hannibal consistently did the most with the least, sustained battle the longest, and won the most undying enmity - and respect - of his greatest adversary.", "Hannibal's reputation stems primarily from the school of military history which subscribes to the idea that war is primarily a series of battles, and that the victor is the side that won the most battles. In this regard Hannibal was an extremely successful general who won many battles, most notably Cannae which was Rome's single greatest battlefield defeat in its entire history.\n\nThe problem is that war is not a series of battles and victories. It is ultimately a contest of nations, and nations are ultimately powered by their economy; and the economy in turn is directed by politics (which at its core is about the government's attempt to parcel out limited resources). Rome may have lost most of its battles against Hannibal, but its economy and political power was much stronger which allowed them to replace their losses even when Hannibal was campaigning in their Italian heartland. By contrast Carthage as a nation was defeated when Scipio Africanus landed an army in Africa and defeated Hannibal in just a single battle at Zama. They simply could not replace their losses the same way the Romans did.\n\nThat said, the \"decisive battle\" school tends to hold Hannibal's strategy - which was to march across the Alps and bring the war to the Italian heartland - in high regard; as they believe the only way Carthage could have won was for Hannibal to bring his superior tactical skills to play and inflict a series of crushing defeats on the Romans until their power base was destroyed. And as noted by other posts, there is a debate whether this meant actually capturing Rome or breaking Rome's hold over other Italian cities. \n\nI instead offer an entirely different view point: I believe Hannibal's invasion of Italy was a grave strategic miscalculation from the outset.\n\nIt bears remembering that the purpose of war is _not_ necessarily the complete destruction of the opposing state. \"Total war\" - involving the complete destruction of the enemy state - is a rarity and not the norm. By invading Italy and threatening the Roman heartland Hannibal in fact drew Carthage into a total war situation, which was disastrous given the strategic disadvantages of Carthage. Hence, rather than being a brilliant \"solution\" that gave Carthage its best chance of winning, Hannibal's strategy in fact basically _destroyed_ any chance of Carthage remaining a major power by forcing it to fight an all-out battle against a superior opponent. Indeed by some accounts this was Hannibal's entire point - these accounts claiming he absolutely hated the Romans and wanted them destroyed as part of a long family grudge - except it never occurred to him that Carthage may end up destroyed because of his actions. \n\nMoreover, the march over the Alps was a tactical disaster in its own right. The Romans may have lost tens of thousands of soldiers in battle at Cannae, but Hannibal lost his own tens of thousands in the winter in the Alps. From a \"battles\" stand point Hannibal may have the higher \"score\", but from an overall _casualty_ standpoint his losses to the winter in the Alps pretty much erased any material lead he may have had.\n\nA stronger strategy for Hannibal would have been to remain on the defensive in Spain and Africa. He would not have lost so many men in the Alps, and his tactical skill would allow him to beat the Roman armies sent against him, especially since he would be fighting on friendly ground. This would hopefully erode Roman support for the war - particularly since they could not muster popular support against an existential threat in their heartland - until an equitable peace could be reached with the Romans. \n\nIn the end of such an alternate scenario Carthage would not have destroyed Rome, but it would have _survived_ and would not have simply been erased from history as was the case in the Third Punic Wars; at which point it was already powerless militarily.\n\nHence, Hannibal is a dangerous example. His strategy revolved around giving the military the best chance of winning _battles_, without considering the wider political and economic issues that would determine who would win the _war_. Indeed, it can be argued that Germany in the First World War - whose initial war plan was inspired in large part by Hannibal and Cannae - fell victim to this trap of creating a strategy that maximized the chance of winning battles without considering if these battles should have been fought in the first place.\n\nEdit: Clarifications." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dq690rz", "dq7mtbx" ], "score": [ 24, 3 ], "text": [ "Hammers and daggers became increasingly popular as full plate armor entered the battlefield. Even a full suit of armor must have gaps, if the person inside is to move. This opens up space for a dagger or the point of sword to slip in and strike the opponent. Fiore de Liberi's [Flower of Battle](_URL_0_), for example, has an entire section dedicated to grappling with opponent so that after forcing the other person into a hold, a dagger can then be pulled out and thrust between their armor. Dedicated warhammers gained in popularity in tandem with plate armor; even though a blow would never actually *penetrate* the armor, the sheer force would crush bone, dent plate and give a seriously nasty contusion.", "In addition to the comments already made, note that much of the armour on a late Medieval plate armour is thin enough so that it can be penetrated by crossbows or arrows. Usually, the breastplate and helmet are thick enough so that they can be considered arrow-proof (often 2-3mm thick), but arm and leg armour is usually thinner (often 1-1.2mm, or even thinner), and can be penetrated. Arms and legs aren't particularly vulnerable, since the armour is strongly curved, and a crossbow bolt or arrow is unlikely to hit square-on.\n\nArms and legs will be more vulnerable to polearms, maces, etc. in hand-to-hand fighting.\n\nFinally, note that handheld firearms were already being used in Europe in the late 14th century. Depending on what you call \"full plate armour\", this can mean that the gun preceded full plate armour, so your question as-asked might not be answerable historically (practically, yes). But also note that 3mm thick armour provides reasonable protection against early (e.g., 15th century) handheld firearms (See Alan Williams, *The Knight and the Blast Furnace* for the penetration of armour by crossbow bolts, arrows, and bullets, and some thickness measurements.)" ] }

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[ [ "http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Fiore_de%27i_Liberi#Grappling" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ceizt3k", "cej539e" ], "score": [ 60, 36 ], "text": [ "At the time, it was necessary to have a large nuclear weapon capable of mass destruction because bombing was very inaccurate, and missile delivery had not yet been perfected. \n\nThe idea was that a large bomb with supermassive destruction would destroy its target, even if the actual ground-zero was hundreds of yards away. Hence, the Tsar could be dropped by bomber, and even if it didn't hit its target by ground zero, the target would be destroyed.\n\nThe Tsar, however, was not meant for actual use. Instead, it was commissioned to be a psychological weapon, with its 100 megaton yield to threaten the United States. The bomb was limited at 50 megatons, because a higher yield would not increase damage, due to the destructive force escaping into the atmosphere. Also, the increased yield would destroy the delivery aircraft.\n\nThe bomb was also impractical to use, because only 1 type of Soviet bomber, the Tupolev Bear could carry it, and it would be difficult to get the bomber, weighed down by the large bomb, into enemy airspace, drop it, and escape without being blown up by the massive shockwave. On the bomb test, the aircraft lost considerable altitude because of the bomb's shockwave.\n\nAt the time, missiles were in their infancy. However, shortly after the bomb's detonation, breakthroughs were made in missile guidance, and therefor, they could target a smaller area with greater accuracy, requiring less of a bomb yield and removing the need for a superbomb.\n\n_URL_0_", "The tautological answer is, they didn't need it. \n\nThe explanation of that involves fleshing out a few things. One is that increasing the yield of a weapon does not increase the effect by the same amount. So the 5 psi blast radius of a 10 Mt surface burst is 6.1 mi; the same radius for a 50 Mt blast is 10.5 mi (that is, a 5X increase in yield only increases the radius by 1.7X); the same radius for a 100 Mt blast is 13.2 mi (an 100X increase in yield over 10 Mt, with only a 2.2X increase in radius). (The reason for this is because the initial blast is spherical, and so the energy gets distributed according to a cubic root.)\n\nOr to put it another way, you can destroy about the same area with two 10 Mt bombs as you can with one 100 Mt bomb. \n\nSecondly, let's consider what adding that yield actually does in terms of the usability of the bomb. There are maximum practical limits to how much bang you can get out of every pound of a nuclear weapon. The best the United States ever achieved was about 6 kilotons for every 1 kilogram of bomb (6 kt/kg). That was their largest yield weapon ever, the Mk-41, which managed to squeeze 25 Mt of yield (half of the tested Tsar Bomba) in a bomb that \"only\" weighed 10,600 lbs (just a little more than the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki). \n\nThe 100 Mt Tsar Bomba had a yield-to-weight ratio of only about 3.4 kilotons/kilogram. Which is to say, it was not a very efficient weapon. It had a big boom, but at the cost of a _lot_ of weight. This extra weight (and size) meant that it had very, very limited delivery options.\n\nNow, could they have done better with it, if they wanted to? _Maybe._ The CIA was super worried that the Soviets were trying to make 50 Mt warheads for heavy ICBMs. If the goal is to make 50 rather than 100 Mt, you can scale down the weight a lot. (The 50 Mt Tsar Bomba was really a 100 Mt design that was just decreased in yield; a pure 50 Mt variety could be lighter.) Light enough to put on a super heavy rocket? Probably — but again, there's a question of why you would do than as opposed to having just dozens and dozens of 1 Mt warheads that will do quite a lot of damage by themselves.\n\nCould they have done it without atmospheric testing, though? I doubt it. And therein is part of the rub: the USA and the USSR signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty only two years later and that essentially halted all high-yield weapon development in both countries. \n\nThe weapon also no doubt used a ridiculous quantity of fission and fusion fuel. Which again gets to the \"why would you want one\" question, especially when you remember that the Tsar Bomba is a 1-bomb-to-1-bomber weapon (whereas with lower yield bombs you can fit multiple bombs in each bomber). \n\nSakharov, as an aside, proposed that they make a 100 Mt torpedo that could be used to destroy a harbor city like New York. Apparently the Soviet general he told this to was appalled by the idea, which Sakharov seems to have found somewhat amusing. (What, it's OK to contemplate bombing a city from the air, but not the sea?)\n\nAs a further aside, there's another, slightly more interesting question hiding here: why didn't the USA build a 100 Mt bomb? The answer is actually somewhat of an interesting story. ([I gave a paper on this last November.](_URL_1_)) The short version is that there were forces within the US military/scientific/political establishment that were fairly interested in developing at least a 50 Mt bomb, just to show the Soviets (and the world) that we could do it too. Proposed delivery mechanisms at one point including having one just built into a B-52 and having the crew bail out before reaching the target. Seriously. They thought that they could even in their first generation 100 Mt bomb really out-class the Soviets in terms of yield-to-weight ratios, and that in second generation bombs (using a new H-bomb technique developed during the 1962 Operation Dominic test series) they could do much, much better. However they never went anywhere beyond the drawing board with the plans, though, because the political consequences were deemed high and because the resources involved in making such weapons were substantial (they didn't have facilities that could fabricate fissile material in the sizes and shapes necessary, for example). That and they never really developed a good idea of what the hell they would ever use them for. \n\nThe timing of the Tsar Bomba is, as just one more aside, an interesting one. The Soviets detonated it in 1961; the USA tested a series of very compact H-bombs in 1962; the LTBT was signed in 1963. The shift for the US from that point forward was mostly away from high yield weapons — the new name of the game were weapons that could fit 100 kilotons of weight into a warhead that was only 100 kg of weight (so 1 kt/kg — not the optimal efficiency, but a good weight/yield tradeoff). This meant making smaller, more accurate nukes, the sort of thing you can MIRV. Which is one of the reasons the Tsar Bomba looks like such a relic; it is a 1950s bomb, when the goal was to see how big you could make them. By the mid-1960s that no longer seemed as important as being able to have lots of bombs and to use them accurately. \n\nFor some more thoughts of mine on these topics, you might find these two blog posts useful: [Kilotons per kilogram](_URL_0_) and [In Search of a Bigger Boom](_URL_2_). " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYUP7zJ0CwU" ], [ "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/12/23/kilotons-per-kilogram/", "https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/400381141372260352/photo/1", "http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cmqtjn0", "cmr4z9c" ], "score": [ 7, 5 ], "text": [ "Afaik the [Tabula Peutingeriana](_URL_0_) is the best surviving example of a real Roman map. Though there are two caveats:\n\n1) While accepted to be of an actual Roman original, it is a medieval copy, so we can't be sure how much the art style reflects the original in detail.\n\n2) It is a road map, which is intentionally deformed so it can show the entirety of the known world (up to India) in a more efficient and convenient amount of space.", "The fastest it would take to travel from Londinium in Britain to Alexandria in Egypt in Roman times was 41 days (travelling in September).\n\nThe route would have been by sea from Londinium to the Southern Atlantic coast of Gaul, by river boat and overland across Gaul, just north and east of the Pyrenees, by ship to Rome, change ships, by ship to Alexandria.\n\nThis would be expensive, costing about 1228 denarii, due to paying for fast ships and river boats.\n\nA cheaper option at the same time of year would have been to take a ship all the way. This would cost 1133 denarii and take 45 days. (More or less, sea travel times were subject to variation depending on wind and weather.)\n\nTo travel by road (as much as possible - you would need to cross the Channel and the Bosporus by ship) would take 179 days and cost 7136 denarii. (In a carriage, not walking)\n\nTimes and prices are taken from “ORBIS” a well researched “Google Maps for the Roman Empire”, produced by Stanford University, which lets you plan journey times and costs to and from most places in the Roman Empire.\n\n_URL_0_\n" ] }

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[ "https://i.imgur.com/lHoCQtt.jpg", "https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/2osa8m" ]

[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana" ], [ "http://orbis.stanford.edu/#" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c586wb1" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "This was the first result for[ Rhiems Cathedral World War I poster](_URL_0_) on google image search. It's got the monster smashing the Cathedral. No Catholic imagery unless I'm missing something. Is this what you're looking for?" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=N&amp;biw=1440&amp;bih=799&amp;tbm=isch&amp;tbnid=WTzuMtzS4o2IUM:&amp;imgrefurl=http://www.fredmussat.fr/e-proceedings2_dec09/mirror_of_modernity_glendinning.htm&amp;docid=AvRVRhZm77KvZM&amp;imgurl=http://www.fredmussat.fr/e-proceedings2_dec09/images/reims_cathedral_worldwar1_cartoon.jpg&amp;w=363&amp;h=500&amp;ei=W9nwT4jQFZGI0QGf_qn6Ag&amp;zoom=1&amp;iact=rc&amp;dur=255&amp;sig=104310105497313219394&amp;page=1&amp;tbnh=125&amp;tbnw=91&amp;start=0&amp;ndsp=36&amp;ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:79&amp;tx=71&amp;ty=82" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cf21rau" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "There was not any major change in 1945 to established voting patterns in terms of social class, but there were key changes to WHO voted and WHERE they voted. The armed services registered in large numbers to vote and they overwhelmingly backed Labour, but that did not account for the dramatic swing around the country as their votes were spread across constituencies. However, working class urban conscripts and volunteers who did not go to war, those who were sent to rural areas to help with tasks such as farming, did have an impact. When we compare the results in rural constituencies for each election 1945 sticks out like a sore thumb - and this can be accounted for by the fact that sufficient numbers of traditional Labour voters voted in rural constituencies - rather than in their home constituencies - to swing many seats. \n\nYou may have heard people complain about the electoral college in the US, the fact that a rural vote effectively counts for more than an urban vote because of the population density inequality of constituencies, in a way the 1945 UK election was a social experiment in what happens if you take lots of Urbanites and get them to vote in the Rural areas. The impact of this was all the greater because many rural constituencies were still very small and could be swung by a small influx of voters. \n\nThe other major factor was WOMEN, those over 21 had been granted the vote in 1928 and it's from this point that the Labour Party becomes a credible force in UK elections - women of all classes voted Labour in greater numbers than their male counterparts, just as women in the US vote Democrat in greater numbers - and this has held true since Women's suffrage. The inclusion of women in the workforce during the war was also reflected by their greater political activity, including voter registration. \n\nThere were numerous other compounding factors such as the association of Churchill with both the Liberal and Conservative Parties and with hung Parliaments and coalitions - he was viewed by many as being a National Leader rather than a Conservative leader. The Conservatives arguably relied too heavily on being 'rewarded' for Victory and did not campaign as actively as Labour, they also went in for either scaremongering or cautionary tales, depending on your view point, likening Labour's socialism plans to Totalitarianism (ref. Churchill's so called 'Gestapo speech') which did not go down well with a Population who largely felt that the governments of the inter war years had reneged on obligations to care for people, especially veterans and war widows and orphans, after WWI. \n\nIf you want to read more about the 1945 election generally here's some resources\n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_2_\n_URL_6_\n_URL_3_\n_URL_4_\n_URL_1_\n_URL_5_" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/election_01.shtml", "http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/1945-general-election#", "http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GE1945.htm", "http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/14/past.education", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_the_United_Kingdom", "http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4713041.stm", "http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/basics/4393271.stmh" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9vfa6j", "c9vfgya" ], "score": [ 8, 6 ], "text": [ "Theodora. Started as a stripper, became Empress of the Byzantine Empire, which is in my opinion , pretty awesome.", "Tabitha Babbitt. She was an American shaker in Harvard Mass in the early 1800's. Shakers considered work to be a big part of their religion. She invented the circular saw. Supposedly, the idea came to her when she was observing some men using a two handled pit saw and realized how inefficient it was. She got the idea to put saw teeth on a spinning wheel - like device. Badda Bing. \n\nShe also invented a process for making false teeth. A very smart lady." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cbcsnxy" ], "score": [ 8 ], "text": [ "Actual sexual relations between men and boys were actually much less common than is usually believed in popular culture. Even such an open homosexual as Plato notes how disgusting he finds it to actually engage in sexual relations with a member of the same sex. Plato reflects a popular attitude of the time, that non-sexual love between members of the same sex was considered perfectly normal, but that actual homosexual sex was something perverted and wrong. These attitudes are further reflected in Aristophanes, for whom one of the strongest insults and most damaging jokes he can make is to accuse someone of having sex with boys (or to say that someone was a minion in his youth). This, however, is in Athens of the Classical Period. While the attitude seems to also have been prevalent throughout most of the mainland (although there may have been a higher tendency to it in Ionia, which served as part of the basis for classical accusations of Ionians as \"unmanly\"), during the Hellenistic Period there was a distinct break in the attitudes. The Greeks of the Hellenistic Period came into very open contact with Eastern cultures that did not have the same reservations about open homosexual sex that the classical Greeks did. As a result, one of the many things that Hellenistic Greeks adopted from the east was this tendency towards actual sexual relations with members of the same sex. We also find that there is a sudden increase during the Hellenistic Period in homosexual art. It is during this period, for example, that we first start to see stories labelling Achilles and Patroclus as lovers, the story of Hermaphroditus, and works arguing for the homosexuality of various historical and legendary figures. It was this Greek culture that the Romans first started to make serious contacts with, and it is largely a result of these changes that the Romans labelled Greeks as womanly and \"perverted.\"\n\nI'd also like to take a moment to note that, whatever might have been the case in the Hellenistic Period, the notion popular in our culture today that Classical Greeks predominantly engaged in anal intercourse and intercourse from the rear is actually completely untrue. In fact, the Classical Greeks (of the 5th Century and most of the 4th) seem to have had a total disgust of that kind of sex, at least among equal partners (which included heterosexual partners, at least where both of them were free or Greeks). This can be best seen from Aristophanes, who ridicules men and women alike who allow themselves to be penetrated in the anus. From what I understand (and I'm not exactly an expert on this) the modern conception that this practice was widespread stems partly from the Roman lampoons of the Greeks as effeminate and sexually perverted, and partly from several vase paintings depicting women being penetrated (usually standing) from behind, presumably in the anus. However, social classicists have come to the conclusion that these are supposed to be prostitutes (there are many indications of that, including dress and setting, as well as the fact that intercourse in a standing position or on the bare floor was also considered repulsive--a fact seen again in Aristophanes), who we know were not considered sexually equal to ordinary female partners." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9gvd0u", "c9gvyz2", "c9gwpzy", "c9gyiua", "c9h01j9", "c9h84aa", "c9hdjn2" ], "score": [ 11, 7, 9, 6, 4, 2, 3 ], "text": [ "Dive bombers were also vulnerable to fighters, for the most part (the later US aircraft significantly less so). In fact, the British Fleet Air Arm disdained and mostly avoided the use of dive bombers because they believed that they would be hopelessly outclassed by fighters, but obviously other navies did not share that opinion.\n\nThe advantage comes in using the two in combination, since enemy fighters (and AA batteries to a lesser extent) are hard-pressed to engage attackers at different altitudes simultaneously.", "Torpedoes when they do hit are very devastating. You're looking at a hit below the waterline for starters. Plus if the torpedo has a magnetic detonator it might hit below the ship itself which can cause massive damage to the vessel. ", "The torpedo bombers of the American fleet at Midway were [TBD Devastators](_URL_0_). They were antiquated and obsolete by the time they were put into action at Midway. It was rapidly replaced after that action by the [Grumman TBF Avenger](_URL_1_), which was a much superior plane in almost all regards. Take a look at the performance characteristics on the pages I linked. Torpedo bombers were crucial to taking out several high value targets later in the war, namely the *Yamato* and *Musashi*. The former took 10 torpedoes and 7 bombs, the latter *19* torpedoes and 17 bombs. ", "To understand why torpedo planes were in use along with dive bombers, you need to understand weapon effects against a ship.\n\nWhen a bomb hits a ship, it makes holes in the deck... it lets in air, essentially.\n\nWhen a *torpedo* hits a ship, it makes holes in the hull... letting in **water**.", " > Yet a squadron of dive bombers comes down and takes out 3 of the Japanese carriers within 5 minutes. \n\nThat was acutally quite lucky for the Americans. You see the Japanese carriers were in the process of fuelling and arming another wave of bombers at the time the American dive-bombers struck, which meant there was a whole bunch of stuff like Bombs, Ammo and Fuel lying about on the hanger decks when the bombs hit, causing devastating secondary explosions and fires that under most circumstances would not have occured, or at least would not have occured in such severity.\n\nUnder Normal circumstances, those bombs would explode in Empty hanger decks, and all the munitions would be stored safely in aresenals deep below, meaning that only superficial damage would be done.\n\n > Torpedo planes were slow and easy targets\n\nThe Douglas Devastators that participated in the battle of Midway were woefully obsolete, and using the hilariously unreliable Mark 13 torpedos. But yes, you are right to a certain degree, torpedo bombing is a risky business, but so is regular bombing. Actually I might say that any action that involves flying *toward* a practial floating fortress full of angry flack cannon in a tiny little carrier launched plane is a dangerous endeavour. \n\nThe hit rate for American air-launched torpedoes was about 40%, which isn't that terrible when you consider that you are ideally launchnig the things in waves and even one can be potentially devastating hit below the waterline that causes the other guy to start taking on water. The point is, Midway where virtually no torpedos did anything usefull is an exception.\n\nAlso Just because there were no *American* torpedo kills doesn't mean there wern't any, the USS Yorktown was sunk by Japanese air-launched Torpedos. Well technically it was crippled by Japanese air launched torpedos and sunk by a Japanese Submarine, but the pont stands.", "There is a trade off involved. A torpedo is heavy, can be evaded (though not necessarily easily), and does catastrophic damage below the waterline if it hits. Dive bombers, by definition, drop bombs.\n\nSome ship types, like battleships, are designed to stand up to heavy shellfire from other battleships. Their thick armor allowed them to stand up to fairly heavy bombing. Aircraft carriers, on the other hand, aren't designed to stand and fight. They are lightly armored to allow them to move quickly. Because of their speed, carriers that sight the torpedo bombers coming in are much harder to hit.\n\nYou're correct in surmising that dive bombers were very effective against the Japanese carriers at Midway. But what about battleships? Take the Yamato, for example. She was sunk by a force of dive and torpedo bombers, but the torpedo bombers caused the fatal list.\n\nSo bombs were much more effective against more lightly armored ships and torpedoes were effective against heavier, slower ships like battleships.", "Torpedo bombers were devastatingly effective in the [Battle of Taranto](_URL_0_), which caused the Italian navy to lose the use of half their capital ships in one night. In this case, the attack was made with obsolescent Fairey Swordfish biplanes. Remarkably, only two aircrew were killed and two aircraft lost. The battle was said to have influenced the Japanese in their planning for the Pearl Harbour attack." ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_TBD_Devastator", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_TBF_Avenger" ], [], [], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_taranto" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c528lxz", "c529lto", "c52a78y", "c52bt5r", "c52cfy9", "c52dl3k", "c52iynl" ], "score": [ 4, 206, 7, 5, 4, 3, 8 ], "text": [ "I can't give you a very in-depth answer, but I can confirm your suspicion that popular media are often forgotten over time.\n\nFor instance, the playwright [Ben Jonson](_URL_0_) was hugely popular in Jacobian England, but you haven't heard of him. His work is generally considered to have been fairly good, too.", "(This gets a bit long, so there will be a **TL;DR**)\n\nAs to your first question, absolutely. My own period of study offers so many examples of this that it's almost embarrassing.\n\n**Poetry at the Turn of the Century**\n\nThink about what you know about the contours of Victorian poetry, as it is typically taught. Names like Tennyson and Browning are very much at the forefront, and perhaps rightly so on a qualitative level. Nevertheless, the best-selling poets in the English-speaking world at the end of the 19th C. were Felicia Hemans, Stephen Phillips and Henry Newbolt -- if you've heard of either of them in any context, you're already ahead of the curve. Hemans is especially interesting in that she had been dead since 1835, but her works remained so popular as tools of moral instruction for young people that she continued to be an unstoppable force. This diminished considerably in subsequent years, and now, of course, she is scarcely heard of at all. Phillips was renowned for his epic verse dramas, like *Christ in Hades* (1896) and *Paolo and Francesca* (1900), while Newbolt made a name for himself through vigorous, exhilarating poems about war, nature, the sea, and so on; \"[Vitaï Lampada](_URL_0_)\" is fairly exemplary.\n\n**Concerning Laureates**\n\nTo continue with the matter of poetry, consider that there have been eight poet laureates in Great Britain since Tennyson. How many of them can you name? Ted Hughes is likely the first one to come to mind, if any come to mind at all, or perhaps Carol Ann Duffy, who exercises a certain amount of sway by dint of being the current laureate and also the first woman to hold the office.\n\nBut that's only a sliver of the story! Alfred Austin, Robert Bridges, John Masefield, Cecil Day Lewis, John Betjeman and Andrew Motion are also in the mix. It's a struggle to find anyone who has heard of Austin, much less read him, and Bridges languishes in similarly undeserved obscurity in spite of having been hugely prolific and very influential in bringing to light other poets who now enjoy a great deal of acclaim. The Masefield situation is the most infuriating to me, though; he held the laureateship for *thirty-seven years*, and was one of the most widely-read names in poetry, prose, *and* drama at the height of his career. And yet I have colleagues who teach the British literature of the 20th century professionally without having ever read or heard of him either. This is not their fault; it's just what happens when people try to frame the literature of a period based on what *they* find interesting after the fact.\n\n**The Early 20th Century in Poetry**\n\nFor that is largely what has happened, here. Think of what you know of the poetry of the early 20th century. That's when Modernism took the world by storm, right? The big names are T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound, and H.D., and so on. And then there's also the war poetry, by the likes of Siegfried Sassoon, or Wilfred Owen, or Isaac Rosenberg -- all held up now as iconic, matchless, vital.\n\nWell, the Modernists certainly were popular at the time -- among other Modernists and academics. However, then, as now, most of the people buying new books were just... regular people. They wanted ballads, and sonnets, and epics, and nature poems. \"The Waste Land\" was absolutely baffling to them, and intentionally so. \n\nAs for the war poetry, virtually nobody read any of the three men I mentioned above during the war itself, whatever we may think of them now. Owen and Rosenberg -- in spite of now being broadly considered to be *the* poets of the Great War -- enjoyed no audience larger than their parents, a few choice friends, and the literary editor Edward Marsh. Sassoon faced similar challenges, and it was only his own furious efforts in the decades after the war that saw Owen popularized in the first place; Rosenberg's works languished in obscurity for even longer. The war poems that people widely read at the time were by the likes of well-established civilian authors like Newbolt and Rudyard Kipling, and the soldier poets whose works they really *did* feverishly consume were men like Rupert Brooke and Julian Grenfell, who wrote in a vigorous and patriotic tone -- quite far from the disillusion and horror of the works we now take to be definitive.\n\nAnd this is just the *poetry*...!\n\n**Prose Considered**\n\nThe assumption of the triumph of Modernism has saddled us with the widespread conviction that James Joyce's *Ulysses* and Virginia Woolf's *Orlando* and Wyndham Lewis' *Tarr* and so on were the leading books of their age, but they absolutely were not. Their consumption was dwarfed by that of far more conventional novels by the likes of Booth Tarkington, Eden Philpotts, F.R. Benson, G.A. Henty, Hall Caine, Mazo de la Roche, John Buchan and so on. \n\nDe la Roche is especially interesting; her *Jalna* series spanned sixteen volumes and was for a time collectively the best-selling literary production *in the English-speaking world*. In spite of having run to almost two hundred editions in English alone, if you can even find a copy of one of those books now, you're a luckier man than I am -- and if you can hear about them in a class between the hours spent on \"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock\" and *Finnegan's Wake*, it will be something of a miracle. It's a sad story. I visited de la Roche's grave to apologize, once, for all the good it did.\n\nAnyway, other popular authors of the period, like Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, J.M. Barrie and so on are mercifully better-remembered on a popular level, but they are still far less often *taught* in survey courses of the period, being left out to make room for more Modernism.\n\n=-=-=\n\n**TL;DR:** Subsequent assumptions about what is important in an era's literature, as seen from later years, dramatically impact how we view that era's literature in its own context -- if we're willing or able to do that at all. In the period I study, later decades' assumptions about the importance of literary Modernism in creating a lineage between the literature of the past and the literature of the present have seen -- I do not exaggerate -- virtually all of the early 20th century's actually popular literature and poetry pushed to the margins, if not entirely ignored. It may be the case that these popular works simply are not as good as the stuff we now so aggressively position as \"the literature of that time,\" but this is not at all how readers back then universally saw the matter.\n\n**EDIT:** Tidied it up a bit.", "There are tons of topical works that meet this criterion:\n\nSamuel Butler's *Hudibras* was unbelievably popular from the 1660s into the 1700s - it is a mock-epic parody of *Don Quixote* that satirizes the roundhead and puritain governments of the interregnum. Now you need to scramble to find modern print editions.\n\nAndrew Marvell's *The Rehearsal Transpros'd* was a barn burner in 1672. It even was printed in pirate editions, and Jonathan Swift tipped his hat to it as an example of amazing wit. Now it is nearly entirely unknown outside of Marvellian scholars - there have been only two editions of it printed in the last *century*. It is witty and funny as shit - if you are well-read enough to understand the problems of Restoration ecclesiastical polity. Imagine watching an episode of *The Daily Show* having never heard anything about American politics, and you have an idea of what reading this (and similar pamphlets) is like for most modern readers.\n\nIn short, popular works fall out of memory all of the time.", "Good god yes. [this New Yorker article](_URL_0_) examines how one generation's giants rapidly become passé and all but unknown. \n\nI think that If a book is hugely popular, it's often very much of its time (addresses contemporary ideas; has characters like the readers; has a particular worldview). This leads such works to age very poorly and/or be easily forgotten as culture moves on.", "Since *Fifty Shades of Grey* was mentioned (a book which started as a Twilight fic), I think it is relevant to note that in the 1800s, novels were typically published as serials. \"Fanfics\" of sorts would be written in the interim between chapters and were sold cheaper than the real thing. While those were certainly popular, most certainly are not around today. \n\nAs for your second question, which may be more interesting, I think we don't need to look beyond (though it would be fun to do so) some of the bizarre morals espoused by folk tales and fairy tales. For an early example, take the Morality Plays which were very popular in Medieval times. Practically nobody thinks that way any more, and so often the morals seem very weird to us. ", "Upton Sinclair wrote a series of 11 books about a character named Lanny Budd that were popular in the 40s but today are mostly out of print and forgotten. Sinclair even won a Pulitzer for the third entry in the series called *Dragon's Teeth*. \n\nIn fact, outside of The Jungle most of Sinclair's enormous bibliography has been brushed aside. A fun book that examines this is *U.S.!* by Chris Bachelder.", "There are many examples -NMW's answer is excellent -- but realize the OPPOSITE also happens, as I believe NMW was also trying to suggest, where writers come back into the limelight even if they are forgotten for a time.\n\nYou have works that were popular at the time and remain popular over time, though their \"classiness\" may change in some ways. Dickens was writing Nicholas Nickleby as a serial first, and it was published over a year -- the weird bit in the middle where suddenly Nickleby ends up in the traveling circus for a number of chapters could be seen as a way of increasing the padding to keep more money coming in. (It's a fun book, but not tightly plotted)\n\nStephen Crane was heavily heralded at during his lifetime but feel into a sort of pit of obscurity until he was revived as an \"important literary figure\" again in the 20s. Also, though we associate him with *Red Badge of Courage* and it was certainly the book that won him the greatest acclaim. But authors liek Crane might be overshadowed by one acclaimed work even though during their lifetimes they had other works that had impact as well -- Crane's *Maggie Girl of the Streets* is far less widely read or known today. Similarly, while literary scholars of naturism know William Dean Howells and *The Rise of Silas Lapham*, I would dare to suggest very few American students outside of upper division classes or beyond would have ever heard of him.\n\nBut since these are still studied I suspect they do not fall completely into \"obscurity\" as you originally intended -- if you mean mentioned only in sparse footnotes or mentioned only in scholarly papers. Consider that whatever we consider \"The cannon\" of \"great literature in English\" -- complicated ideas after you scratch the surface anyway -- is always going to be such an extraordinarily limited subset of popular culture generated at a time, it would not be surprising that a great deal of \"popular culture\" of a time can slip away from us. moving away from books, think of the number of bawdy tavern songs or the lost body of Greek pantomimes that were hugely popular but considered low entertainment and therefore not preserved that we are really only aware of from secondary or tertiary mentions, but for which no original text survives. So, to broaden your inquiry, I would suggest there are whole FIELDS of popular entertainments that have fallen into obscurity because a group at one point or another deemed them unworthy.\n\nIn a sort of related cultural note, consider how someone choosing to intentionally PRESERVE a work can save popular culture from obscurity -- the work of Zora Neale Hurston in the 30s was crucial for saving a lot of black folktales that were regarded by many as \"superstition\" and not worthy of study, but her work really opened a popular door to the importance of of those lines of preservation of these popular cultural folktales.\n\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Jonson" ], [ "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Admirals_All/Vita%C3%AF_Lampada" ], [], [ "http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/why-is-literary-fame-so-unpredictable.html" ], [], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "erhufc2", "eriiq8j", "erimjmw", "erkmask" ], "score": [ 48, 9, 4, 8 ], "text": [ "Why are there so many hospitals in the US called Beth Israel, Mount Sinai, or something with \"Jewish\" in the name? I've always been intrigued by this, so I went looking for some answers.\n\nThe answer, shockingly, is that Jews established a bunch of hospitals. Of course, the actual interesting reasons ended up being WHY Jews chose to do so-\n\n1)For about 1000 years in Europe, Jewish communities were often their own semi-independent entities, or kehillot, separate from the Christian communities in the cities and towns in which they resided. As part of their self government, they often looked after their own sick, whether using the hekdesh (a room in the synagogue complex which was available for the use of the poor and homeless), through Bikur Cholim (visiting the sick) voluntary societies, or through the establishment of hospitals, starting in Western European cities in the 18th century. Bikur cholim is a fundamental act of kindness in Judaism (it's famously counted as one of the things which allows a person to go to the World to Come) and so communities caring for their sick was almost second nature.\n\n1a)The first Jewish hospitals in the US were founded in the mid-19th century in response to outbreaks of disease in cities like Cincinnati, New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco, specifically intended for the care of \"Israelites\" in those cities. But WHY did they found their own hospitals in America, land of the free, home of the brave, religious liberty and all that, where they could go to any hospital they chose?\n\n2)The other kind of denominational hospital that is widely found is Roman Catholic (including my local hospital, incidentally). The commonality is that in the 19th century, both Roman Catholics and Jews were being targeted by some Protestant clergy at local hospitals, who attempted to convert them as they were dying. By founding their own hospitals, these religious groups could prevent this sort of encroachment on their religious beliefs.\n\n3)In addition, there were of course other specific benefits to a Jewish hospital for Jewish patients- the food served would be in accordance to kosher dietary laws, the facility would have policies in place to allow the observance of the Sabbath by staff and patients, and rabbis and synagogue services would be available.\n\n4)In the 1880s, when the biggest wave of Jewish emigration began, antisemitism became a dominant concern. The new immigrants were often discriminated against by non-Jewish doctors at local hospitals, who were disconcerted or even disgusted by their poverty and religious observance. One Boston doctor reported, in a paragraph that's so startling that I'll quote it in full, that\n\n > As I sit in my chair behind the desk, Abraham Cohen, of Salem Street, approaches, and sits down to tell me the tale of his sufferings; the chances are ten to one that I shall look out of my eyes and see, not Abraham Cohen, but a Jew ; not the sharp clear outlines of this unique sufferer, but the vague misty composite photograph of all the hundreds of Jews who in the past ten years have shuffled up to me with bent back and deprecating eyes, and taken their seats upon this stool to tell their story. I see a Jew,—a nervous, complaining, whimpering Jew,—with his beard upon his chest and the inevitable dirty black frockcoat flapping about his knees. I do not see this man at all. I merge him in the hazy background of the average Jew.\n\nIn addition, Jews visiting hospitals were often faced with language and cultural barriers to the point that some doctors would diagnose Jews with \"Hebraic Debility,\" supposedly an anxiety brought on by acculturation to the US, when they couldn't come up with a better diagnosis. Small wonder that Jews might wish to start their own hospitals to avoid this- where, incidentally, they could hire Jewish doctors, who were often blocked from being hired by non-Jewish hospitals. Not coincidentally, at least eleven Jewish hospitals (in addition to Mount Sinai, which already existed) were established in the five boroughs from 1880 to the early decades of the 20th century, as well as many others in other cities, some of which still exist today.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nWhile we're at it, I'd like to talk about Jews and discriminatory medical school admissions. [I've already written in the past about Jewish quotas at universities](_URL_0_), but medical school quotas were their own issue. While they weren't quite as drastic as they were sometimes portrayed to be, they still very much existed. Cornell's quota limited the proportion of Jews to their proportion in the New York State population; UNC fired its med school dean for imposing a quota but then maintained it anyway. Some schools, like NYU, had no such quotas and at one point in the 1930s had a 50% Jewish student body; this was at least in part due to the fact that the dean preferred to accept students from City College of New York, which had such a large Jewish population (in the face of the above-referenced Jewish undergrad quotas) that it was nicknamed \"the cheder \\[Jewish school\\] on the hill.\" But the prevalence of Jewish quotas in med schools was still enough that Jews attempted to avoid it by going abroad to England, Scotland, Germany and Switzerland for medical school (though when they returned, they discovered that in effect, the quotas were replaced by restrictions on licensing for foreign-educated MDs), and a Medical Committee for Research of the Conference on Jewish Relations was founded in the 1930s to research the problem.\n\nThese practices actually led, in one case obliquely and in two cases directly, to the establishment of two new Jewish institutions and one New York State institution. Indirectly, the quota led to the creation of Brandeis University, a nonsectarian university founded by Jews as a way of resurrecting the failing unaccredited Middlesex University medical school. At this stage, Jews were taking chances on attending unaccredited schools, specifically Middlesex and the Chicago Medical School (which later became accredited with the help of Jewish-run Mount Sinai Hospital of Chicago). When Middlesex was threatened with closure, Jewish figures decided to purchase it, establish a university around it, and hopefully to reestablish it as an accredited school. The university succeeded; the medical school failed, and ironically, to this day Brandeis has no medical school. More directly, the quota led to the establishment of two medical schools which would accept Jewish students. One of these was Albert Einstein College of Medicine, founded by (but no longer officially part of) Yeshiva University, a Jewish university which was facing the issue of its students facing frustration gaining admission to existing schools; it also had the side benefit to religious Jews of following the Jewish calendar and featuring kosher food.\n\nThe other, and certainly the most significant of the three, was the State University of New York, which included a medical school system. This was due to the legal challenges to quota laws mounted by Jews in the wake of Truman's Commission on Higher Education and Commission on Civil Rights, including an attempted suit against Columbia University to remove its tax exempt status given its discrimination against Jews in admissions at its medical school. In 1946, a NY City Council investigation found that despite the fact that the majority of students in the city colleges (then CCNY, Hunter and Baruch) were Jewish, only 1/4 of students at the five NYC medical schools were Jewish. While the schools were private, they used city funded hospitals for teaching and received tax exemptions. The results of the investigation led to the establishment of a Temporary Commission on the Need for a State University in 1947, a move which had been rejected for over 150 years previously out of fear of harming private colleges. In 1948, SUNY was officially established, along with a commitment by the governor that students be granted equal access based on qualifications \"without regard to race, color, religion, creed or national origin,\" and in 1950 took over medical schools in NYC (now Downstate Medical Center) and Syracuse (now part of Upstate Medical Center)- later medical schools were established at Buffalo and Stony Brook.\n\nIronically, these days Jewish populations in medical schools have plummeted much farther down than they ever were in the days of quotas, but that's due just as much to the fact that they have other options that they may not have had previously, as fields like engineering, academia, law and finance increasingly opened to them.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSources:\n\nKraut and Kraut, *Covenant of Care : Newark Beth Israel and the Jewish Hospital in America*\n\nSokoloff, \"The Rise and Decline of the Jewish Quota in Medical School Admissions\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\n(yes, I'm aware that I have no chill)", "Warning, this one's a little gory - the time Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Cimmerian, got into a car accident:\n\n > We passed through a small town about fifteen miles from Cross Plains, where a steel flag pole was planted in concrete in the middle of the street. The pole was painted grey and was practically invisible. None of us saw it until we had hit it, head-on. Naturally the car was wrecked. The fellow on the seat beside me, a Tennessean, was thrown through the wind-shield, head and shoulders, and struck his belly terrifically against the dash-board, and a piece of glass gouged out most of his eyebrow and a piece of scalp larger than a dollar, and left it hanging over his eye by a shred of flesh. Of the men sitting behind, one was practically unhurt, but the other suffered a badly wrenched and almost broken leg, and some veins and tendons were evidently ruptured. As for me, I was driven against the wheel with such terrific force that I crumpled it with my breast-bone and my head was driven down against a jagged shard of glass with a force that would have fractured or dislocated a more fragile jaw than mine, and a gash two and a half inches long was ripped along the under part of my jaw, laying the bone bare the full length of the cut. I also received a deep cut — to the bone — across the middle knuckle of my left hand, and the flesh inside the joint of my right thumb was literally mangled. My knees caved in the solid steel instrument-panel, which naturally bruised and tore them considerably. But the worst hurt was to my breast. The arch of my breast was flattened and for hours it was only with the most extreme pain that I could draw a breath at all. Well, the instant I recovered from the blow — which was almost instantly — I shut off the engine and leaped out to see what damage had been done to the car, and though I don’t remember my remarks, my friends say my profanity was fervent and eloquent when I saw the crumpled bumper, the ruined radiator and the other damages. I didn’t know I was cut until, during my remarks, I happened to put my hand to my jaw and felt the bare bone through the gaping wound. At about that time the other boys piled out, and the man who had gone through the windshield, evidently having been numbed by the blow, suddenly was made aware of his plight by his awakening sensations. He was bleeding like a butchered steer, and was really a ghastly spectacle, with that great flap of flesh hanging down over his eye, and the contour of the skull, covered only by a layer of membrane, showing beneath. But he was suffering most from the terrible blow of being hurled against the dash-board. He was suffering internal pain, and apparently unable to straighten up. He was convinced that he was dying, and indeed I thought it quite likely, and he was making considerable noise about it; indeed I was so taken up with his injuries that I didn’t even know the other fellow was hurt — of old Texas stock, and stoicism being part of his instincts, he didn’t even mention the agony he was enduring with his leg, so I didn’t even know he was hurt until the next day. I don’t reckon I was making much noise about my injuries, either, because he didn’t know I was hurt, until the next day, either. But the fact is I didn’t think much about them at the time. It was about midnight, and a small town; we made an effort to get a doctor, but they were all out on calls, and not even a drug store open. But a young fellow offered to take us anywhere we wanted to go, and the man whose head was laid open wanted to go to the nearest hospital, which was in a town about twenty miles from there. I tried to persuade him to come on to Cross Plains, and let my father bandage him, which wouldn’t cost him anything, but like many people he had something of a hospital complex; so I told him and the fellow with the hurt leg to go on to the hospital, and I’d see about getting my car towed home. So they went, but it was useless trying to get anybody to see about the car; everything was closed, so I phoned my father, at Cross Plains, and he came over after me and the other fellow, who, as I said, wasn’t hurt. When we got home he put five stitches in my jaw and one in my thumb, which is the first time I was ever sewed up, though I’ve been ripped open before. I’m rather fat-jowled, and the gash on my jaw presented a rather ghastly appearance, gaping widely and the white of the bone showing through. The other fellow who was cut had fourteen stitches taken in his head, and it left a rather horrible scar, which, however, may become less obvious as time goes on. He had accident insurance, which was lucky, though I offered to pay his hospital bill, which he refused. A funny thing happened while my father was sewing me up; the watchman was holding his flashlight for my father to work by, and a young drug-clerk was standing watching. In the midst of the job he asked me if I was getting sick, to which I honestly replied that I never felt healthier in my life, and presently he pulled out in considerable of a hurry. I asked my father what was the matter with him, and he said the young man got sick at the sight of blood and raw flesh. Can you beat that? I’d heard that there were people who got sick at the sight of blood, but I’d never seen one before. I’d always wondered how it felt to be sewed up like a piece of cloth, but a gash like mine was appears to offer no particular problem. I imagine other wounds might require a local anesthetic. \n\n- Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, January 1934", "In 1849 the Hudson's Bay Company obtained a ten year lease for all of Vancouver Island from the British government. One condition of this lease was that the company establish a crown colony and promote settlement. Shortly after the colony began gold was discovered along the Fraser River and Cariboo regions of what is now British Columbia. The population of Victoria, the capital of Vancouver Island exploded overnight with miners and merchants seeking fortunes. Along with these new inhabitants some two thousand Indians from many coastal villages also moved to Victoria in search of trading opportunities and employment.\n\nIn 1862 the steamship *Brother Jonathan* left San Francisco and arrived in Victoria bringing miners and merchandise destined for the goldfields. \n\nOn board this ship was a person infected with Small Pox. The disease soon spread to the Indian settlements surrounding Victoria and turned into an epidemic that wiped out half of the coastal Indian population in two short years. Of all the articles and history books I have read about this epidemic this article by far gives the most detailed and comprehensive coverage of the outbreak. \n\nThe following link will take you to a dark chapter of British Columbia's history. It also gives an eyewitness account of tribal doctors methods of treating smallpox as witnessed by Joseph Crow. \n\n[History Link: the smallpox epidemic of 1862](_URL_0_)", "There are no Ottoman-related questions that interests me (or the ones that i can answer) so i'm thankful that Tuesday Trivia exists so i have something to do in my free time\n\nThis time i'm talking about the hospital of the Haseki Hurrem Sultan. Just like most Ottoman hospitals of the day, it was tied to *waqf* and so tied with the Mosque complex she built. The complex was built in two phases. The first phase was completed in 1540, in which the Friday Mosque, Madrasa, elementary school and soup kitchen were completed. The hospital was then completed in the second phase of construction in 1551. It was built near to the *Avrat Pazari* (Women's Market). One can speculate that a bazaar frequented by women eventually burgeoned in the area due to the large number of women coming to the hospital, either as visitors or as outpatients themselves\n\nThe regulations concerning the establishment of Sultana Hurrem’s hospital showed her intent in building this hospital with regard to her role as a builder and healer. She starts with specifying in great detail the professional qualifications she is looking for in the two physicians intended to run the hospital. Hurrem requires that these physicians possess not only extensive experience and high levels of proficiency in the arts of medicine and pharmacology, but also problem-solving and patient psychology. In addition, she expects her doctors to possess an impressive inventory of assets that, according to her, are more conducive to the healing process than mere professional expertise. With this objective in mind, she seeks out doctors who possess such humanistic qualities as \"munificence of conduct, considerate disposition, serenity, diligence, one with a sensitive heart, conciliatory nature, appreciated by relatives and as well as strangers, one with soft words, pleasant discourse, cheerful, and accommodating\", as can be seen in her further requirements afterwards:\n\n > The Physicians of the hospital must treats each and every patient of his as clemently as a close friend, never receives them with a sulky face, never utters a word that reflects any measure of gloom and disgust, ... talks to them in a most considerate manner, chooses the most compassionate manner in asking questions and receiving answers, ... always girds upon them the arches of grace and support \n\nHe also described the daily routine of her two physician are expected to follow:\n\n > Each of these two physicians promptly reports to work every morning \\[even if he spent\\] the previous evening at the hospital. He checks the conditions of his patients and other people with sickness. He follows the development of diseases and discomforts, checks his patients’ pulses, examines their urine, and scrutinizes the symptoms of any or all diseases. He listens to the complaints of all patients, young or old, and would not miss even the smallest detail. Subsequently, he administers to each patient the most appropriate medicine. If a patient’s condition requires the physician’s immediate attention, he runs to the hospital right away. Each of these two physicians complies with these written conditions and maintains these rules exactly as they are established. It is mandatory that they not neglect or violate any or all of these conditions, each and every year, month or day, and fully comply with. Any physician who violates any listed condition or neglects any of his duties is misusing his position and gaining unlawful benefit. \n\nThe same conditions apply to oculists, surgeons as well as the two pharmacists. These health professionals, too, should never neglect their duties or deviate from the humanistic objectives put forth in the deed of trust: \"‘it is mandatory that they, too, refrain from ever violating or neglecting any stipulated condition in any possible way\". The lower-ranking personnel are equally subject to strict scrutiny. The two cooks are to \"prepare their foods in conformity with each patient’s condition\" and the four nurses \"are always attentive to their patients’ conditions, never leaves them unattended ... and watch over them every night, in rotating pairs\". Even the bath attendant \"must treat the patients with the highest degree of dignity and tenderness\". The organization and coordination of a total number of 28 employees must be done in accordance with the strictest principles. Care was expressed to make sure that each employee was informed of his job requirements and that he did not violate any of the regulations. In addition, many professionals and personnel were employed to make sure that the hospital was fully staffed and well maintained. The hospital’s personnel included the aforementioned physicians and pharmacists, in addition to a clerk, an accountant, a pantry attendant, two cooks, two medicine grinders, four nurses, two assistant nurses, two laundrymen, a sweeper/garbage man, a gatekeeper, a gardener, a cleaner of toilets, and a bath attendant. The first physician, who was simultaneously the chief administrator, received a daily wage of 30 akçe, The second physician received 15 akçe, whereas the first surgeon and oculist got five, and the second surgeon and oculist got three akçe a day. Including the payments to the rest of the personnel, the daily budget for salaries was 113 akçe in total, 78 for medical, and 35 for auxiliary personnel. \n\nThe hospital originally served both inpatients and outpatients. The inpatients were most likely men. This is substantiated by the fact that the hospital had only a single bath tended by a male attendant. The row of toilets was also tended by a male employee and was directly accessible from the central yard. This indicates that women could only be treated as outpatients. In fact, both men and women outpatients came for visits on Mondays and Thursdays when clinics were open to the general public. Those in need could come and ask for their help, but it was stressed that also in these cases medication was to be given only to the really needy (and deserving), not to just anybody" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/awky8y/_/eho47lm/" ], [], [ "https://www.historylink.org/File/5171" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d1na8ah", "d1nhnj3" ], "score": [ 15, 2 ], "text": [ "I was playing the role of Chaucer's yeoman for April Fool's, so I can answer a few of your questions. My characterization of him was based on (besides his description in *Canterbury Tales,* obviously) a quite excellent article by Kenneth Thompson, \"Chaucer's Warrior Bowman: The Roles and Equipment of the Knight's Yeoman.\" Much of previous Chaucer scholarship that touches on the Yeoman has tried to emphasize one role over another, with someone suggesting that the Yeoman is supposed to be a \"man of peace,\" which is a hilarious contrast to the amount of weapons he's hauling around. In reality, Thompson correctly shows that the Yeoman, much like his real-life counterparts whom Chaucer would have have known, has a variety of roles that he is suited for and would be expected to handle. \"Yeoman,\" at the time Chaucer wrote his *Tales*, meant \"servant\" and could be applied to those who occupied a kind of middling place in society.\n\nHis \"day job,\" so to speak, is as a forester. His most important task there would be to ensure that the deer in his forests are maintained for the hunts held by the Knight. He would be responsible for not only preventing poachers from killing too many of the deer, but also feeding the deer in winter and take care of newly-born calves. In addition to taking care of the deer, a forester also prevented illegal grazing and logging in the woods. So law enforcement, animal husbandry, and resource management are all things he would be doing in the course of his normal duties. He would also participate in the hunts as an assistant. His role in the hunt would be determined by the kind of hunting being done. Presumably he would be an archer or a guide of some kind; nothing in his description would imply that he works with the hounds. \n\n As I implied in one of the follow-up questions about Chaucer, there was a difference between the senior administrators of the forest (who might be called \"forester\" in their official job title) and the guys actually in the forest doing the daily work. Chaucer indicates that his Yeoman is a practical guy: he's got a tan because he's outdoors all the time and \"of wodecraft wel koude he al the usage.\" He's equally good with his weapons: \"wel koude he dresse his takel yemanly.\" He knows how to maintain his equipment and he has enough money to buy the good stuff. Aside from his \"gay daggere\" and \"gay bracer,\" his arrows are fletched with peacock arrows rather than the common goose. The actual utility of peacock-fletched arrows is debatable, but they were often regarded as superior to goose. Chaucer is indicating that the Yeoman can afford the best arrows available. Presumably the Knight is paying him a good salary or he's acquired a lot of plunder on campaign. \n\nThere's actually nothing directly in Chaucer that would indicate that the Yeoman was a soldier at some point. Unlike the Knight (a valiant crusader) and the Squire (a mounted man-at-arms who has participated in *chevauchées*), the Yeoman's combat record is not mentioned. However, we can presume that he knows how to fight. He's well-armed, with bow, sword and buckler, dagger, and peacock arrows. The most likely reason for him to be on the pilgrimage to Canterbury is that he is acting as a bodyguard for the Knight and Squire. Neither of them are mentioned to carry arms, although they almost certainly are both bearing swords and the Knight is wearing armor. The language Chaucer employs to describe the Yeoman and the focus on his equipment function to describe the Yeoman himself as a kind of weapon, wielded by the Knight and the Squire. Again, there's nothing specific to indicate that the Yeoman has ever been a soldier. He has no tale or dialogue that would help clarify his past. But in the context of the other two men he's with, military service is strongly implied. Not all foresters were necessarily soldiers, but there's an obvious overlap in the skills associated with both roles. When medieval aristocracy went to war, their households served and fought alongside him. Looking at the pay records of campaigns like Henry V's 1415 invasion of France reveals names like \"John Tailor\" and \"Richard Armorer.\" These occupational surnames indicate their roles in the peacetime household, but in war, they were mounted archers. \n\nTogether, these three men are a microcosm of the English army in Chaucer's day: the knightly commander, the man-at-arms, and the regular mounted archer. All of these things together indicate a martial role for the Yeoman. His service is not mentioned directly perhaps because Chaucer doesn't feel he needs to say that the Yeoman accompanied either the Knight or the Squire to war. It seems to be the case that the Yeoman is a trusted figure to them: he is the only servant they have with them, no more are necessary. This makes sense with the evidence we have of English military recruitment in the Hundred Years War: men going to war often did so in the company of tight-knit groups of local family or friends, which would then join with larger companies to form the army as a whole. These friends and family members did not necessarily fight all in the same role; a man-at-arms might be accompanied by his brother serving as an archer. \n\nI don't have any idea about foresters outside of England, unfortunately. You'll have to ask someone else about that. \n\nSources: \n\n1) Kenneth Thompson, \"Chaucer's Warrior Bowman: The Roles and Equipment of The Knight's Yeoman,\" *The Chaucer Review*, Vol. 40 No. 4. \n\n2) Richard Allmond and AJ Pollard, \"The Yeomanry of Robin Hood and Social Terminology of 14th Century England,\" *Past & Present* No. 170. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "I can speak very briefly to point #3.\n\nSimilar systems of forest management are seen in Germany and the Netherlands into the 19th century. They are generally called \"jaagers\" (hunters) and were professional woodsmen and game wardens who worked in the employ the local nobles who owned the hunting rights to a given piece of woodland. The local jaager of an area might work as soldiers, but seem to have often take up trades like charcoal-burners or sometimes lumberjacks if they could not find work in the employ of the local notables." ] }

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[ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4csbgd/in_premodern_times_was_it_perfectly_possible_to/d1l3y0g" ]

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{ "a_id": [ "cek9oov", "ceka9su" ], "score": [ 10, 6 ], "text": [ "The New York Times did [this amazing piece about Guarani language](_URL_0_). Basically this is as you mentioned about the Jesuit missions that utilized the languages as medium of proselytism. But more importantly the survival and high status of Guarani is due to successive rulers of Paraguay patronized the language, used it for nationalistic propaganda and narratives, and supported the Guarani speakers. First of such ruler was President José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who used Guarani speaking people as base of supporters to counter the previously important Spanish Metizos and Peninsulares. To quote the article:\n > he (De Francia) banned those in the light-skinned upper class from marrying each other, sealed Paraguay’s borders and used Guaraní-speaking informants called *pyragues*, or fleet-footed ones, to bolster his tyrannical regime. \n\nAs did General Stroesner who ruled the country from 1950s-1980s\n > General Stroessner, the son of a Bavarian immigrant and his Guaraní-speaking wife, made it an official language, employed his own espionage network of pyragues and rewarded rural Guaraní-speakers with land for their loyalty. \n\nSuch measures might be considered tyrannical by westerns standards but it definitely helped the survival and high status that Guarani language enjoyed, compared to neighboring native languages such as Quechua, Aymara, or Mapundungan.", "I think this is a hard question to answer because the average English-speaking, reddit-using lay-person doesn’t have too many historical sources sitting around that discuss this topic. Furthermore, there are so few sources on Paraguay in English at all that finding anything to address your question is fairly hard. I’ll try my best; hopefully, others can jump in too. Guaraní is part of a much larger language family called Tupí-Guaraní, which scholars believe originally shared a common ancestor. This family also included (includes) many other indigenous languages (mostly) south of the Amazon and east of the Andes. But before discussing the Spanish, we should look at how central the language was to precolumbian Guaraní culture. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of the creation story of the Guaraní religion, called “Ayvu Rapyta” (“The Foundation of Human Speech” translated by León Cadogan in 1966):\n\n1. \nThe true father Ñamandu, the first one, \nOut of a small portion of his own godliness, \nAnd out of the wisdom contained in his\nOwn godliness,\nCaused flames and tenuous mist to\nBe begotten.\n\n2. \nHaving emerged in human form, \nOut of the wisdom contained in his own godliness,\nAnd by virtue of his creative wisdom\nHe conceived the foundation of human speech.\nOut of the wisdom contained within his own godliness, \nAnd by virtue of his creative wisdom\nOur father created the foundation of human speech,\nAnd caused it to form part of his own godliness.\nBefore the earth existed,\nIn the midst of primeval darkness,\nBefore there was knowledge of things,\nHe created the foundations of future human speech,\nAnd the first true father Ñamandu\nCaused it to form part of his own divinity...\n\nBefore Ñamandu created the Guaraní, people in general, the Earth, or even emotions like love, the language was born. Peter Lambert and Andrew Nickson write in the Paraguay Reader (where I got the translation) that “the very identity of the Mbya-Guaraní depends on a shared language, a willingness to love each other, and adherence to a common religion” (15). Even though your question isn’t really about the pre-contact period, it is important to show how central language was to these people. The very first thing their god created was language, which helped lay the foundation for all other aspects of Guaraní life.\n\nNext, I should also point out that Guaraní was not the only indigenous language to survive contact with Europeans. Hundreds of indigenous languages are spoken in the Western Hemisphere, often despite the best efforts of colonizers. Once the Spanish arrived in the Río de la Plata region, they quickly settled in Paraguay, abandoning Buenos Aires in the process, in favor of the semi-sedentary agriculturalists of central South America. Once this happened, the language of both the colonizers and the colonized immediately began to change. The two languages mixed together. Guaraní was much more affected, and as the languages evolved, Guaraní might better be described as a creole or mixed language. Thus, when it was recognized as an official language of Paraguay in 1992, the language had undergone significant changes from that which the first explorers would have heard. So here is the real “meat” of your question. How did this language beat the odds and remain so prevalent in a region where indigenous languages tended to give way to Spanish or Portuguese? \n\nWell, there are lots of reasons, which I will try to succinctly summarize. First, the relationships between the Spanish, Portuguese, and Guaraní allowed for many opportunities to preserve Guaraní culture (and language as shown above). The missions, which you mention, became central to this relationship after the Jesuits were granted authority to convert the people of the region in 1608. Though they have always been controversial (historians like Branislava Susnik and Philip Caraman demonstrated that the missions were often brutal places), more recent historians like Barbara Ganson and James Schofield Saeger have shown that the missions allowed indigenous people a large amount of freedom to preserve their culture and protect their interests. \n\nIn the beginning, the Jesuits tried to spread Spanish, but this was abandoned in favor of Guaraní, since the semi-settled populations spoke several dialects of the language that were mutually intelligible. Cajetan Cattaneo, an Italian Jesuit in a letter to his brother in 1730, explained his experience with the language: “The only thing that gave me some pain, was the difficulty of the language. I have applied myself so assiduously to it that these two months I have catechized the children...Tho’ I now and then mistake one word for another, I find they understand me pretty well, as I do them by their answers. Those that answer best, I reward with pictures, and dismiss all my people well satisfied” Cattaneo shows that the language provided the Jesuits with a medium of communication through which they could spread the gospel. It also allowed them to quickly teach European values and agricultural methods. All of these were central to Spanish goals throughout the New World. As historian Lyman Johnson points out, Guaraní language became centrally important to trade in the region and allowed various individuals from all over South America to communicate. Eventually, to counter the growing threat of Brazilian slavers who were preying on the missions, the Jesuits organized Guaraní military forces, who spoke their native language, further protecting and fostering a sense of cultural and linguistic identity. Additionally, Guaranís who objected to life in the missions or in the colonial world could flee, finding communities of unincorporated natives deep in the rugged and forested terrain of central South America. Here too, the language survived largely outside of Spanish or Portuguese control. Finally, Paraguay remained on the fringes of the two major European empires. Lacking substantial, exploitable natural resources, the region and its indigenous inhabitants were (relatively) spared from the levels of involvement seen in other regions of the New World. Far fewer immigrants came to the region, and thus, Spanish speakers remained a significant minority. Mestizos often assumed leadership positions in the region in ways that would have been shut in other areas of the Spanish Empire.\n\nFollowing independence, Paraguay shut itself off from the world, pursuing a policy of nationalistic self-sufficiency, and given the penetration of Guaraní language and culture in Paraguayan society, this move promoted a more homogeneous population and culture. Peter Lambert and Andrew Nickson point out that there was even a ban to prevent foreigners and Spanish elite from marrying among themselves. Guaraní was used as the language of government until the end of War of the Triple Alliance, when the victors forced the change, and was encouraged among the lower classes. (An aside to address another of your questions: I haven’t seen the huge numbers of casualties in the war cited as a cause of the ascension of Guaraní language in any of the sources I have read. It MIGHT be a cause that I simply haven’t encountered in the primarily English sources before, but since most of the people of Paraguay by the 1860’s were Guaraní-speaking mestizos, the huge numbers of casualties would not have made a huge difference since the language had already gained a foothold in Paraguayan culture.) Guaraní remained widely spoken by the lower and middle classes and was further bolstered as the language used by the military during the Chaco War. The language was looked down upon for much of the national period among the wealthy elite, but during the twentieth century, pride in indigenous and working class heritage grew, eventually being recognized as a national language in the 60’s and an official language in 1992. \n\nEDIT sources:\n\nLambert, Peter, and Andrew Nickson, eds. “The Foundation of Human Speech.” In The Paraguay Reader: History, Culture Politics, 15–20. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.\n\nBurkholder, Mark, and Lyman Johnson. Colonial Latin America, 6th Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.\n\nCaraman, Philip. The Lost Paradise: The Jesuit Republic in South America. New York: The Seabury Press, 1976.\n\nGanson, Barbara. The Guaraní Under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.\n\nLópez, Adalberto. The Colonial History of Paraguay. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2005.\n\nSaeger, James Schofield. The Chaco Mission Frontier: The Guaycuruan Experience. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000.\n\nSusnik, Branislava, and Miguel Chase-Sardi. Los indios del Paraguay. Madrid: Colecciones MAPFRE, 1995.\n\nCattaneo, Father Cajetan. “Three letters by Italian Jesuit Father Cajetan Cattaneo (1695-1733) to his brother describing missionary work in the New World.” Fordham. http:// _URL_0_ (accessed 4 May 2011)." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/world/americas/in-paraguay-indigenous-language-with-unique-staying-power.html?pagewanted=all" ], [ "www.fordham.edu/images/undergraduate/lalsi/letters_from_father_cajetan_cattaneo.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "df9bwuf", "df9cx72", "dfa9sdm" ], "score": [ 351, 691, 6 ], "text": [ "There's a good answer to the Africa part of your question here:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nedit: credit where credit is due - /u/khosikulu", "This is a complicated and very broad question, so any answer will inevitably involve a lot of simplification. In general, early states on all continents were often divided by natural barriers, such as rivers, large lakes, and mountain ranges, as these all often constituted serious obstacles to movement. Indeed, most of the national boundaries in Europe are geographical boundaries as well. Germany and Poland are divided by the Oder River. Spain and France by the Pyrenees Mountains. Greece and Turkey by the Maritsa River. Several of these boundaries, such as the France-Spain example above, were formed over the course of centuries, while others are formed by much more recent treaties, such as the German-Poland border established by the Potsdam Agreement in 1945.\n\nBoth of the Americas, Africa, and Australia, were colonized by European powers, starting in the mid 1400s and lasting until the mid 1900s. Most of these colonies obtained independence during the 1900s, and only a handful of ‘overseas territories’ remain in the hands of their colonial overlords. As over a dozen European states divided up faraway continents between themselves, they conquered the lands of indigenous peoples of those areas, and drew borders dividing their colonies chiefly in order to avoid conflict with other powers. The earliest such division to be formally made was the Treaty of Alcáçovez in 1479, between Castile (modern Spain) and Portugal, which declared that Castile could not establish new colonies south of the Canary Islands. Hundreds of other such divisions would be made in the ensuing centuries, including what is now perhaps the most famous colonial border in 1818. The London Convention determined that the border between the United States and Canada (then a British colony) should be extended along the 49th parallel. This created by far the longest straight border in the world.\n\nBut not all such colonial treaties produced straight lines. Indeed, geography continued to be used as a reference for colonial borders, and these borders typically remained either unchanged or minimally changed following the independence of those colonies. While Chad and Libya are divided by two perfectly straight lines cutting through the Sahara Desert, the DR Congo is divided from Tanzania by the massive Lake Tanganyika. This trend of \"some natural and some artificial\" borders holds true on all continents settled by Europeans. The America-Mexico border is determined by both the Colorado River and Rio Grande River, as well as five perfectly straight lines. There is even one case in Africa (at least that I’m aware of) of pre-colonial borders surviving to the present day. Rwanda has notably ‘jagged’ borders descended directly from a centuries old Kingdom there. Rwanda was subjugated by the German Empire following the Berlin Conference (explained by /u/souHad) (**EDIT:** souHad's comment has been removed. Berlin was a very broad conference focused on formalizing African colonial borders between the 7 powers colonizing it, which occured in 1884), and later by Belgium following the First World War. In 1962, Rwanda regained its independence as a republic and kept the same borders as the old Kingdom.\n\nThere are straight treaty-determined borders in Europe too, but they are not as common as on other continents. The most obvious of these is the Russia-Poland border, a patchwork of a few dozen linear borders,that mostly form clean north-south divide. This was established by treaty following the defeat of the Nazis at the end of World War Two in Europe. A similar example exists between in a small section of the Ukraine-Romania border just north of the Suceava River, and most of the Norway-Sweden border.", "One of the more vexing problems that cartographers faced when desiring to convey abstract geographic data on a flat piece of paper is that ... um guess what, the earth is not anywhere flat, which means that there are no \"straight lines\" possible on the earth's surface. Mapmakers gradually accepted that the earth is spherical, then they refined their understanding to be an oblate spheroid, and then with more precise measuring devices have determined that it is ever-so-slightly pear-shaped, with certain small irregularities.\nEven to define what constitutes the proper \"surface\" or zero-level, at any given point, involves some contention due to local gravitational anomalies.\nTreating this subject comprehensively is far beyond this subreddit, the entire history and technological development is fascinating but requires volumes.\nEven today there are hundreds of people in full time career positions, \"geodicists\", whose entire job consists of further refining our understanding of this problem.\n\n\nJust to throw in one anecdote ...\nthe border between Ethiopia and Eritrea was drawn on a flat map in an office in London after the first world war, as a \"straight line\". That map had been created using a \"mercator projection\" which is one method of schematically warping \"what is on the ground\" to a flat piece of paper. Later on others tried to draw the same \"straight line\" on a map drawn according to the transverse mercator schema. On the actual surface of the earth, there is a sliver of land between those two \"straight lines\" as much as 2 km wide. Most of that land is extremely arid, supporting no vegetation at all, devoid of springs, oasis, or other water. Near the end of the 1900's, the two nations got into an argument about which curved line was the correct one. They fought a war in which over 120,000 men died, and did not resolve the issue, there are still military fortifications and outposts ready to resume hostilities at a moment's notice...." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2yaq6n/why_are_some_of_the_borders_in_africa_so_bizarre/" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cxveqj1", "cxvjf3j", "cxvqnlp" ], "score": [ 8, 32, 6 ], "text": [ "I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but the naval battles during Guadalcanal were very interesting in regards to air power. For the total story, James Hornfischer's *Neptune's Inferno* covers the campaign.\n\nThe basic story is this. The Americans controlled the entire island and surrounding sea during daylight. The Japanese controlled the area at night. There were a number of factors that led to this. First, the absence of aircraft carriers in the warzone. The Japanese had just lost 4 fleet carriers and could only muster between 1 and 2 carriers at any given time. The Americans were down to a single carrier (the Hornet) in the fall. This made the only land base, at Henderson Field, even more proportionally dominant. The Japanese were afraid to lose their carriers to land-based air power, and the Americans figured they could *not* lose a carrier by using Henderson Field.\n\nSecond was the differential abilities of the US and Japanese and night fighting. The Japanese had much more night fighting training and their discipline made coordinating nighttime operations more smooth. They dominated the night battles but were unable to make the breakthru they needed to gain naval superiority. They could not resupply or bombard the Americans to the level needed for victory. As the Americans learned how to use ship-based radar, the nighttime battles turned in their favor. In addition, the ability of the Americans to conduct naval operations unimpeded during the day was a major factor in them wearing down the Japanese Army and Navy.\n\n", "Personally, I don't know if air superiority was ever dismissible in any fight. However, it was far from the dominant factor in all campaigns. Of course WWII showed that airpower could smash apart enemy supply lines. It could lend a massive hand of help to an armored spearhead or defensive force. It was also useful in reconnaissance and factory bombing. But there were many limitations on what a Messerschmidt, Zero, Spitfire, IL-2 or Mustang could do. \n\nSo the absence of omission of air superiority is probably not quite what you're looking for, but it was interesting to note that WWII is probably one of the last global wars to be fought in which air power would be entirely absent from some battles. Planes were still relatively fragile back in that era, and they could not operate well in cold or rain conditions. \n\nSo large sections of the Battle of Moscow, Stalingrad, the Ardennes Bulge and the Finnish wars were fought without air power. Authors like Stahl, Glantz and Beevor mention the major occasions when airpower could not be used under -0 temperatures. The early Soviet counteroffensives depended on using weather to negate the Germans' airpower, and put the battle back into the constraints of artillery, tank and infantry warfare. Moreover, much of their success in operations like Bagration and Romania depended on the Soviets masking their troop movements and preventing Luftwaffe responses. Would airpower be considered dominant then, if it is foiled from its most useful skill: reconnaissance, by thorough strategic planning?\n\nAlmost all urban fighting from Monte Cassino to Stalingrad to Berlin could not be dominated by air power either. Dive bombing was too comparatively weak, heavy bombing too crude and inaccurate to be of much use in urban warfare. Bombs could ruin a city, but turn it into a dangerous warren of rubble. Places like Pavlov's House in Stalingrad or the Reichstag in Berlin, simple buildings which would be busted into dust by any drone nowadays, resisted battalions for weeks on end. \n\nIt's also important to remember that Europe was relatively clear and easy to use planes within, and that America's war on the Pacific islands was in many senses uniquely suitable for air power dominance. In a different location, such as a forested jungle, the air power that was available in the 1940s was incredibly limited. As 'Touched With Fire' mentioned, the earliest phase of the war in the Pacific was fought in a limited but deeply forested region of Guadalcanal and New Guinea. The Japanese lost because seaborne logistics were cut apart by planes and u-boats, but the battles themselves tactically went to whichever side threw the most men in with the best weaponry. In a different location less dependent on the sea like Burma or Vietnam, air power was not of as much use, as the early Japanese advances showed. \n\nTo conclude, WWII was one of the last total wars where air power was severely constrained by major factors of terrain, weather and accuracy. Because of this, there were many important campaigns where aircraft were used minimally. ", "The Battle of Hürtgen Forest is a prime example. I alluded to this in a previous answer\n\n_URL_1_\n\n The vast superiority in air support that the United States had was effectively neutralized by the rugged terrain and very poor weather. The Germans made no use of air support in the battle. The fall of 1944 was notoriously wet and gloomy, with most days in October and November being quite cold and rainy, with solid overcast; the first snow fell even before Thanksgiving. In this area along the German-Belgian border, the terrain is mostly hilly with a few flat areas, cut by steep valleys through which flow creeks or rivers. The banks of the valleys and some open areas beside them are heavily forested. The towns and villages in this area are mostly located on the bald tops of these hills, and mostly produce root crops like carrots or potatoes. German pillboxes were scattered throughout the forest, some of them located next to villages. Prepared ones were mostly made of concrete, although some were constructed of large logs. \n\nThe trees in the forest were planted closely together in neat rows, almost like soldiers on parade. The lower limbs of the trees interlocked at a low height, so that soldiers often had to stoop in order to walk. Effective control of units larger than platoon size was impossible. Fighter-bombers found it very hard to hit targets in the thick forest. Combined with the poor weather, air support was ineffective. P-47s and P-38s often had to orbit above the overcast until holes in the clouds opened up for them to dive through.\n\nJust because the American advantage in air support was greatly curtailed doesn't mean it wasn't there at all. The P-47s of the 365th Fighter Group were able to fly 45 missions in October; the 404th Fighter Group was able to fly 20 out of 30 days in November. The 370th Fighter Group earned a Distinguished Unit Citation after napalming the town of Bergstein in bad weather and under heavy antiaircraft fire on December 2nd.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n > \"The next day the Group ran an uneventful sweep over the Ninth Army front in the morning. The weather was poor, with a solid low overcast at 5,000 feet, and high cirrus around 20,000, but not enough clouds at the right altitudes to encourage the Luftwaffe.\"\n\n & nbsp;\n\n > \"November 9th the 506th and 507th worked over a bridge across the Roer at Linnich, funnel for two main highways. The 508th off last, ran into low ceilings, rain, sleet and snow, but managed to unload its bombs on a marshalling yard at Bergheim, half way between Julich and Cologne.\"\n\n & nbsp;\n\n > \"As the Group returned to base, however, a hazard more dangerous than flak arose. The clouds had settled-down to 800 feet over A-92, and landing aircraft were peeling off, disappearing into the \"soup\" and trusting to luck there wouldn't be another plane in the way when they broke out under the 800-foot layer. There were wild, crazy landing patterns, elements cutting in front of aircraft on the final approach, 48th Group planes mixed up with the 404th squadrons coming in scattered.\"\n\n & nbsp;\n\nSources:\n\n*The Guns at Last Light*, by Rick Atkinson\n\n*Hell Hawks!: The Untold Story of the American Fliers Who Savaged Hitler's Wehrmacht*, by Robert F. Dorr\n\n365th Fighter Group\n\n_URL_2_\n\n370th Fighter Group\n\n_URL_3_\n\n404th Fighter Group History\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [], [], [ "http://www.winkton.net/Leap%20Off/LeapOffPdf3.pdf", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3my48t/we_often_hear_about_the_great_battles_the_allies/", "http://www.368thfightergroup.com/368-timeline-w.html", "http://www.armyaircorps.us/370th_Fighter_Group.cfm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d3rlnzu", "d3s31ig" ], "score": [ 5, 2 ], "text": [ "Just a clarification: going to space per se isn't what makes you weightless. Gravity affects objects on the ISS (about 400 km above Earth's surface) almost as much as it would on Earth. The key difference is being in orbit, which is equivalent to free fall. Your feet don't exert a pressure on the floor (and vice-versa) when both you and the floor are in a free fall.\n\nThings are different when you go deeper into space, far away from any planet or star, where the actual strength of gravity drops off inversely proportional to distance squared.", "Jules Verne's \"From the Earth to the Moon\" includes a scene where the characters experience weightlessness, but only at the point where the earth and the moon's gravity cancel each other out. This is a step in the correct direction but obviously not a full understanding of what it would be like in space. \n\nI'm not exactly sure when the tipping point came, but by the 1920s weightlessness was pretty well understood. Herman Noordung's 1929 book *The Problems of Space Travel - The Rocket Motor* discusses the physiological and practical effects of weightlessness in pretty minute detail, even getting into topics like writing in space. Fritz Lang's \"Frau im Mond\" (which had Hans Oberth as a technical consultant) featured a spaceship with foot straps on the floor so that the characters could \"walk\" in zero gravity, so it was even a part of popular culture at this point. \n\nIt was still an open question at that point if a human could survive more than a few seconds of weightlessness, and by the early 1950s both the US and USSR were conducting sub orbital rocket flights with animals in order to gain practical experience in this area. The question of if a mammal could survive more than a few minutes of weightlessness was settled in 1957 when the Soviets put Laika into orbit, however there was still some nervousness about what disorienting effects it would have on humans. When they sent Gagarin up the controls for the ship had a plastic cover on them that could only be removed by entering a special code.\n\nSo, yeah, by 1951 it was pretty well established that spaceflight would involve weightlessness. However, it wasn't well understood if humans could survive in such an environment. One idea that was proposed (and is still possible though it's never actually been done) would be to have a section of the ship that would rotate in order to provide artificial gravity for the crew. A well informed author might have figured that such a system would have been a necessary component of any future spacecraft. \n\nHope this was helpful. Some good books to read on the subject would be Mary Roach's *Packing For Mars*, and Noordung's *The Problems of Space Travel* which is actually [available for free online from NASA](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [], [ "http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4026.pdf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dv3wi0c", "dv3z6sn" ], "score": [ 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Followup: Why would they have serial numbers in them? Were such items usually tracked?", "Hello there! As your question is related to looking for identification / information regarding military personnel, the [AskHistorians Guide to Military Identification](_URL_0_) may be of use to you. It provides a number of different resources, including how to request service records from a number of national agencies around the world, as well as graphical aids to assist in deciphering rank, unit, and other forms of badges or insignia. While the users here may still be able to lend you more assistance, hopefully this will provide a good place to start!" ] }

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[ "https://imgur.com/a/EqCFs" ]

[ [], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/militaryrecords" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d4jj7oc", "d4jjz2n" ], "score": [ 337, 40 ], "text": [ "Martial did write one epigram on the subject (VI.57):\n \nMentiris fictos unguento, Phoebe, capillos \nEt tegitur pictis sordida calva comis. \nTonsorem capiti non est adhibere necesse: \nRadere te melius spongia, Phoebe, potest.\n\n**translation** \nYou manufacture, with the aid of unguents, a false head of hair, \nand your bald and dirty skull is covered with dyed locks. \nThere is no need to have a hairdresser for your head. \nA sponge, Phoebus, would do the business better.\n\nThis is, as far as I know, the only explicit description of bald men painting on hair. Hair dye was used frequently by balding men to give hair a fuller appearance. \n\nAs Martial notes, it's an oily dye, and it clings to skin as much as to hair. So given that this is the only reference to painting on hair, and that hair dye is well attested, it seems more likely that he's talking about an old man with wispy hair, who tries to make it appear fuller with the addition of dye. But he is generous with the dye, thinking it will fill in the gaps for him as well. Sort of the equivalent of an extreme combover.\n\nBut given the silence on the subject, it seems unlikely that this should be understood as a completely bald man painting a hairdo on his bald head. Just a balding guy getting a bit aggressive with the hair dye. That being said, the language is explicit that he is in fact painting hairs on his head.\n\nThere's plenty out there on Roman hairstyles, and even the social history of baldness. The usual cover-ups, combovers, and wigs. But if painting a full head of hair on a bald head were a fashion, there would almost certainly be more than this single epigram (absence of evidence, I know. But given the frequency with which authors liked to talk about style, the absence is deafening). It's more likely a slight exaggeration about the overuse of dye to stain the scalp as well as hair.", "Edit: Someone beat me to it! My post doesn't add much, but here you go:\n\nThis is surely the Martial epigram you're referencing (Book 6, epigram 57):\n\n > Mentiris fictos unguento, Phoebe, capillos\n\n > et tegitur pictis sordida calua comis.\n\n > Tonsorem capiti non est adhibere necesse:\n\n > radere te melius spongea, Phoebe, potest.\n\nTranslation:\n\n > You make fake hair with gel, Pheobus—\n\n > Your filthy scalp is covered with drawn-in hair.\n\n > You don’t need to summon a barber for that head:\n\n > A sponge can give you a better shave, Phoebus.\n\nThe operative word concerning the \"drawn-in hair\" is *pictis*, which, according to Lewis and Short's entry is the same sort of word you would use if you were painting with a brush or pencil. (Interestingly some authors used it to mean \"tattooed\" but only in reference to non-Roman customs, so I doubt that's what Phoebus is doing here. Besides, if it comes off with a sponge it is hardly tattooed.)\n\nHonestly, I can't find a single source for this other than the Martial epigram, and in my experience you need to take Martial with a grain of salt just because he's satire. It could be possible that some Romans painted hair on their heads, but it's equally possible that he's just making fun of some guy whose thin, short, greasy hair looks like it *could* be painted on. It's like a future historian seeing someone compare Donald Trump's hair to a fox or something, and saying that 21st-century Americans used animal pelts as wigs. \n\nSo Martial is inconclusive in my opinion, but it's certainly possible! In any case the practice wasn't widespread." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ck1075f" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "Frisians! I will answer these in order, but first off, some basic background.\n\nThe Frisians were a Germanic barbarian group, probably originally from Scandinavia or the Baltic regions who migrated into the area that came to be known as Frisia (and which corresponds roughly with the modern Netherlands) during the end of the Roman Empire. They are quite closely related to the Saxons both the \"Old Saxons\" (i.e. the Saxons who remained in Germany) and to the Saxons who migrated to Britain. During the late antique period and the Early Middle Ages (say roughly 5th to 7th century) they were active as pirates, but also as traders which makes sense given that there lands were coastal and in fact were far more suited to maritime activity than to agriculture. \n\nBy the 8th century the Frisians had begun to coalesce into what can be regarded as a \"kingdom,\" and had come into active contact and contention with the Merovingians and the Pippinid mayors (the pre-Carolingians).\n\nUnder Charles Martel, Frisia was actually conquered by the Franks and integrated over time into Francia. By Louis the Pious time (814-840) Frisia was fully integrated into the Carolingian empire. Frisians fought in the Carolingian armies, served as traders throughout the empire and beyond, intermarried with other important families etc.\n\nIn fact, they became known as the most important traders in the early Middle Ages, in large part because Dorestad, the most important emporia (market town) in the period was in Frisia. In many sources the word Frisian became synonymous for \"merchant.\" \n\nOK, with all that said, onwards to your questions.\n\n\n1. So there is some confusion here in terms of time and activity. The \"Viking Age\" typically dates to c.800 to c.1050. By 800 Frisians were *not* particularly known for their piratical activities. Rather, as I stated above, they were known for their trading activities. Frisians were incredibly active throughout the North Sea. They settled along the coasts well into Scandinavia, note, for instance, the so-called Frisian Archipelago along the western coast of Denmark. They also created colonies as far as Sweden, having an active presence at all of the major Scandinavia trade ports (and some argue that they were instrumental in their emergence). They carried trade goods such as pottery, wine, glass to Scandinavia and brought home furs, amber and other goods. So they were *very* active, but not as pirates (though of course we can't rule out some piratical activities . . .)\n\n2. See question one. In fact, during the Viking Age it is, unsurprisingly, the Vikings who are the major pirates wrecking havoc across the North Sea. The Frisans had been famous for their piratical behavior long before during the chaotic period of the migrations and early Barbarian kingdoms but having been integrated into a stable \"state\" this activity had dwindled.\n\n3. This is *very* hard to answer since the people in question were all pre-literate at this point so we have no records. That being said, they were probably seen as familiar and perhaps even as \"related.\" We know that Frisian elites held land across the Rhine in Saxony, even before the \"conquest\" by Charlemagne, and vice-versa. The languages must have been largely intelligable both in Saxony and in Scandinavia. The fact that Frisians served as the major \"go-betweens\" between Scandinavia and the Continent also indicates familiarity and \"closeness.\" Of course, the fact that the Frisians were the major handlers of wealth also made them attractive targets for Viking activity. It is no wonder that the first major Viking attacks on the Frankish empire were focused on the Frisian trading port of Dorestad.\n\n4. Not really, although they certainly were not the easiest to Christianize. We have quite a bit of literature on the on-going attempts to convert Frisians and their resistance prior to the conquest by Charles Martel, but by the mid 8th century they had been fully converted (as much as anyone was in this period). Dorestad had several churches and Utrecht, up the Rhine river was the seat of a major bishop and monastery. They did, however, retain a unique identity. For one thing they had their own law code, first set down by Charlemagne. They also were clearly regarded as a separate \"regnum\" (kingdom) within the empire and as a separate people, just as the Saxons and Gascons might be. Frisian \"identity\" aided in the control of trade routes, as small Frisian communities settled throughout the empire (and in Scandinavia and England as well).\n\n5. I am not quite sure what you mean here, but I think this may just be a confusion in terms. The Viking Age is a distinct chronological period, (as noted above). In terms of its end, this is largely due to major political changes across Europe, especially in Scandinavia, but certainly in Frisia as well. And by the 11th century the term \"Frisia\" had largely fallen out of use anyhow as the regnum \"devolved\" into powerful counties.\n\n6. The Frisians were a Germanic people so there were certainly some similarities, but they were also quite different. For one thing they were a part of the most powerful political entity of the period, were far richer and more political unified and stable. That being said, a sword is a sword, they both used them. Scandinavian warfare wasn't actually as \"distinct\" as is often thought, they used swords, armor, etc. The advantage they had was typically surprise. Archaeologically, they are fairly distinct in style and material, however. We have no difficulty telling whether a sword found in a Frisian river is Frankish/Frisian or Scandinavian.\n\n7. I think I've answered this before but yes, Frisian and Old Norse (and Old Saxon and frankly Old Franconian as well) were probably mutually intelligible. Viking chieftains actually settled in Frisia as rulers for periods of time throughout the 9th and 10th centuries, and as stated above Frisian traders were quite active in Scandinavia. We even have references to traders being used as diplomatic go-betweens for Danish and Frankish kings.\n\n8. He was Danish, or at least Scandinavian. The confusion arises from the fact that by the time of the Great Army Vikings had been quite active in Frisia and had even (as I noted above) settled in certain areas and at times been granted land by Frankish kings in an attempt to control their predations. The Great Army thus probably had groups of Scandinavians who had previously been active in Frisia, but it was not a \"Frisian\" force.\n\n9. Yes, and yes. But in the period in question they were trade ships not \"viking ships\" They were not clinker built (i.e. they were not long ships) but more often resemble barges. But again, Frisians were masters of the river ways and seas. \n\n10. We have no way of knowing numbers, but its hard to believe that some Saxons didn't flee west. That being said, Saxony remained a distinct regnum and the Saxons remained a distinct people with their own laws and leaders. The Frisians and Saxons were neighbors and in many ways very similar (especially those Saxons along the coasts) but they didn't \"merge.\" Although following the 804 deportation of the Nordliudi Saxons from beyond the Elbe it could be that Charlemagne settled some of these peoples in Frisia.\n\nSo there we go! I hope these answers are helpful. Again just to re-iterate. Frisians began as a germanic, piratical people settled along the coasts of the modern Netherlands, slowly formed into a kingdom (or perhaps even kingdoms) which was then absorbed (forcefully) into the Frankish Empire. They were widely known for teir maritime activities, first as pirates but by the end of the 8th century primarily as traders. They had frequent contact with Scandinavia and Frisia was subsequently frequently attacked by and even settled by Scandinavian pirates and chieftains.\n\nSources:\n\n* The most important work on the Frisians is Stéphane Lebecq's *Marchands et navigateurs frisons du haut moyen âge* though you'd have to know French to read it.\n\n* Ian Wood's *The Merovingian North Sea* and *The Merovingian Kingdoms* both have info on early Frisia, as do many of his articles.\n\n* H.A. Heidinga's *Frisia in the First Mellennium* is a nice quick intro.\n\n* In terms of primary sources, check out the Royal Frankish Annals, the Life of St. Willibrord, the Life of St Boniface, The Life of St Willifrid, the Annals of St Bertin. All of these are in translation.\n\nHappy Frisianing! " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "eju8r3y" ], "score": [ 26 ], "text": [ "The answer to this question is the Amenities Ship, a concept developed by the Royal Navy in the 1930s. The amenities ship had aboard it everything needed for a good period of rest and relaxation. They could be moved to wherever the fleet was based, whichever empty atoll or deserted island anchorage, and provide the sailors with a place to relax. With construction of warships constrained by the various naval treaties, the major navies of the world turned to amenities ships as a way to display their power and wealth.\n\nAs mentioned above, the Royal Navy was the first to develop the concept. They had gained significant experience of operating from remote, empty harbours during WWI, with the Grand Fleet based at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. While Scapa was an excellent anchorage, and well supplied with munitions, fuel and other naval supplies, there was little to do there to relax. Nearly every naval memoir from the war describes the experience of Scapa Flow as being utterly tedious. It's no surprise that this experience influenced Captain Arnold A.F.M Keane, who had spent three years at Scapa, to write a paper describing the amenities ship concept in 1932. While little notice was taken of the paper at first, the RN soon seized on it. Plans were put in place for the construction of three amenities ships, built on the hulls of liners cancelled during the Great Depression. One would be based in the Far East, one in the Mediterranean, and one in Scapa Flow. The two for foreign service, *Lycaon* and *Tantalus*, were supplied with everything needed to support a fleet's worth of bored sailors. They had a cinema, kept well-stocked with all the latest movies, a large NAAFI canteen capable of dispensing sixty thousand gallons of tea and twelve tons of buttered crumpets in a day, and their own breweries, producing hundreds of bottles a day. The third ship, *Midas*, meanwhile, was much more luxurious, as she was built for the officers of Home Fleet; interwar improvements at Scapa had greatly improved the recreation facilities there, but they were still viewed as far too spartan for RN officers. *Midas* was lavishly decorated, had a theatre, rather than a cinema, a high-quality restaurant (during WWII, staffed with chefs taken from the Free French Forces), and a gin distillery. However, she would lose much of her finery during the war, as it was considered too easy a target for German bombers. The three ships proved their worth during the war, though *Tantalus* was sunk during the Japanese Indian Ocean raid in 1942. As the RN pushed back into the Pacific in 1944-5, two more ships were converted to a similar design, *Agamemnon* and *Menesthus*, and they served with distinction during with the British Pacific Fleet.\n\nThe IJN, with it's traditional close ties to the Royal Navy, was another early adopter of the amenities ship. With a strong desire to prove their strength compared to the Western navies, and with their abilities to do so limited strongly by the Washington Naval Treaty, they found the amenities ship a great avenue to do so. They began converting the liner *Kobayashi Maru* in 1937, to support the fleet in its anchorages at Truk and Babeldoab. She had the almost obligatory cinema, a pachinko arcade, as well as her own sushi canteen. This was fed by an early variant of the modern sushi conveyor belt. It was reasonably successful, though jams were common, preventing it making the leap to civilian use until after WWII. *Kobayashi Maru* was inspected by a number of RN officers, who were impressed by her comfort and design, though they preferred the RN's designs. She served mainly at Truk during the war, but was sunk nearly 75 years ago by the American submarine *Aprilfish*. The IJN did not complete another amenities ship, but work was well underway on a second in 1945. This was built on the unfinished hull of the fourth *Yamato*-class battleship, *Echizen*. While her half-sister *Shinano* was intended to maintain the air wings of the IJN's carriers, *Echizen* was intended to support their crews. Little information is present on her intended equipment, but it is believed she would have had been equipped much like *Kobayashi Maru*, as well as a swimming bath based on a traditional onsen.\n\nThe USN preferred to spend its money on more traditional auxiliaries in the 1930s, but also completed a single amenities ship in the period, the USS *Hollywood*, completed in 1938. Unlike the RN and IJN, the USN was 'dry', so *Hollywood* did not serve alcohol. Instead, she was given a soda fountain, often proclaimed to have the 'longest counter in the world'. She had vast tanks for carrying soda syrups, with capacity of at least 10,000 gallons in four different flavours, as well as a carbonation plant. Unfortunately, she had little chance to serve any sailors in anger, being sunk by *U-269* off the North Carolina coast as she was travelling to join the Pacific Fleet in January 1942. Her sinking was somewhat surreal as the torpedo hit opened her syrup tanks, leading to what one survivor described as \"the sweetest shipwreck I ever tasted\". Still, pre-war exercises with her had shown the USN the value of the concept. Tens of Liberty Ships were converted to amenities ships to support the USN advances across the Pacific. The fleet base at Noumea, supporting the invasion of Guadalcanal in 1942, had \"one ice-cream ship, one soda ship, two cinema ships and one restaurant ship\", in addition to the more warlike oilers and ammunition ships. Three years later, and the force providing recreation for the fleet for the invasion of Okinawa had grown tenfold. Pride of place amongst these was taken by the two *Wrigley Field* class ships, *Wrigley Field* and *Lambeau Field*. Converted from unwanted *Independence*-class carriers, they were essentially giant floating sports centres. The flight decks were covered in turf, and kitted out for baseball (*Wrigley Field*) and American football (*Lambeau Field*), while the hangar decks were converted to basketball courts, or squash and tennis courts. Their aviation petrol tanks were knocked through, and converted to a swimming pool. They had sufficient capacity to allow for the entire crew of a *Baltimore*-class cruiser to be exercising at any one time. They were highly popular, though not so much with the USN's allies, as Lieutenant J. Smith of the British destroyer HMS *Nonsuch* described in his diary:\n\n > 20th March 1945: *Nonsuch* met the American Fleet Train for replenishment and rearmament. I took a party of men aboard one of the big American sports vessels we've heard so much about in the newsreels. High Command had informed us that we were being provided with a ship outfitted for football, so the men were very much dismayed to find that the goalposts and pitch markings were for the inferior American game, rather than for what they call 'soccer'. Still, the British tar can find enjoyment anywhere, and a game was soon going, using caps 'borrowed' from our American hosts for goalposts.\n\nAnother sports vessel, albeit one that never got off the drawing board, was a Canadian project based on Project Habbakuk, the plan to construct a giant aircraft carrier out of 'pykrete', an ice/sawdust mixture. The RCN soon realised that this would also make a perfect playing surface for ice hockey. A plan soon formed for a floating ice island, with no less than twenty hockey rinks, to be placed in the North Atlantic to support convoy escorts. Ships could dock, refuel, send their crews aboard to rest and relax, before heading back out to join the battle. Churchill was much in favour, apparently because aboard it would be the only place he'd be able to get a properly cold martini, but it was soon superseded by developments in the Atlantic. \n\nThe European navies, with limited need to operate from distant harbours, never really got into the amenities ship game, but there were two projects worth mentioning. The first was the French wine tanker *Bourgogne*. Designed to support a fleet in the tropical waters of French Indochina, she was equipped with an innovative evaporative cooling system capable of keeping her supply of 500,000 litres of wine at a perfect temperature, no matter how hot it got outside. While she was completed, she never served, and was scuttled at Toulon along with the rest of the Vichy Fleet. The other is the German *Rücksichtslos* latrine ship. Following the Fall of France, the Kriegsmarine began establishing submarine bases on the western coast of France, as well as in the Norwegian fjords. It was soon discovered that while these bases had plenty of storage for food, fuel and torpedoes, the toilet facilities were lacking. To solve this problem, the Kriegsmarine began constructing a flotilla of latrine ships, capable of providing the U-boat fleet with toilets wherever they were based. *Rücksichtslos* was the only ship completed before the steel for the fleet was diverted to constructing tanks and V-2 rockets. She had a quite astonishing range of facilities, from latrine troughs capable of seating 40-50 enlisted men to individual suites with private showers, manicurists and massage tables for U-boat captains. She survived the war, and was surrendered to the Allies in 1945.\n\nSources:\n\n*Amenities Ships of WWII*, Angus Konstam, Osprey, 2018\n\n*Rum, Sodomy and the Lash: Recreation in the Royal Navy 1914-45*, George Field, Cassell, 2013\n\n*Miscellaneous Vessels of the Kriegsmarine, Volume 3: Oilers, Repair Ships and Latrine Ships*, William Garzke, USNI, 1985\n\n*Floating Pleasure Palaces: Amenities Ships of WWII*, Norman Friedman, USNI, 1978\n\n*Gravity's Rainbow*, Thomas Pynchon, Viking, 1973\n\n**THIS IS AN [APRIL FOOL'S POST](_URL_0_)**" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b7te79/there_is_no_need_to_panic_you_arent_crazy/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cpkffbz" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "The Flood story in Mesopotamia actually has several iterations, and it's hard to say which is the earliest. These are known as the Eridu Genesis, the Atrahasis Epic, and the Utnapishtim section of the various Gilgamesh Epics. \n\nSome of the oldest mentions of the deluge are in the [Sumerian King Lists](_URL_2_), which are Old Babylonian texts from the early 2nd millennium documenting earlier Sumerian mythologizing of political succession. \nSeveral of these texts refer to one Ziusudra as the last king before \"the flood swept over\" and Kingship was disrupted. \nThis corresponds with one of the three literary \"flood stories\": [the Eridu Genesis](_URL_1_). This version is known from three tablets: two in Sumerian from ~1600 BCE and one bilingual copy found in the much later library of Ashurbanipul, 7th century BCE. Note that these are just the dates of the tablets, and that the story itself (as in the case other two versions of the flood story as well) is probably much older, going back to the Sumerian period. \nThe Eridu Genesis follows a basic template in common with the other Mesopotamian flood accounts; Mankind is created and organized into cities, their raucous noisiness disrupts the sleep of Enlil, god of the wind, who decides to destroy them. Enki, the god of fresh water and a proponent of humanity, warns the Priest-King Ziusudra of the impending cataclysm and instructs him to build a boat, preserve animals, and so on. \n\n [The Atrahasis Epic](_URL_3_) is an Akkadian version, nearly identical to and contemporaneous with the Ziusudra story, with tablets dating to the reign of Hammurabi's grandson Ammi-Saduqa in the late 1600s. Both Atrahasis and Ziusudra are inheritors of the king or eponymous city of Shuruppak. \nThe final and most famous account is found in The Epic of Gilgamesh, the dating of which is all over the freaking place (seriously, there are so many fragments and alternate versions found over such broad periods of time that I'm having a hard time sorting it out) but with one definitive Akkadian version from the 7th century. \nIn this telling, which seems to be adapted from Atrahasis with some minor changes, the story is framed within Gilgamesh's quest for immortality, in which he meets and interviews Utnapishtim, the long-lived survivor of the deluge (his name actual means \"he who found longevity\").\nLong life spans are characteristic of the tale - Ziudrusa in the King Lists was reported to have reigned for 36,000 years or some such, a remarkable trait shared by his pre-deluvian predecessors. This points to one of the important literary functions of the flood myth: the demarcation of the mythic past from the historic era. \n\nThorkild Jacobsen suggests that the recurrent motif in some inscriptions of \"*after the flood swept the land*\" represents the cultural and political disruption of Sumerian society by the invasion of the nomadic Gutians and the subsequent collapse of the resurgent Third Dynasty of Ur at the hands of the Elamites. \nI'm not sure if that's a consensus interpretation, but it does seem consistent with other allegorical references in texts like *The Lamentation of Ur*, where the destruction wrought by invaders is described as \"the storm of Enlil\". \n\nAhem! I got so caught up in the textual mire that I almost forgot to address your question. \nThere *is* archaeological evidence of localized flooding throughout the Jemdet-Nasr and Ubaid periods in Mesopotamia -especially at Shuruppak - which could constitute the source of a cultural \"flood memory\" (see [this wikipedia page](_URL_0_)), amongst many other theories of widespread pre-historical flooding, but it's my understanding that there are significant difficulties with a coherent, synthesized account of evidence for deluvian historicity. \nIn my opinion, it's more likely that flood myths are so prevalent across human cultures simply because *flooding* is such a universal experience. Millions of people have died in floods in just the last hundred years, and in the ancient past humanity was even more closely tied to rivers and coasts where they were at the constant mercy of nature's watery whims. \n\nA lot of people try to claim parallels between disparate flood traditions across the globe, but in my opinion that view just doesn't hold water. I'm only really familiar with Mesopotamian, Chinese, and Australian flood stories, but in those cases the themes, details and methods are all vastly different. \nOf course, it IS quite likely that the biblical flood is derived from the other near eastern myths. Noah and Utnapashtim are practically interchangeable. " ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth", "http://www.jstor.org/stable/3266116", "http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/12833/1/CUSAS-17-11.pdf", "http://www.ancient.eu/article/227/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dpl4mwz" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "I asked a similar question to this several hours ago and would also like to know the answer to this question." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cgv35m3" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Komei was pretty furious that Westerners, which he had known nothing about, had showed up and started causing trouble, while the shogun, who was supposed to keep control of the county, was letting them run amok. Growing anti-Western tensions led to the sonno joi (Expel Barbarians (foreigners), Revere the Emperor) movement. Because the Shogunate was perceived as not helping the situation, it also led to a growth of anti-Shogunate sentiment.\n\nThis culminated in the bombardments of Shimonoseki and Kagoshima, where members of Choshu domain and Satsuma domain started striking out against foreigners. When the West intervened, and the Shogunate did nothing to fight the foreigners, this led to resentment. In addition, the heads of Choshu and Satsuma, the Mori and Shimazu clans, respectively, were strongly opposed to the Tokugawa shogunate since its inception, having fought against Tokugawa Ieyasu in the 1600s and being defeated. Choshu was mad because it had backstabbed Satsuma and gotten penalized by losing its ancient lands, while Satsuma was obviously mad for losing to Tokugawa treachery. While both clans also hated each other, the Shogunate's reluctance to fight the foreigners caused them to seek an alternate source of leadership. \n\nThe straw that broke the camel's back was the Choshu punitive expeditions. Shogunate forces attempted to subjugate a rebellious Choshu, but many retainers committed half-heartedly, while Choshu had built a small but well-equipped and trained army (see the Kiheitai). This caused the Shogunate to lose much face, and gave the opportunity for Satsuma and Choshu to seize power.\n\nSources: de Bary, Sources of Japanese Tradition, Jansen, Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cfh0sdh" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I don't know about Albania, but in Europe in general, the nationality of the monarch mattered little for most of the modern era. When the proposition to make Finland a monarchy stood, [Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse](_URL_0_) (German) was supposed to become the new monarch. In general, you wanted a monarch with as noble past and standing as you could get, preferrably a prince. Princes are rare in smaller countries." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Frederick_Charles_of_Hesse" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e7e5uvw" ], "score": [ 89 ], "text": [ "Adding to the question, to be the same wouldn’t it be Irelandman, Franceman, and Scotlandman? Why wouldn’t we say Chineseman?" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cncsj0r" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Ancient Chinese history is quite cyclical, oscillating between unity and disunity. This has been quite a stable pattern ever since the First Qin Emperor unified China as an unitary state. Prior to this, China was ruled as a feudal state, similar to Europe during the Middle Ages. \n\nIn any case, notable periods in ancient Chinese history when China was politically fragmented - post-Qin Chu-Han Contention, post-Han Three Kingdoms, Wei-Jin Northern and Southern Dynasties and post-Tang Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.\n\nContemporary China also saw a short-lived period of fragmentation in the aftermath of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, with warlords carving up large swathes of land for themselves. Subsequently, Chiang Kai-shek succeeded with his Northern Expedition to nominally unify China under the Nanjing regime, even though many warlords still managed to preserve their local power bases. \n\nI think historically, tensions have always existed between the central government and local governments in China. Due to the large geographical size of China, until recent advancements in telecommunication and transportation technology, it was largely unfeasible for the central government to exert effective control over all of China, and this left a large amount of autonomy for local governments to administer their respective jurisdictions with minimal intervention by the central government. Therefore, it is really not that difficult, practically speaking, for local governments to disavow the authority of the central government over themselves, especially when the interests of the local governments are no longer compatible with the interests of the central government. Nonetheless, China has been able to remain united for much of its history because of a deep-rooted belief in the idea of \"unity under heaven\", which has consistently served as a source of political legitimacy for many Chinese emperors. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjxe5v7", "cjzsol1" ], "score": [ 3, 2 ], "text": [ "Each property owner had his/her own idea of what purpose the building would serve and a different budget to make it happen. They may appear to share walls, but they did not. They are built wall to wall, but they usually did not share a wall. And they were tightly packed like this because most people did not own horses, but instead walked to work, shopping, entertainment, and church. I discuss this is my book[Virginia City: Secrets of a Western Past](_URL_0_) (2012).", "Note that buildings were also often \"false fronted\"" ] }

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[ "http://www.treasurenet.com/images/americanwest/WEST174.JPG", "http://epmgsenior.media.lionheartdms.com/img/croppedphotos/2013/04/30/Dallas-1888-crop_1_t670x470.jpg?8e219340208df2a3d052e47766487e5429f45de8", "http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/pcimages/PC/012/web/PC012554.jpg", "http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/off/off1011/off101100273/8151958-panguitch-ut--may-7-morning-day-at-authentic-street-in-style-wild-west-on-7-may-2007-panguitch-ut-fi.jpg" ]

[ [ "http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Virginia-City,674932.aspx" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c9uruwq" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Timeframe?\n\nIf you're talking about the Colonial timeframe, then it would be the combination of a massive die-off of the Native population combined with excellent agricultural land and abundant natural resources. A giant mostly-empty landmass ripe for colonizing once the original inhabitants were gone (we're talking massive population decrease from disease here). In terms of the technology, it never needed to catch up. Anything they had across the pond was brought over here.\n\nIf you're talking about post-WWII, then you have one of the most industrialized and one of the largest countries by population (if you exclude India from the U.K.'s figures, third) that survived the war without an overall reduction in infrastructure and subject to almost none of the wholesale slaughter wrought on the mainland. We didn't have firebombings, road destruction, partisan activity, or a giant kill-off of a significant chunk of our young male population." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dufosbk" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "We have considerable number of journals of some of the important voyages of discovery! \n\nA lot of them were published by the English Hakluyt society founded for exactly the purpose of collecting, translating and publishing original documents relating to discoveries. You can browser their selection [here](_URL_2_). Because a lot of those works are older, some are now freely available online on sites like _URL_5_ and _URL_3_. \n\nI am not sure if you were inquiring about any journal, including official ones, or you specifically want journals from some of the other, secondary, crew memebrs. You will have to check each resource to see the exact source of the log.\n\nSo here are some examples:\n\n[Columbus first voyage log](_URL_0_) - technically not original log, but 16th century retelling of it by Las Casas, yet considered highly accurate. There are many translation and editions of it online, this is just one\n\n[Vasco Da Gama log](_URL_4_) - log of the journey made by one of the crew members\n\n[Magellan voyage](_URL_1_) - journal from a crew member Antonio Pigafetta\n\nThere are many other accounts in the Hakluyt series, some are directly diaries and journals, some a collection of accounts from letters and so." ] }

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[ [ "https://archive.org/details/journalofhisfirs00coluuoft", "https://archive.org/details/firstvoyageroun00pigagoog", "http://www.hakluyt.com/hak-soc-bibliography.htm", "archive.org", "http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46440?msg=welcome_stranger", "gutenberg.org" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "def6soy" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "There are numerous accounts of the Crusades written by people who participated in them. In fact, they form a major source for our information on what occurred on the various Crusades (from the Western perspective, anyway). They're generally written after the fact (although in some cases they may have been begun while the Crusade was still ongoing) with the power of hindsight, so they're not exactly like a journal would be, but that doesn't make them less interesting to read. \n\nFor the First Crusade, there are three and a half major eyewitness accounts (I'll get to that half bit). They are: \n\nThere are numerous accounts of the Crusades written by people who participated in them. In fact, they form a major source for our information on what occurred on the various Crusades (from the Western perspective, anyway). They're generally written after the fact (although in some cases they may have been begun while the Crusade was still ongoing) with the power of hindsight, so they're not exactly like a journal would be, but that doesn't make them less interesting to read. \n\nFor the First Crusade, there are three and a half major eyewitness accounts (I'll get to that half bit). They are: \n\nFulcher of Chartres: Possibly the most readable account of the First Crusade, and probably the most comprehensive single eyewitness account. Fulcher was a French priest in the service of Baldwin of Boulogne (the future Count of Edessa and later the King of Jerusalem), and his account primarily follows Baldwin’s adventures. This is important because at one stage Baldwin separated from the main Crusader army, and Fulcher followed him, giving the only eyewitness account of these events, but also missing several important moments in the main campaign due to his absence. He includes accounts of these events in his chronicle, but we know he did not see them himself. Fulcher’s account extends beyond the end of the First Crusade, and into the reign of Baldwin II, making this chronicle an invaluable source for descriptions of politics in the early days of the Crusader States as well. \n\nRaymond of Aguilers’ *Historia Francorum*: Raymond’s account is probably the least read of the major eyewitness accounts. Raymond was a priest, like Fulcher, and he was likely in the service of either Adhemar of le Puy (head Papal legate for the Crusade) or Raymond of Saint-Gilles (alternatively known as Raymond IV of Toulouse and Raymond I of Tripoli). In general, his account seems to side with Count Raymond’s political faction. Raymond of Aguilers’ account is most interesting for how he includes visions and accounts of miracles in his text. He gives an interesting perspective on the religious nature of the movement, and how that was represented in people’s actions and behaviour. He’s also the only chronicler to really concern himself with the poor commoners who also accompanied the Crusading army. \n\nPeter Tudebode / *Gesta Francorum*: These are our 1.5 chronicles. Peter Tudebode was also a member of Raymond St. Gilles’ faction, and wrote his version of events in his *Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere*. The *Gesta Francorum* contains almost the exact same narrative as Peter Tudebode’s account, but written from the perspective of an Italian Norman affiliated with Bohemond (eventually of Antioch). There have been extensive debates about who the original author was (right now Tudebode seems to be the favourite) and/or whether they both copied from a third lost account. This account provides some of the most specific details of military practice (particularly in the *Gesta* version), and was very influential as many European chroniclers used it as the basis for their histories of the First Crusade, see for example Guibert of Nogent or Robert the Monk’s accounts. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ca8n92l", "ca8p5tq", "ca8qwq0", "ca8ueas", "ca8ye5o", "ca92ymt" ], "score": [ 46, 8, 9, 2, 3, 5 ], "text": [ "Lets talk about the Romans a bit.\n\nFirst off they knew poor hygiene and lack of clean water was a major source of disease. Any emperor who desired the love of the people could start a couple building projects to sway the minds of the plebs. While some wealthy Romans had running water and private baths, most Romans depended on the public baths for their general cleanliness. Aqueducts were also a huge factor in the success of the Romans, in fact when a city was conquered by the Romans a major part of \"Romanizing\" the city was by building some aqueducts. Public fountains weren't not just nice to look at, they displayed the superior Roman engineering skill, which seperated them from the rest of the Meditareanean. This was especially important in desert cities.\n\nCheck out Roman Art by Ramage for more info about how architecture was used to \"Romanize\" a city and A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome: Daily Life, Mysteries, and Curiosities for more info on Roman bathing habits\n\nSecondly Roman doctors, who learned a lot from the Greeks, did lack a modern understanding of the human body. Though their nearly constant state of war, through trial and error, made then really good at mending broken bones. They had equipment to remove tiny splinters of bones that got stuck in the flesh and they also had tools to remove diseased bones.\n\nIt's easy and natural to assume that these people, who would make prophecies based on the livers of sacrificed animals followed no logic at all and that anyone who got a minor wound was doomed, but that is not the case! The Romans depended on their legions for protection and expansion, and legion warfare was based on the legion acting as a unit not a group of individuals each seeking glory. The Romans had an investment in each soldier and losing one man was a major loss as it could take years for another man to fill his shoes...or sandals.\n", "Placebo effect is extremely powerful. If a doctor gives your a pill you will usually feel better. Even if the patient is told it is a placebo, it still works. ([*Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome*]\n(_URL_0_))\n\n\nIn addition to the placebo effect, most people tend to go to the doctor when they are on the point of recoving anyway. The patient's own immune system deals with the problem and the fake pill or leech gets the credit. The Hawthorne Effect and other upward biases apply. ([*The Hawthorne Effect And The Overestimation of Treatment Effectiveness*, Psychology Today](_URL_1_)).\n\n > Pasteur's rabies vaccination, established around 1870, was the first medical treatment based on scientific evidence; and it has been estimated that 1911 is the first year when a patient was objectively likely to benefit from being treated by a doctor. \n > (L.J Henderson: \"somewhere between 1910 and 1912 in this country, a random patient with a random disease, consulting a doctor at random had, for the first time in the history of mankind, a better than a fifty-fifty chance of profiting from the encounter.\"\n\nJohn Bunker (2001) *Medicine Matters After All: Measuring the benefits of medical care, a healthy lifestyle, and a just social environment* (Nuffield Trust)\n\nBecause of these barriers to seeing anything resembling a clear and simple cause and effect in medical phenomena, it took a long time to develop the intellectual tools and financial resources to do proper medical studies. It is extremely difficult to figure out what works. Modern double-blind medical studies with 3 stages of human trials and large groups of statistically significant data are at the very top-end of the most complex and difficult scientific studies to accurately carry out. It typically takes around 10 years and billion dollars to successfully test a drug and get it to market.\n\nThis was way beyond anyone's comprehension or resources before the Victorian era, so it's no wonder that medical science didn't acheive very much before that. \n\nTo their credit, and to answer the original question, the Italians did figure out the quantine system in the 14th century as method for controlling plague outbreaks. It was quaranto journo in Italian, or 40 days which was the time ships from China or India visiting Florence were held before they were allowed ashore. \n\nThis was something like a lay understanding of contagion, held by commoners and merchants, doctors themselves didn't teach it. ", "Let's talk about early Victorian England.\n\nIn this era (1820s or so), there were three major healthcare professions. I'll address them in ascending order of prestige.\n\nYour bottom rung was the apothecaries (pharmacists). They developed from practitioners of herbal medicine, and in villages were often the only access to healthcare people had. Since there wasn't a lot of formal regulation, a lot of it was similar to your modern-day health-food store in terms of stuff with only anecdotal evidence in its favor, but they also could get you laudanum, so if you were inclined to become an opium-eater they could frequently help you out.\n\nAbove that were surgeons. Surgeons had a very good knowledge of anatomy and physiology, not infrequently obtained as a result of grave-robbing. Unfortunately their knowledge of surgical hygiene was nonexistent, as Joseph Lister had yet to come up with his theories, so your chance of getting an infection and dying was pretty high. Also, chloroform had yet to come into wide use, so unless you got yourself some laudanum from the apothecary, you weren't going to have much in the way of anesthesia. It was tough, bloody work, in many ways a sort of human butchery. Still, if you got gangrene and needed a limb chopped off, they were the guys to do it.\n\nThe most reputable medical professionals at the time were the physicians. These were classically educated English gentlemen who could read Latin and were really familiar with the medical theories of antiquity. Unfortunately, Galen turns out to not have been the final word on medical theory and practice, so a lot of their hard-won \"medical knowledge\" was antiquated hogwash. Their outcomes, as a result, tended not to be that great. In those days, you didn't go to a physician actually expecting to get better- it was more for what we would today term \"psychological\" reasons. They were really smart and seemed to know what they were talking about, and they weren't going to get you addicted to opiates or chop your arm of then leave you to die of infection.\n\nStill, there were opponents of this way of doing things. The respected medical journal \"The Lancet\" was actually founded to attack physicians. As people started to learn more about the modern practice of medicine, eventually there were movements for reform of medical practice, which after long-fought battle (the existing physicians REALLY didn't like the idea of reform) were, starting in the mid-late Victorian period, adopted.\n\nSource: one of those \"Great Courses\" lectures on Victorian England.", "I'm late to the party but ayurvedic doctors were performing plastic surgery in ancient India that was actually adopted by Western doctors in the late 1700s. The techniques were clever and effective.\n\n_URL_0_", "I'll step away from medical science (surgery and pharmaceuticals) and throw in some ideas for nutrition science. Ancient and medieval peoples weren't bad at prescribing healthy diets and exercise regimens for someone who was already healthy.The problem was if you should slip into the unhealthy. Even so, doctors/health professionals weren't entirely useless at recognizing helpful ointments and salves, some of which are still used today. There's a passage in *Canterbury Tales* in which one of the characters is described as having terrible pustules and flaky skin on his face, what we would today call acne vulgaris and seborrheic dermatitis. The important part is a quote to the effect of \"no amount of sulfurous ointments would relieve him.\" Today we still use topical sulfurous compounds to relieve acne and seborrheic dermatitis, and it is also still true that these treatments don't universally work. Fortunately we now have alternative recourses (antibiotics or even synthetic vitamin A).", "Speaking for traditional Chinese medicine, no, they were not worthless. Chinese medicine is based on experience. The various materia medica compiles medical knowledge of experienced medical practitioners. Some examples include: Compendium of Materia Medica, Treatise on Cold Damage Disorder, Divine Farmer's Materia Medica, Canon of Problems. \n\nWhile these compilations had many errors (most famously lead being not poisonous) and model of human anatomy and physiology may have been incorrect, they were nonetheless useful in that they are based on practical experience. One famous example is that doctors knew that you should eat seaweed to cure goiter. Through modern medicine, we know that it's because goiter is caused by iodine deficiency and seaweed has high iodine content. The doctors back then didn't know the chemistry behind it, but nonetheless had practical knowledge like this.\nOne famous doctor is Hua Tuo. He's perhaps the first Chinese to use anaesthesia in surgery. He produced wine and herbal concotion called mafeisan, which numbs the muscles around a local area, allowing him to perform surgery. However later he incurred the wrath of Tsao Tsao and was executed. All of his medical writings were destroyed, and this set Chinese surgery back for centuries.\n " ] }

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[ [], [ "http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0015591", "http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/overcoming-pain/201011/the-hawthorne-effect-and-the-overestimation-treatment-effectiveness" ], [], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoplasty#History_of_surgical_rhinoplasty" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cjg5ex1", "cjg7q67" ], "score": [ 3, 5 ], "text": [ "I'd start with little things, such as his rank and where he served. If he seems uncomfortable, stop there, but, if not, start asking for personal stories. Just out of curiosity, what did you want to ask him?", "Be sure to gather up any relevant information you can about where he lived, what regiment he was in, where he might have served, and what the experience would have been like. That'll help you prepare questions and trigger his memories if he decides to open up. Pictures are a wonderful memory jogger. Remember, he's an old man and things are going to be hazy regardless. Try to ask what historians call qualitative questions instead of quantitative ones. So, avoid asking for a timeline or where he was on January 23. That's difficult enough at 19, let alone 90. :)\n\nIs there a friend or family member he is/was especially close to in Germany? \"Oh, Hans! He was a real troublemaker...\" will lead to questions about how they stayed in contact during the war. Or tell him you're interested in German-American relations and let him bring it up. Something to break the ice. The accent is the kind of thing to ask about once you get to how German or American he considered himself and why he joined the military. How differently was he treated? Did being German ever serve as an advantage? Did they need translators or cultural ambassadors? All that makes for a better conversation than asking about the German American Bund (Nazi sympathizers), though if you think he'd be comfortable talking about that, it could be fascinating.\n\nThe main thing to stress is how much it means to you to learn about this stuff. It's your family history and all. Most people love that the young folks are interested as long as it's nothing traumatic. He'll fill in the blanks that you want to get the information before he's gone." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cg256hd", "cg25g82", "cg264hj", "cg26snq" ], "score": [ 60, 52, 8, 15 ], "text": [ "Lincoln was patient with McClellan because McClellan had changed a collection of ragged militia units into a formidable fighting force during the winter of 1861/62. His Peninsular Campaign came closer than anybody to taking Richmond until Grant in 1865. It was McClellan's misfortune that Lee took over for Johnston when he did, because a methodical siege of Richmond would have been right up McClellan's alley, while a free-wheeling multi-day fight was not. McClellan was more of an engineer than a bucaneer.\n\nEventually, Lincoln realized he needed someone who would take and keep the initiative, and went through generals until he found one who could.", "I think it is actually quite unfair to McClellan to call him incompetent. He was cautious, yes. But the only thing that could have lost the war for the north was losing his army. So being cautious with it was actually a very reasonable strategy.\n\nHe was an excellent organiser and motivator of men. He also recognised the power of defensive positions and methodical advancement with modern firearms many years before WWI would make everybody else realise that. Moving to entrenched positions that forced his opponent to attack him was actually a pretty forward thinking strategy for the time. Had Lincoln and Staunton supported him better in the peninsular campaign, he might well have won the whole war right there (Grant didn't exactly do it easily, much later, with far better material advantages)\n\nAnd people somehow forget that he WON the battle of Antietam against the much vaunted Lee. And that Lee named him as the best Union general he faced. \n\nSo I think the premise that McClellan was incompetent is flawed. And Lincoln put up with his arrogance because McClellan was the best option he had.", "I'd like to add to the organizational and strategic arguments already put forth. There were off-the-field consequences for the removal of McClellan that were considered. McClellan was well-liked by his troops. Somewhat as a byproduct of his seeming reluctance to fight, they believed he truly valued their lives and would not risk them in a slaughter. The average solider was not well-disposed to his departure, though not enough to vote in a majority for him in the 1864 presidential election.\n\n\nPolitically, McClellan was a pro-war Democrat, a group from which Lincoln needed as much support as possible. This led to the appointment and retention of a number of Democratic generals, such as Nathaniel Banks, Benjamin Butler, and Daniel Sickles. There was political pressure to keep McClellan on just as there was pressure to get rid of him. Interestingly, McClellan was relieved of command of the Army of the Potomac on November 5, 1862, one day after the fall gubernatorial and congressional elections ended.", "I think the most important reason was that McClellan was adored by the troops and his presence was regarded as a tremendous boost for morale. McClellan's fame and reputation brought him instant credibility among the men and for whatever faults he possessed as a tactician he was still a very charismatic, larger than life figure. His mere presence was enough to cause men to \"dance and frolic like schoolboys\" and could turn the mood from one of \"extreme sadness\" to a \"delirium of delight\". When Stanton and Chase criticized Lincoln for retaining McClellan after the disaster at Second Monasses Lincoln justified his decision by saying that \"he had the Army with him.\"\n\nPerhaps equally important was McClellan's skill at making exemplary soldiers out of what he was given. As Lincoln explained to Stanton and Chase \"There is no man in the army who can lick these troops into shape half as well as he can.\" And perhaps more pointedly Lincoln noted that even \"If he can't fight himself, he excels in making others ready to fight.\" McClellan was the man viewed as responsible for molding the Army into the revered professional fighting force it had become.\n\nThere were also political considerations for keeping McClellan in command. Like many of the troops under his command McClellan was no particular fan of emancipation. By removing him from command Lincoln risked further alienating soldiers already suspicious of the Republican goal of an antislavery war and risked angering Democrats who viewed McClellan as their future Presidential candidate. Removing McClellan would have been very inopportune with mid-term elections looming in 1862, for example. Appeasing the War Democrats was of utmost importance to Lincoln, particularly as they grew to distrust him on matters of emancipation.\n\nLastly I'm not entirely sure it's fair to characterize McClellan as incompetent. He was certainly overly cautious and had a delusionally inflated sense of self worth but he was also largely responsible for making the Union army respectable. He was clearly not the man for the job but his contributions to the war effort are often overlooked perhaps somewhat unfairly." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dn2nab1" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Hiya, since this is a question about life during prehistory, it would be worth x-posting to our sister sub /r/AskAnthropology. While there are some anthropologists here, there are more there, and with greater focus on earlier time periods. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ds5x90p" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "[A Russian source here](_URL_1_) estimates that in 1870 the average salary in Russia was 25.53 rubles. [The same source](_URL_2_) estimates that an average laborer's salary in the 1880s (closest time period for which data is available) fluctuated between 12.925 and 15.575 rubles. So relatively speaking, 10 rubles was about 40% of an average monthly salary back then, or between 60-75% of a laborer's monthly salary. That should give you an idea of relatively how much 10 rubles was.\n\nTo convert those amounts to today's money, we have to do a lot of estimating.\n\nThe same source estimates that 25.53 rubles in 1870 was equal to $19.64 1870 US dollars through the official exchange rate of the time. \n\nPutting $19.64 [through this calculator here](_URL_0_) gives us the estimate that this amount equals to $353.48 of 2017 US dollars.\n\nSo to answer the question at the end of your post, 10 rubles in *1870* would be $138.46 in 2017 US dollars (assuming 25.53 rubles = $353.48).\n\nNow, I would say that looking how much 10 rubles is relative to monthly wages is probably a better estimate of how poor or rich a character is, because even today an average salary in Russia fluctuates between $400-700 depending on the exchange rate between the ruble and the dollar. Since most commerce is done in rubles, that proves to be enough for people to live on, despite how little that may seem in US dollars." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.in2013dollars.com/1870-dollars-in-2017?amount=19.64", "http://opoccuu.com/wages.htm", "http://www.opoccuu.com/rab1913.htm#%D0%97%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BA_%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%B4%D0%BE_%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8E%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%B8_" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c5z64ro", "c5z8e0d" ], "score": [ 14, 54 ], "text": [ "The war was interesting to Europeans for many reasons. But I'm not sure if the style of warfare was a main one. \n\n[Conscription by a nation-state](_URL_3_) had begun already during the Napoleonic wars. And those wars were also fought over a huge area of land. \n\nRegading new killing machines, probably the biggest weaponry innovation in the Civil War was the introduction of the [Minié ball](_URL_2_) bullet. The Minié ball could be loaded much faster, shot more accurately, and fly further than previous bullets. Now soldiers could be killed without seeing their killer. And soldiers killed and were killed at a devastating new rate. New strategies, like trench warfare, had to be devised. War reached a new level of hell. \n\nBut the Minié ball wasn't first used in the Civil War. It was introduced in the [Crimean War](_URL_0_) (1853-58), which anticipated many of the warfare techniques of the Civil War.\n\nThat said, that is one Civil War innovation in warmaking that I know impressed and set a major precedent for wars to come: [ironclads](_URL_1_).\n\nEdit: typos.", "Actually, there's little in the US Civil War that the Europeans did not experience themselves in the Battle of Solferino 1859 (large scale use of rail movement) or the Crimean War 1853-1856 (mass usage of rifled muskets and minie balls, ironclads, trench warfare, continued naval support for ground operations, rifled artillery and much more).\n\nHelmut von Moltke the elder claimed that the US civil war consisted of “two armed mobs chasing each other around the country, from which nothing could be learned.”.\n\nIf one compares the US Civil War to the contemporary wars in Europe at the time (War of Italian Unification 1859, Dano-Prussian War 1864 and Austro-Prussian War 1866, Franco-Prussian War 1870) there is one striking difference to the US Civil War - battles are decisive. The lack of trained troops, light forces and above all cavalry in both the CSA and USA armies (neither army ever managed to knock out an enemy army completely other than in a siege and neither managed to conduct a successful large-scale pursuit of a defeated enemy army) meant that the losing army could just pull back, lick its wounds and then be back again in a few months, as the winning army was almost as exhausted as the losing one.\n\nThe US Civil War armies reached a hit ratio of about 1/50, which is consistent with Grossman's findings on natural killers in his book \"On Killing\". The French in Crimea could get about 1/7. The US and CSA training of their troops completely failed to condition the men to kill, and casualties did not mount until the forces of tightly packed men were about 50 to 100 yards away from each other, where you cannot miss even if you are not aiming.\n\nBoth the USA and CSA were using Napoleonic tactics and doctrine, both tactically and operationally. While the Europeans were switching to \"rifle chains\" and more light infantry-like doctrine for the infantry (see for example the British and Ottoman lineup during the battle of the Thin Red Line at Balaclava 1854), the USA and CSA were still using tightly packed manouvre units to fight - probably because \"rifle chain\" formations and light infantry tactics demand much more training - which neither side had time for.\n\nProbably worst in European eyes, were the failure of CSA and USA units to close for melee. Only about 1% of the wounds treated by field surgeons were bayonet wounds. While it might seem like a stupid tactic in the age of rifled muskets, it was really not - it was always decisive, and would cause the enemy unit to rout if successful. USA and CSA formations trying to charge with the bayonet, in attacking column formations (since it adds weight to the charge and exposes fewer soldiers to enemy fire) would almost always stop when faced with enemy fire, drop down and start to exchange rifle fire, which they were at a disadvantage doing, since they were not in line formation and the enemy usually had a prepared position. \n\nThe Europeans decided that the US Civil War became long only because it was fought by amateurs who could not finish a battle due to lack of training, discipline, cavalry (willing to charge home rather than ride around), modern doctrines and tactics - their own wars at the time were usually short and decisive, and became drawn out only when the losing power could hole up in a fortress and a long siege had to be conducted." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclads#First_battles_between_ironclads:_the_U.S._Civil_War", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini%C3%A9_ball", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription#Invention_of_modern_conscription" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d20uk0z" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "I can give you a overview of why Chinese intellectual works didn't penetrate Western consciousness up until 1900, so hopefully someone else can give you the rest of the puzzle.\n\nObviously, distance was the initial division between the literary worlds. Though trade contacts had been established across Central Asia and the Indian Ocean between China and the Mediterranean world since classical times, little literary penetration occurred, as the series of exchanges that characterised trade across the Silk Road meant that while goods and more slowly ideas and technologies made their way across the routes, literature did not. Even individuals that made their way to the Far East did not bring back literature, but their own fantastic tales of a mythical East, rich in wealth and utterly alien in nature. Marco Polo case in point. \n\nThe first real engagement of a Western audience to Chinese literature comes with the arrival of Jesuits in the 16th C. These Jesuits, such as Francis Xavier and Matteo Rici came with the intention of converting the Chinese to Christianity by winning over of the ruling groups of China, specifically the Imperial Court. To this end, the Jesuits studied Chinese literature and language intensively, translating both Classical Greek and Roman texts into Chinese, translating Chinese texts such as the Annals back into Latin for other Jesuits and creating the first known Latin anthologies for Chinese characters. Armed with this, European mathematical and astrological knowledge as well as attempting to present themselves as existing within a Chinese paradigm (for example they first dressed as Buddhist monks and later as Confucian scholar-officials, allowed converts to continue with practises such as ancestor worship and they attempted to philosophically cast Christianity as a natural evolution to Confucian thought) they managed to win some favour with the Imperial Court for some time. The Jesuits would eventually be dissolved by Papal order and Christianity and missionaries cracked down on by the Kangxi Emperor, a handful of priests would remain in China.\n\nThough this knowledge would be filtered back to Europe, Chinese literature would remain a subject of study for intellectuals and scholars, particularly in an age with widespread illiteracy among the general populace. There was a period in the 18th C., particularly in France and England, where anything Chinese or \"Oriental\" became quite fashionable, though the references and images I've seen of this period seem to suggest a rather superficial engagement with Chinese culture, with such things a burst of garden pagoda building and the wearing of Chinese style silks. Perhaps someone else more familiar with the era might be able to comment. \n\nAside from the Jesuits, European contact in China would be quite limited during this period, as foreigners were restricted from entering the country save for an allocated season for trading in Canton as well as the Portuguese in Macau. In these matters, business was the primary concern, with European merchants being only allowed to deal with an Imperial mandated merchant group known as the Cohong, as well as only residing in a restricted area, meaning that little intellectual contact could happen.\n\nAfter the opening of the treaty ports in the 19th century, contact between European and Chinese is now much easier as Europeans settled in concession areas and took on local servants. However, by this point, intellectual understanding in Europe has shifted, and ultimately coloured by understandings of European superiority. Chinese literature, as the Chinese themselves, are cast in the light of the native, inferior, colonial other. Chinese literature become aspects of intellectual research, that of colonial ethnographers but not a part of the common literature. From a European perspective, the Chinese have much to learn from the West, but the study of the Chinese is only worthy as an intellectual curiosity or as broader study of ethnology and stages of human civilisation. \n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cf0ly86" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "Let's answer your second question first, shall we? It's tied in with the answer for your first question, so why not start there?\n\n > did people care as much about history back then as they do in this era?\n\nYes. Oh god yes. Faaaaaaaaar more. But for totally different reasons. \n\nIn the modern world we view history as the study of written (and, increasingly) archaeological evidence of past events and cultures, in order to discover basic truths about the development of humanity and the modern world, as well as basically just figuring out what makes people tick. Ok, well that's interesting, but not fundamentally important. I mean, the world won't end (probably) if you as an individual don't study history.\n\nIn the ancient world, the world *would* end. \"History\" for us is primarily based in written records or quantitative archaeological evidence. It's something that we know happened because there was a record of it. That's not really the way it worked in antiquity, at least not until after the Ionian historiographers and Herodotus. In antiquity we should really ask whether knowledge and study of the past, both as it was actually recorded and as tradition passed it down, was as important. And it was. Way more. Because ancient societies are built on orders of tradition. There are traditional behaviors, traditional rituals, traditional codes of social interaction. And those traditions are grounded in some form of origin story, which, whether actually factual or not, was assumed to have actually taken place. Understanding of a society's origins was of *paramount* importance, and certain societies were obsessed with understanding of their own origins (the Romans, for example, had this unhealthy obsession with figuring out exactly what it meant to be Roman). Understanding of one's own origins was crucial to the maintenance of social rituals that kept the culture cemented. So in a very real sense, without a clear understanding of the basic \"history\" of a society, communities would quite literally fall apart through loss of tradition. \n\nNow, that sort of answers your first question as well. Societies regarded legendary and semi-legendary events, generally taking place before any system of writing was able to codify and confirm events, as being their own \"antiquity.\" There are certain examples, the most common of which that is cited on the sub is usually Hesiod's story of the Ages of Man. But beyond something like that, any sort of local origin story was taken as fact, at least for the sake of ritual. This could be a local origin story, like the story of Romulus and Remus (the origin cult of the Latins) or the story behind the cult of Aeneas (a cult derived from the Etruscans). It could be an ancestral story of a single family (there are *lots* of these, but one good example might be the story of the Alcmaeonids, who claimed descent from a descendant of Nestor). Or they could be the all-important universal \"histories,\" such as the Trojan Cycle, that cemented the ties between related localities and joined them into a single larger social group.\n\nBut there were other histories as well. Following the development of what we'd call \"true history\" there was a boom, particularly during the Hellenistic Period, the 1st Century, B.C., and later in the 2nd Century, A.D. of professional histories. The ancients thought of written histories as being always universal, starting from earliest times, unlike our more common histories of short-lived events. So we see the Hellenistic historians compiling enormous piles of origin myths from different peoples and listing them out one by one before starting on the next round of subjects. Even Herodotus does this, by going through the early histories of each of the major players in his narrative before embarking at the very end on the Persian Wars, which are the crux of his work. Hell, even Thucydides (who was often not, along with his imitator Sallust, or even Xenophon, considered to be a true historian, but something more like a chronicler, since he didn't write universal histories but focused on specific events) feels compelled to give a very brief rundown on the history of political strife among the Greek states, although he does this mainly to explain the causes behind the monumental disaster (i.e. all-out shitfight) that was the Peloponnesian War. Ancient historical works are strange for us, not only because of their use of rhetoric and thematic material, which is stressed over precise factual accuracy (partly because it's awfully hard to be factually accurate about things that happened hundreds of years ago when people didn't make detailed records but simply said one army beat another army end of story), but also because despite the fact that they are \"universal\" histories, they are still in their most crucial material contemporary histories. Ancient histories relied almost entirely on verbal evidence, since the detailed bureaucratic records that we are used to today, although in use, were used to record other things. So they are universal in scope, but contemporary in content. And in any case there are \"chroniclers\" like Xenophon, Thucydides, and Sallust, writing on contemporary events that they had witnessed and that were very narrow in scope (basically cherry picking the endings of most universal histories and cutting out what they would've believed to be of little importance), who are often considered of greater historical value to modern scholars, although often of inferior literary value (although Thucydides is a *marvelous* writer and was really a genius. Yes, I kind of have a hard-on for that guy.).\n\nSo what would the average person have thought about, say, Herodotus? Well, he'd be intensely interested in remembering and understanding events from his own lifetime, which was honestly the important bit. Histories were often said to be written for posterity lest the memory of the events disappeared, but it wasn't really true. Historical works almost always, in the onus of their content (the contemporary material) were attempting to communicate with the contemporary readers who had experienced the events in question, to try to interpret what had happened and why it was important. Their value for posterity did not diminish really, but that wasn't actually the intended audience. As for Herodotus' discussion of, say, the history of Egypt, would an average person have cared? Probably not. Books were expensive, at least keeping them was, although undoubtedly many people frequented the great public libraries to get good access to many works. So much of that would've been of sort of eccentric interest, as an interesting oddity much like the early museums of the Enlightenment, entertainment and brain fodder for an educated elite (and, at least in Herodotus' case, much of that material was included for that purpose, as an interesting oddity. Historians often considered themselves first and foremost storytellers. They told stories that, to the best of their ability, they believed were more or less true, but they still were telling stories). Still, many people would be aware of the content, particularly the stories that pertained to their people, but they wouldn't have been interested really in figuring out exactly what happened long ago in some far away place." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c9t325a" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "It depends on what you mean by 'left wing'. If you're simply looking for the main alternative to the Conservative Party, then the answer is certainly the Liberal Party. They were, by most measures, more progressive than their opponents but also championed the kind of laissez faire economic and social policies that wouldn't sit well with some definitions of left wing politics. So, whilst they were responsible for extending the franchise, it doesn't make sense to see them as the forerunners of the Labour Party. For this, you need to look to radical, working-class political movements like Chartism and the political activities of trade unions. Ultimately, the foundation of the Labour Party was such a momentous moment in British political history because it was the first major party to align itself successfully to working-class interests. In this sense, it doesn't really have a nineteenth-century forbear." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "f0oopde" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "I’ll be as short as possible, but it will still be a long post.\n\nToday the Katyn massacre is the name for a whole series of massacres of the Polish POWs (from the POW camps Starobelsky, Kozelsky and Ostashkovsky) and prison inmates (from the prisons in the annexed parts of Ukraine and Belorussia) in the spring of 1940 committed on Stalin's order (more specifically, the 05.03.1940 order of the Politburo).\n\nSince its ~22,000 victims included thousands of officers, including generals, and a huge chunk of the Polish elite, their disappearance (lack of correspondence) was noticed immediately, and especially after USSR failed to release them along with all the other amnestied Polish POWs. The Polish Government-in-Exile (PGE) drafted the lists of the missing persons and unsuccesfully tried to clear up their fate by gathering information from the POWs previously held in USSR as well as by asking the NKVD officials and even Stalin directly (e. g. the ± Sikorski and general Anders tried to do it). They were met with evasive answers boiling down to „we don’t know what happened to them“. Stalin hinted that some might have fled, e. g. to Manchuria. After the war some Polish officials would claim that the NKVD officials told them that some sort of a great mistake was committed vis a vis these POWs.\n\nIn early 1943 the Germans found the bodies of some oft he missing POWs in the Katyn forest near Smolensk (those were the bodies of the Kozelsky camp POWs). The worst Polish suspicions seemed tob e confirmed by the findings: the names matched the missing persons; the documents on the bodies (letters, newspapers) were dated not later than the spring of 1940; the locals confirmed that the Poles were shot by NKVD.\n\nAfter the PGE called on the Red Cross to investigate the allegations and USSR immediately broke all diplomatic relations with it.\n\nNevertheless, the evidence was extremely problematic in the eyes oft he world. It was gathered by the Nazis and propagandized by the agencies oft he well-known liar Goebbels (indeed, the Nazis tried to blame the massacre on the Jews and even published a fake list of Jewish names of the alleged NKVD men – though it was soon forgotten). Little was known about the fact that the Polish Red Cross took part in the exhumations and in ist internal documentation confirmed their authenticity. Moreover, the Western Allies knew that the whole affair was only a maneuver on the Nazis‘ part to split the Allies, and thus chose to ignore the revelations.\n\nIn 1944 the Soviet investigative commission under Burdenko re-exhumed several hundred bodies in the Katyn forest and unsuprisingly established that the deed was done by the Germans. The witnesses said their previous testimonies were coerced by the Germans; several documents were allegedly found on the bodies dated long after the spring of 1940 (allegedly overlooked by the Germans). The commision’s report settled the matter for many, or at the very least reduced it to a he-said-she-said, despite the fact that it did not clear up the fate of the missing officers from the other camps.\n\nDuring the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg the Soviet Union tried to blame Katyn on the Germans, specifically it came up in the case against Goering. Internally, the Soviet judges argued that the Trial rules meant that the Burdenko report should be accepted as evidence and cannot be disputed. But the Western Judges did not let the Soviets‘ trick slide and pointed out that although the rules allow for the report to be accepted as evidence, its veracity can be disputed by the defense. The judges reached a compromise – each side would provide 3 witnesses, which then testified. It was arguably a wash, unable to convice anyone of the opposite opinion, and Katyn was not mentioned in the verdict.\n\nDuring the Cold War the old political considerations did not matter anymore; in fact, Katyn could be used well against USSR. So there were several attempts to investigate it further, the most famous one being the Madden commission (The Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre). In 1951-52 this House committee interrogated numerous witnesses and examined numerous documents. This included the reps of the PGE, the former Polish POWs (incl. Prof. Stanisław Swianiewicz who testified about seeing his fellow POWs shortly before they were brought to the Katyn forest, while he himself was taken off the transport), the people who took part in exhumations, and even the former American Nuremberg prosecutor Jackson.\n\nAlbeit not without flaws (e. g. the commission examined an anonymous witness whom we know to be fake today – he testified about having witnessed the shooting; they also took some of the false rumors about the Ostashkov POWs having been drowned in barges somewhere seriously), the general picture painted by the commission was credible – there was the problem of the missing POWs and the only plausible answer was that the Soviet Union did it. The Soviet Union largely ignored the event, mostly reissung the Burdenko report as the answer.\n\nVarious researchers took up the topic from time to time, but there was not much new to add to the results of the Madden commission. A fake document, the so-called Tartakov report, seemingly confirming the shooting by the NKVD (most probably forged by the Polish emigre Mieczysław Gorączko), surfaced in the 1950s and was used by various researches (like Louis FitzGibbon), but that was that.\n\nThe real breakthrough came in the late 1980s, when the Soviet historians Lebedeva, Parsadanova et al. found and analyzed the archive of the Main Administration for Affairs of Prisoners of War and Internees in the Special Archive in Moscow. They noted that the traces of the POWs end in the spring of 1940 with their deportations somewhere, e. g. in case of Kozelsk they were sent to the train station Gnezdovo (near Katyn). The sequence of the layers in the Katyn graves could also apparently be somewhat correlated to the transportation lists. The Burdenko report was re-examined and its inconsistencies pointed out (e. g. no POW camps with designations „ON“ existed). It became clear that the POWs really disappeared from the internal Soviet records after the spring of 1940, which was extremely telling. The \"missing Poles\" issue, relevant already during the war, has now been confirmed by the Soviet documents. Albeit the evidence was indirect, but it was still obviously damning and had only one plausible explanation.\n\nIn 1990 Gorbachev, based on the historians‘ findings, officialy admitted the Soviet guilt. However, Gorbachev also knew about the documents in the so-called sealed envelope in the Kremlin archive and chose not to reveal them.\n\nMeanwhile the Soviet Prosecutors‘ Office started an official investigation into the Katyn-related crimes. It turned out that Katyn was just one of several mass grave sites related to the crime. Several old ex-members of the NKVD confirmed having taken part in the massacre in various roles, the head of the Kalinin UNKVD Tokarev described the massacre in the Kalinin prison (Ostashkov POWs) in detail. Mass graves in Mednoye (at Kalinin, now Tver) and Pyatikhatki (Kharkov) were partially investigated, the results were telling – the Polish POWs were indeed found, the documents found on the bodies were dated not later than the spring of 1940.\n\nAll this has already amply confirmed the Soviet guilt, but then came a new revelation, already after the fall of the USSR, under the Russian President Yeltsin. He was given the sealed envelope by Gorbachev and decided to make it public. Among other things it contained Beria’s March 1940 proposal to shoot the Poles, with positive resolutions by Stalin and other Politburo members; the official Politburo decision; and the head of KGB Shelepin’s 1957 note proposing to destroy about 22,000 case files of the Poles shot on Stalin’s order. The documents were revealed in 1992 and officially published in January of 1993.\n\nThis brought new information to light: the victims were not only about 15,000 POWs but also about 7000 prison inmates, about which heretofore not much had been known. (Their existence was suggested by the numeration gaps in the troika protocols, and the new documents closed the gaps).\n\nMeanwhile, the Polish prosecutorial and archeological teams made their own exhumations in Katyn, Mednoye, Pyatikhatki, Bykovnia (further confirming the Soviet guilt). And some time later the former Ukrainian KGB files in Kiev about Pyatikhatki were opened and revealed some further information about the inmates of prisons who were shot (the correspondence about the so-called Ukrainian list), and about the KGB attempts in 1969 to destroy the graves in Pyatikhatki (these internal KGB documents once again openly acknowledge the Soviet guilt).\n\nSuch is basically the state of knowledge today, very shortly.\n\nStill not clear: the location of the graves of the inmates from UkrSSR and BSSR (except for the Bykovnia graves) and the names of the victims from BSSR (the Belorussian list is still missing)." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cdhbhyg", "cdhcnrp" ], "score": [ 13, 10 ], "text": [ "Speaking on the part of the Revolution (my expertise does not extend deeply into the Napoleonic period), Grenadiers were not exactly what you'd expect.\n\nBy the time of the American Revolution, the title \"grenadier\" meant something closer to \"shock troops\" than it did to \"munitions experts.\" Though their symbols were still the grenade with the burning fuse, they still carried ceremonial match-cases, and the song \"British Grenadiers\" still referenced the hurling of hand grenades, they weren't actually equipped with them in the colonies. \n\nAt that, they weren't even separate regiments. Out of the ten companies that made up every regiment of foot (infantry), one of them would be grenadiers. Wearing distinctive bearskin miters and \"winged\" lapels on their shoulders, they were the tallest men of the regiment. Cutting such an imposing and towering figure, these companies were often detached from their regiments and formed into battalions. Such a battalion was run by Major Ackland during the Saratoga campaign, and included companies from various regiments. \n\nThese battalions would serve special duties fit to what we might think of as special operations. As an example, Ackland's Grenadier Battalion climbed a steep incline on hands and knees with their muskets slung over their shoulders in order to meet an American attack.\n\nThey were considered very effective, and their battle record seems to bear this out.\n\nHaving said that, they were also not as carefully defined as we might think. Though there was a height requirement, soldiers were drafted into and out of the grenadier companies as often as they were from the standard battalion companies (sometimes called \"hat men\" for their cocked, tricorner hats) and the light infantry companies. Their training was virtually the same as everyone else's, and seem to have benefitted primarily from the espirit d'corps, rather than from specialized equipment or training.\n\nThis may be different among the Hessians, who *did* have regiments of grenadiers, but I haven't done enough research into the German auxiliaries to say anything more definitive than that.", "In respect to European Grenadiers outside of Britain, they weren't grenadiers in respect to the use of grenades but rather their size and skill in combat.\n\nIn a French battalion of line, there would be eight companies of men ranging between 120-150 men. Six of these companies were line infantry, one would be special light infantry called voltigeurs (chosen for their small stature and skill at shooting) while the talledt and bravest would be placed in the elite Grenadier company (minimum height was five six in today's Imperial measurements). They served as a shock troop that would be best suited for bayonet work rather than standard line action. Later in Napoleons reign, he increased the size of companies to 210 men but decreased the number of line companies per battalion to four. In a light company, men chosen for their stature and speed at march, the same structure existed but instead of Grenadiers, a Light battalion would have a company of Carabineers a Pied.\n\nAs LordKettering mentions, grenadiers had bearskin hats, by the time of the Napoleonic wars, modt European countries adopted Shakos and the bearskin hat (usually a foot to two feet tall) for headdress. This bearskin hat was given to Grenadiers a Pied and Carabineers a pied.\n\nWhile they normally served in battalions, there were some times when a Grenadier division was formed. Charles Oudinot, often called Father of the Grenadiers for the level of care he gavr to them, commanded a Grenadier division in the 1805 campaign. They famously secured the bridge that Muratand Lannes bluffed into French possession and led a devastating charge at Austerlitz that destroyed the Russian center.\n\nHowever, in France it must be noted that they had Grenadiers a cheval and Carabineers a cheval, large men on heavy horses. The former served as part of Napoleons horse guard and were similarly dressed as regular grenadiers but Carabineers served as one type of heavy cavalry that was sometimes given a cuiriass for protection. Both were to be used in battle as a sort of battering ram meant to ruin an enemy and either break a hole or roll up a line.\n\nOverall, the French grenadiers were large brave men that knew the wisdom of the bayonet." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cp2f8wj", "cp2fvzp", "cp2fyhk" ], "score": [ 104, 16, 29 ], "text": [ "There are **three** distinct phases to collapse of the USSR, and each in turn was a large contributor to the collapse, even if unintentionally.\n\nThe first phase was the slow dismantling of the Warsaw Pact and the emergence of glasnost as a strong force near the end of the 1980s. This new openness meant not only was more debate and dissent in both the USSR and sattelite countries going on, but the Red Army would no longer be protecting the communist governments in the Warsaw Pact. With the fall of communism around the Eastern Bloc in 1989, democratic, anti-communist fervor was also spreading to the USSR.\n\nThe second phase was the initial separation of those states that had no interest in remaining in the USSR, particularly the Baltic and Caucasian republics. This occurred in 1990, thanks to the communists losing the elections in those republics. While not every one of these republics declared independence immediately, they did begin the formation of national institutions independent of the Kremlin, beginning the transition to independent states.\n\nNow, at this point, it is possible the USSR or at least a successor federal state could have been salvaged. Belarus, Ukraine, and the Central Asian republics could possibly have been saved into a new treaty that would have saved much of the territory of the former Soviet Union, although the successor state would not have been the USSR most likely. Indeed, although several states were breaking away throughout 1990, by 1991 things were settling down and negotiations were underway to move the republics of the USSR forward into a new system.\n\nThe final pin to drop was in August of 1991 during the coup. This completely eviscerated trust in the Soviet institutions that would be transformed into new federal apparatuses. The response in the USSR was swift, but most accutely felt in Russia. The coup itself was directed mostly against the new government of the Russian Republic. This meant that the largest republic in the USSR was now directly opposed to the continued existence (or transformation) of the USSR. Without Russia, the USSR's collapse was swift. The actions of some of the leadership of the Soviet Union's institutions meant that the newly democratic republics had no interest in saving it. ", "I read \"Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000: Soviet Collapse Since 1970\" by Stephen Kotikin a few months ago and, although it felt like a shorter work that had been padded out, it had an interesting take on the Soviet collapse. In short Gorbachev misunderstood what held the USSR together. He thought that the non-political structures of army, secret police, civil service and economic management bureaucracy could hold everything together and that the Communist Party itself could be removed and allow a democratic USSR to continue. In fact the Party was the only real power that covered the whole USSR and once he attacked and weakened it there was nothing to stop each republic from going its own way. The book tried to explain why the breakup was so relatively peaceful rather than the fundamental causes of collapse, but he does mention the 1970s oil price spike as covering up economic failure. Once the price of oil fell the underlining economic mismanagement was revealed.", "A combination of factors led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I will detail some of them here in the hopes of answering your question. \n\n1. Leadership crisis of the 1980's.\n\nLeonid Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union from 1964 until 1982. The last several years of his rule, he was infirm and routinely absent when key decisions were made. Shortly after his resignation and death, Yuri Andropov became General Secretary. Already a senior citizen and in poor health, Andropov held the post until his death some 15 months later. And so the torch was passed to Konstantin Chernenko, already elderly and infirm, who carried it further another 13 months until his passing on 10 March 1985. That same month saw the ascension of Mikhail Gorbachev, a younger man by comparison, who had just turned 55 years old.\n\n2. Gorbachev's Domestic Reforms. \n\nPrincipally Glasnost (openness), Democratizatsiya (Democratization) and Perestroika (Restructuring). This package of reform sought to restructure the economy (perestroika), enable a widening of freedoms, including freedom of speech and the ability to criticize the government (glasnost) and bring about competitive democratic elections for lower ranking party posts (democratizatsiya). These reforms were resisted in various ways by the constituent republics of the Soviet Union, and created factionalism within the Communist Party itself. There were hard liners looking to end and roll back reforms and others who wished to see them accelerated. Another part of the Glasnost package was to allow foreign broadcasts into the Soviet Union which had previously been jammed to prevent citizens from tuning in to foreign ideas. Finally, Gorbachev abandoned the Brezhnev doctrine of intervening in the internal affairs of satellite states to ensure Soviet hegemony within the Eastern bloc. Gorbachev demonstrated his repudiation of the doctrine by not intervening when Poland held free elections in 1989, and the Communist Party there was defeated by Solidarity. Other satellite countries and even member republics got the message and began to push forward their own separatist agendas.\n\n3. Economic stagnation and rising expectations.\n\nThe military budget for the Soviet Union was significant enough to cause a shortage of industrial goods for Russian consumers. With a more open media environment and freedom of speech, the demands of the Soviet citizenry for a higher standard of living began to creep into the public sphere. Agricultural setbacks and the need to import grain coincided with a decline in oil prices, forcing the USSR to borrow and import to prevent food shortages in major cities. This limited their ability to project force and may have been the principle reason behind abandoning the aforementioned Brezhnev doctrine. \n\nTo be sure there were other reasons that the Soviet Union collapsed. Those are just a few and I hope they help. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ceriu2n", "cernyz7" ], "score": [ 37, 8 ], "text": [ " The Louisiana Purchase area had actually been under Spanish control for about 40 years before the Purchase. It was transferred to France, then to the Us a few months later. Having said that most of the settlers were French (mostly from France proper, not Cajuns from French Canada, but some from French Caribbean territories, and some slaves and free black/creole families as well). \n\n When the territory was turned over to the US the population became US citizens (except slaves who were still considered chattel) and all personal property was respected, including all land titles.\n\n Someone deep in the territory, so much so that they did not hear about the transfer until months afterwards was probably a frontiersman and didn't much care about governments as long as they were distant and not in their day to day business. Everyone else would have found out reasonably quickly and it would not have affected them much at all initially. As time went on and Americans started pouring into the territory the French people found them quite irritating and socially inept, particularly in New Orleans, but they also started making money as the economy boomed, which it did fairly quickly.", "[This article might be enlightening - it refers particularly to French traders on the Mississippi.](_URL_0_)\n\n > The social reality on the ground was slow to change, and French settlements continued much as they had before - tied together by a commercial system of traders and merchants travelling the waterways of North America to form what was in essence a French river world.\n\nHe goes on to say that this continued into the 1830s, buoyed by fur trade from Saint Louis, and inevitably fur trade from Michillimackinac and Canada.\n\nInterestingly, he makes a point I wrote a paper on for a university class - the French trade networks were similar to Native trade networks, often based largely on loose kinships (godparents, remarriage, babysitting) and had a pretty significant amount of mobility for women.\n\nThat aside, the situation of the southern French should actually be contrasted with Michillimackinac, a British fort after the Treaty of Paris. The French only lightly fortified it even though it was by far the most important trading post south of Montreal, even moreso than the Sault. There was a large trade community there formed almost entirely of meti (half-Indians, children or grandchildren of French traders). By comparison, the British more than tripled the garrison, erected heavy fortifications, and eventually removed the previous population there for fear of the Indians - Indians who would actually storm the fort during Pontiac's War, having convinced the British to join them in a game of lacrosse just outside the gates.\n\nThe French really did not remain where the British were, especially with the removal of the Jesuits. Many Indians who had been Christianized continued with their uniquely hybrid faith, even after being displaced by Americans. And the meti/French trading community thrived, as did that of more southern reaches. There's a reason that Lousiana today has so many Cajuns and Creoles - because the French never left, they just became the new Indians." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chwfbdm", "chwfgpu", "chwhg9h", "chwqppw" ], "score": [ 81, 808, 19, 9 ], "text": [ "I have yet to run across any evidence of any sort of German and Japanese soldiers fighting together on any sort of a unit level. The closest thing that I can think off of the top of my head are some instances of Asian conscripts that were captured and re-conscripted a couple of times. This was very infrequent though. A prime example of this would be Yang Kyoungjong, a Korean who was pressed into service in service in the Imperial Japanese Army and sent off to fight against the Soviets in one of the early border conflicts between the two. The Soviets ended up sending him (among other prisoners of war) off to fight against the Germans on the Eastern Front. The Germans captured him, and then pressed him into service in one of their Ostbattalions (made up of former Soviet soldiers and defectors), where he ultimately ended up on the coastal defenses in Normandy.\n\nSo technically, yes. You've got at least one documented instance of a [former] IJA solider fighting alongside German soldiers on the battlefield. There are probably other instances here and there of soldiers that had similarly odd/bad luck, but AFAIK no SS units stationed on Iwo Jima.", "No, there was never really any military cooperation between the two states during the war. The cooperation between the two states was limited to economic and scientific collaboration. Military collaboration was never really an option because Germany and Japan had different goals and neither side really possessed the capability to fight a war in a completely different part of the world. The Germans operated a few surface raiders in the Indian Ocean, but never really went beyond that. There was also a famous case of Korean Soldier (Yang Kyoungjon) conscripted into the Japanese Army being captured by the Soviets, than ended up being liberated by the Germans and fighting for them. But that was a rare case that wasn't really repeated.\n\nThere were numerous instances where they aided each other though. One of the more famous being the Automedon incident. A British ship named the Automedon was shelled and captured by a German surface raider. The ship contained important documents on it about British troop movements in the Far East, they were immediately given to the Japanese, and the documents helped convince the Japanese that the colonial possessions of Britain were weak and undefended, which helped pushed them towards war.\n\nIn terms of economic cooperation, Germany sent a number of engineers and industrialists to Japan in the years leading up to war. Japanese ship builders began to copy German designs in key areas, especially with regards to submarines. The Germans also sent key individuals associated with aircraft to inspect the Japanese air force. There was also limited collaboration between German aircraft companies and Japanese ones.\n\nThere was also limited forms of espionage cooperation. Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the German espionage agency, visited Japan to enlist the Japanese in forming an anti-Soviet spy ring. The German and Japanese intelligence services promised to share important details with each other and to cooperate. Supposedly they even came up with a plan to assassinate Stalin, but that didn't really get far. Again, once the war started the cooperation sort of died off as the two states become occupied with their own goals and ambitions.\n\nFinally in the Scientific sphere,there was limited collaboration. Germany's radical social Darwinist found its way into the hands of Japanese radicals, who molded it too fit into East Asian society. There was also collaboration in the fields of biological and chemical warfare and several agreements were signed between Germany and Japan that made scientific collaboration easier. \n\nFunny enough, there was more military cooperation, in the early years,between Germany and China. Germany sent officers to train the Chinese army, and some of these officers even helped the Chinese fight against the Japanese. There was also a large amount of Chinese officers who studied with the Wehrmacht, including the son of Chiang Kai Shek.\n\nSource:\n\nGerman-Japanese relations 1895-1945 by Christian Sprang", "Not Nazis, but interestingly enough the Japanese did participate in the Battle of Madagascar.\n\nIn Britain's first amphibious assault of the war, they attacked the Vichy garrison to secure the island, and prevent Japanese submarines from using it as a port. Three weeks after the initial invasion of the island, three Japanese submarines showed up and caused trouble, though the island fell after a few months anyway.\n\nNothing too epic, but an interesting show of solidarity between two unusual allies.", "Hello there, friendly neighbourhood mod here.\n\nI just wanted to post this comment that there is **no need to continuously recommend the movie 2011 'My Way'**. Whether or not it is historically accurate is a separate question and whether is a good movie to watch (it was almost unanimously critically planned, mind you) is also something for another subreddit. Unless it is a thread specifically asking for movie recommendations, we ask that you refrain from recommending movies on historical topics unless asked to. You are however more than welcome to recommend primary and secondary sources to supplement the answers already given.\n\nPlease keep this in mind before you post yet another comment recommending this movie." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c4nlvdv", "c4nlwb8", "c4nmf0a", "c4npi38", "c4nr29z", "c4nulib", "c4o1dqn" ], "score": [ 2, 4, 3, 6, 3, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "I recently read 'White Mughals'. It deals with the early days of the Raj and East India Company. Reading about the evolution of British attitudes toward India was very interesting. \n\n_URL_0_", "I had to read a lot on the British Raj this semester; the one I liked the most was:\n\n[Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India](_URL_0_) by Lawrence James.", "[Richard Holmes' *Sahib*](_URL_0_) is a wonderful introduction to the military side of it, at least.\n\nI found [this](_URL_1_) really engrossing as well - Sir Malcolm is a charmingly eccentric memoirist, though quite competent for all that - but it's somewhat narrow in its focus and I can offer no insight into how best to procure a copy or whether it would be useful to you or not.", "*Ideologies of the Raj* by Thomas Metcalf. Definitely an authoritative source; written for the Cambridge History of India.", "[Flashman in the Great Game](_URL_0_)", "*Modern South Asian* by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal- Very readable narrative history by two highly respectable scholars, starting around 1600 CE. Pretty short, too.\n \nWant to know how and why the British came to control South Asia? Read C. A. Bayly's *Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire*.\n", "Once you get an understanding of the larger concepts and timeline I would recommend [Plain Tales From The Raj](_URL_0_). Its oral history of British civil servants and can be quite eye opening and funny.\n\nEdit: Corrected title and provided link." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Mughals" ], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Raj-Making-Unmaking-British-India/dp/0312263821/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1336941249&amp;sr=8-1" ], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Sahib-British-Soldier-India-1750-1914/dp/0007137540/", "http://www.amazon.com/Apprentice-Power-1904-1908-malcolm-darling/dp/B0000CMZK9" ], [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashman_in_the_Great_Game" ], [], [ "http://www.amazon.com/Plain-Tales-Raj-Charles-Allen/dp/0860074552" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cymjwao", "cyml0v2", "cyna3mh" ], "score": [ 694, 213, 8 ], "text": [ "At the time of the publication of the first Sherlock Holmes novel in 1887 Polygamy was still publicly practiced in the Mormon church. It wasn't until the [1890 Manifesto](_URL_0_) that Polygamy \"officially\" ended under Wilford Woodruff. While it did not stop until years later it was better hidden and less open until the practice stopped altogether. Mormons were recruiting and proselytizing in the British Isles heavily since the religion had started under Joseph Smith. A lot of people were converted at the time. The Mormon movement under Brigham Young was very centralized, once you were converted you were expected to \"Come to Zion\" in Salt Lake City, later church officials would tell you where to go to settle the inter-mountain west. As such, many people were emigrating in large waves to the unsettled US from Britain following a strange rumored (but totally) Polygamist society. Was Doyle wrong about the polygamy? No.\n\nOthers I have ideas and speculation, most to do around the Mountain Meadows Massacre, but they are just that, speculation.\n\nEDIT: Heh, Wilford Woodruff not Woodrow Willson", "Quick note: I'll call Mormons \"Latter Day Saints\" (LDS) because the Mormon Church has had a complicated relationship with Mormon as a label for group identity. Second, what I'll say below is true for the followers of Brigham Young in Utah (known as the Rocky Mountain Saints, as opposed to the Prairie Saints who stayed behind in the Midwest after Joseph Smith's death) but they were not the only group within the larger [Latter Day Saint Movement](_URL_0_). The second largest group, which is only about ~~1/10~~ 1/30th the size of the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is the Independence, MO-based Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS). No other group ever achieved the popularity or notoriety of Brigham Young's faction so generally when people discuss Mormon's post-Joseph Smith, they're only discussing the Salt Lake City-based groups. I just want to acknowledge that there are other Mormon groups, and their relationship with plural marriage was not the same as the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints. For example, the RLDS church was opposed to the practice from its inception (and in fact its leaders have claimed in the past, with no convincing evidence, that Smith himself never practiced it). \n\nSo, to get to your actual question, there are accurate things about the story and inaccurate things about it. Many LDS churches at one point practiced polygamy. A few still do, but they're all tiny. These are generally called Fundamentalist Mormons (this term can either refer to the movement as a whole, or the largest denomination within the movement, the [FLDS Church](_URL_10_)). Until 1890, the main Salt Lake City-based church still practiced \"plural marriage\", as polygamy is called in the LDS movement. \n\nJoseph Smith, the founder of the first LDS Church, privately taught plural marriage during his lifetime. It's unclear when Smith began teaching plural marriage to his inner circle, but it's [probably some time in the early 1830's](_URL_5_). By the 1840's, the doctrine was more strongly established in the Church, but it was still not publicly acknowledged (in fact, Smith preached against it publicly). By the time of his death Smith had about three dozen plural wives, but the exact number isn't documented. Smith likely did not have sexual relations with all these women. Plural marriage, or \"spiritual wifery\", was [the cause of the scandal](_URL_3_) that ultimately lead to Joseph Smith's lynching in 1844. \n\nAfter Smith's murder, the movement split. The largest faction followed Brigham Young westward (the movement had been already moved several times, from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois). The Utah Territory was organized in 1850 and Brigham Young was its first governor. In 1852, for the first time, LDS leadership publicly acknowledged plural marriage.\n\nParts of the Utah Territory were later broken off into all of Nevada and much of Colorado--mainly the areas that attracted large numbers of non-LDS settlers (mainly because of the silver rush in Nevada and a gold rush in Colorado). Utah itself was run as a [quasi-theocracy](_URL_6_) (Young called it \"republican theocracy\") where Brigham Young was really in charge of both religious and political life. That part is also true, but I believe was changing by the time Conan Doyle was actually writing. Young died in 1877 and there was an organized, but if only occasionally elected, opposition in the [Liberal Party](_URL_7_) starting in 1870. Secondly, while the Church controlled much of the politics in the territory, key positions, especially after the 1850's, like judges and the governor were in the hands of federally appointed officers. These federally appointed positions were generally held by people who were non-LDS and at times openly anti-LDS, as in the case of [Eli H. Murray](_URL_9_), who was governor of territory from 1880-1886. \n\nI'm not sure exactly when the Utah parts of the story were supposed to be set. The story was written in 1886 and published in 1887. It depicts tense and at times violent relationship between Mormons and non-Mormons. The thing is, by the 1880's, these didn't so much exist anymore. The two many incidents that people point to--the 1857 [Mountain Meadows massacre](_URL_2_) and the 1857-8 [Utah War](_URL_1_)--were both a full generation earlier. There was really a paramilitary group called the Danites, as well, though I don't think they resemble the group in Conan Doyle's book very closely. By the time Conan Doyle was writing, this sort of paramilitary tension doesn't exist in the way it had in the 1850's. \n\nI don't know about how apostates were handled, nor how relations with non-LDS members worked in the late Utah Territory. They were not like Conan Doyle's book, as much of what the country knew about the LDS church came from apostates like [Ann Eliza Young](_URL_4_). Ann Eliza Yoing went through a very public divorce with Brigham Young, in which he was initially ordered to pay alimony, but I don't remember her receiving threats or coercion. By the 1870's, there were several sensational stories of ex-LDS members being published back East. Some also went on popular speaking tours. I am unaware of cases where people were prevented from leaving or otherwise coerced violently by the church in this period. In fact, there were in fact several groups of people formally excommunicated by the Church who still operated in the territory, such as the [Godbeites](_URL_8_). \n\n*Continued below* ", "I answered [a related question](_URL_3_) in /r/latterdaysaints some time ago:\n\n--------------------------\n\nI am LDS and a reader of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories since childhood.\n\n*A Study in Scarlet* is part of a long line of anti-Mormon literature and other media published in the US and Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These articles and books ranged from relatively factual accounts by disaffected members to bizarre slanders that would today be laughed at by anyone with common sense, but which many took seriously at the time. (As one example of the latter, in the 1922 British silent film *[Trapped by the Mormons](_URL_1_)* the heroine escapes the evil Mormons' Salt Lake Temple by jumping out the window and landing in the Great Salt Lake. Anyone who has been to Salt Lake City will be able to tell you why this is a laughable notion.)\n\nMuch of the literature, especially in Britain, claimed that Mormon missionaries were actually white slavers who lured young single women to Utah for Mormon harems. Although such claims largely vanished in the US by the early 20th century--Utah was now a state, legally represented in Congress, and apparently not comprised of perverts--such claims continued in Britain for decades; [Winston Churchill, for example, had to deal with demands that Mormon missionaries be banned from Britain during his time as Home Secretary](_URL_0_). As [Michael Homer explains](_URL_2_), Doyle wrote about Mormons because 1) he had studied it and 2) writing about it, especially in a sensational manner, was good business at the time for a struggling doctor who wrote on the side for extra money.\n\nVolume 2 of Leslie Klinger's *The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes* (2005), which I highly recommend you consult, offers an excellent and accurate explanation of relevant Mormon history in *Scarlet*'s \"The Country of the Saints\". Klinger refers to Jack Tracy's *Conan Doyle and the Latter-day Saints* (1979) as the \"definitive\" examination of Doyle's treatment of Mormons. While I do not have access to Tracy's work, Klinger quotes from it. For example, \"[The] suggestion that the Ferriers were forced to convert in order to be rescued is a patent misrepresentation of the Mormons' often demonstrated generosity toward their fellow travelers ...\" Klinger later writes \"Tracy asserts that no evidence exists that the [Danites] ever engaged in any activities in Utah\" and, referring to the mention of a supposed funeral rite, \"Again, there is no evidence of such a Mormon custom\". In other words, Doyle took some real Mormon history and names but everything else came from his own imagination." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/od/1" ], [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latter_Day_Saint_movement", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_War", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Joseph_Smith#Incidents_leading_to_the_event", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Eliza_Young", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_Latter_Day_Saint_polygamy", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodemocracy", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_%28Utah%29", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godbeites", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_H._Murray", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-Day_Saints" ], [ "http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2009/06/12/winston-churchill-investigates-the-mormon-question-1910-1911/", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapped_by_the_Mormons", "http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V23N04_99.pdf", "http://www.reddit.com/r/latterdaysaints/comments/1cfkdy/a_brief_summary_or_resource_on_mormonism_for_high/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "e3yixrk" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "​\nThe Spanish definitely drew many parallels between (Iberian) Muslims and America's native populations. Rather than simply comparing, I would say that they perceived the previously unknown lands and their inhabitants in relation to what they knew from Europe. This meant especially applying institutions and negative views of the Muslims developed during the centuries-long Iberian \"reconquista\" to the new Spanish overseas possessions - in a variety of areas, incl. religion, law, and arts. I've written about this a bit before, hopefully between these answers you can get a better picture of this influential process - let me know in case of questions:\n\n* [A more general one, talking about literature and arts in colonial Mexico](_URL_0_) \n\n* [This one focused on the example of rituals known as *cristianos y moros* in Spain and central America](_URL_1_) \n\n* [ On a different topic, but under point I.\\) I talk about the casta system, so Iberian judicial processes of exclusion brought to the Americas](_URL_2_) \n\nAs an intro to those I'm adding my conclusion from the 1st answer:\n\n\n\"the reconquista and its parallels with the crusades were extended to Ibero-America and transformed as important ideological features of early colonial life ... This intellectual transmission can be seen in literature and art (e.g. with St. James „mataindios“), but also in religious and territorial concepts (like the requerimiento). The transformation of these medieval concepts would continue in New Spain in different ways with the conquistadors' decreasing influence towards the mid-16th century, and increasing importance of religious orders and gradually of creoles.\" " ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ia39w/were_the_successes_and_failures_of_controlling/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSocialScience/comments/4kf38d/what_is_the_guatemalan_perception_of_conquistadors/d3f5tbg/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6qjdib/are_native_mexicans_considered_an_indigenous/dlg8sp8/?context=3" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cgbgmzg", "cgbhas9", "cgbhwkv" ], "score": [ 39, 19, 31 ], "text": [ "There's a [section of the FAQ](_URL_1_) dedicated to the question of how far back one could go and still communicate in English.\n\nWith your specific question of 1000 years ago, there is a famous Old English work written in that time - the epic poem Beowulf. [This link](_URL_0_) shows the original text side by side with its translation. I'm not a linguist and it's possible that the differences lie partially with how language was transcribed at the time, but practically none of it is comprehensible to someone who speaks only modern English.", "This would mean that you would be sent back to the year 1014; which interestingly is exactly when [Sweyn Forkbeard](_URL_6_) dies and [Cnut the Great](_URL_2_) is proclaimed King. More importantly, though, this is several decades before the [Norman Conquest of England](_URL_1_).\n\nThis would probably be a more fitting question for /r/linguistics. However, I can say with a good deal of confidence that you probably would not understand much at all. The variant of English spoken at this time - [Old English](_URL_0_) - had yet been largely untouched by the influence of Romance languages, and of course the immense variation of space and time, that colors our English of today. It was very clearly a German language (English is West Germanic - I just mean it sounds more like German than modern English) that was basically introduced by Jute, Saxon, and Old Norse invaders. Remember that the Isles were Celtic before the Anglo-Saxon migrations.\n\nIn the above link there are some textual samples to Old English writings. Bear in mind that the letter \"þ\" is analogous to \"th\", or \"d\". There are some other nuances, and even though you see some familiar forms \"over, the, in, of, did\", in general most of it is rather close to older German (particularly in word order and agglutination; I'm not sure, but it looks like Old English combined words together, basically). ~~Languages have~~ English has had a naturally tendency to become simpler over time, even though its lexical base has expanded massively. The English of today has shed huge amounts of grammatical rules and conventions that were natural to Old English - and in fact most languages that were spoken a thousand years ago; conjugation, gendering, cases, double-negatives, etc. It'd be possible to render some simple sentences; \"*Þæt wæs gōd cyning*!\", for instance, if you read it out loud and carefully enunciate the words, pretty much sounds like \"That was a gode (good) kin[in]g!\". However this doesn't really suggest real intelligiblity; it's to be expected given that the languages are related. A good analogue is the modern language of [West Frisians](_URL_5_), which is closely related to Modern English. However if you compare the Lord's Prayer at the bottom of that page, you can see that any real mutual intelligibility is merely superficial.\n\nMore importantly is whether or not they'd be able to understand *you*, given the incredibly simplified structure of Modern English and its word order. You can get a feel for this sort of confusion when you take a German sentence, which I believe tends to position the verb towards the end ([Mark Twain writes an amusing reflection on learning German here](_URL_4_). Fifth paragraph is relevant) and directly translate it. You may not entirely understand what the sentence is trying to say because the sentence isn't organized in a logical way to you. But more importantly, a huge amount of our language is composed of romantic loanwords, to which these Old English people probably have almost no exposure whatsoever. One hour? Sure, you could communicate even rudimentary ideas using hand signals in an hour. But for more complex understanding, I feel like you'd be lucky to get anywhere in a month.\n\nHowever, what if you dropped in about two centuries later? You'd find that the linguistic landscape was beginning to change dramatically (at least amongst the literary Anglo-Norman elite, I imagine. If anyone can reflect on whether the countryside was still composed of largely Anglo-Saxon speakers, I'd be interested to know too). Look at the [development of Middle English](_URL_3_) just a couple of hundred years after the Norman Conquest. It looks like gibberish, with ridiculous spelling conventions (I believe at this time they weren't yet standardized), but try reading it slowly again and pronouncing it out loud. \n\n\"*Forrþrihht anan se time comm*\" - \"forth-right anon(?) se(?) time come\"\n\n\"*ben borenn i þiss middellærd forr all mannkinne nede*\" - \"been born in(?) this middle-eard[th] for all mankind's need(?)\"\n\n\"*and whær he wollde borenn ben he chæs all att hiss wille.*\" - \"and where he would born been[sic] he chose all at his will\"\n\nStarts to make a lot more sense, doesn't it? Chaucer is actually perfectly readable if you approach him slowly, but I fear that escapes your time constraints a little too much. I know this stuff is already answered in the FAQ's, but I thought I'd expand on it a bit.", "Probably not. It depends to whom you would like to talk to and how good you are in foreign languages, but definatelly it would still take time to learn religion, customs, way of life and new language.\n\nJust before [Norman conquest](_URL_10_), [Old English](_URL_9_) was spoken, here is wiki page about [Old English in Old English](_URL_0_), maybe try to read[Beowulf](_URL_5_), or listen to it [1](_URL_4_) [2](_URL_6_)\n\n[Old Norse](_URL_7_) would help, Celtic languages were far more common in Britain, so if you know Welsh or Gaelic, would be helpful to begin with, but without good mastery of [Latin](_URL_2_) [1](_URL_3_) guess it would be hard to find way at all anywhere in Western Christian Europe.\n\nTo understand linguistic landscape in Europe, all languages resembled each other far more, like Old Norse was closely related to Anglo-Saxon, so they would easier catch each other's words, concepts etc... but for you would be two barriers to overcome - cultural and language barrier. E.g. simple word [Wednesday](_URL_1_) has ethymology from a god Wōdanaz that would be Old English \"Wōden\", Old Saxon \"Wôdan\", Old High German \"Wôtan\", Old Norse \"Óðinn\", sounds similar, and anybody from that time would possibly have some understanding of the godand why a day is named after him, while today it hardly makes a lot of sense to anybody. You would have a hard time to grasp what is happening in everyday life, you would miss sweet food and salt...\n\nAnd [this is some language from modern times and in English and in familiar format and theme, just couple hundred miles north of you](_URL_8_), for comparison.\n\nIn contrast if you would be a speaker of Sardinian language, or any of Baltic languages, or Icelandic language you would probably have a lot less of those problems, because those languages did not change that much over the course of last millennium." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-text.html", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/language#wiki_how_far_back_could_i_go_and_still_communicate.3F" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_english#Text_samples", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Invasion_of_England", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_english#Sample_texts", "http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language#Folklore_about_relation_to_English", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweyn_Forkbeard" ], [ "http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ænglisc_sprǣc", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesday", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Latin", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVBN0_UOL6I", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L7VTH8ii_8", "http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/beowulf-oe.html", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K13GJkGvDw", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Norse_language", "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfzaa0Ly1kk", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Norman_language" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckeajam" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "The Mongol seige of Baghdad was particuarily bad due to the destuction of irrigation canals, and uprooting of date palms. This made any sort of agriculture extremely difficult. As for the destuctivenss, it was more thorough than others but not exceptionally so. Combining this with the deaths of large amounts of the population and there arises an inabilty to repair the agricultural systems, leading to an ultimately worse situation than other conquered cities. Sources vary wildly on the number of deaths, from 100 thousand to one million.\n\nBaghdad was a major hub of Islam, and science at the time. It was lead by Caliph Al Musta Sim. Before the seige the Mongols armies lead by Hulagu were involved in conflicts with the assasins in Iran. The Mongols asked the Caliph for assistance, but he did not comply, and instead sent mildly insubordinate responses to Hulagu. (Dont piss off the Mongols) combined with other incompitancies of the Caliph and his advisors Bagdhad was not prepared for the Mongol army.\n\nThe Mongols absolutely appreciated, and even embraced new technologies and beliefs. Had they not used the seige technologies they discovered in China, their conquests may have been unsuccesful, and likewise with religous acceptance. The Seige of Baghdad was a bit different. The executions spared no one, where in other conquests, skilled laborors, warriors, and leaders would have been used. The Grand library f Baghdads books were thrown into the Tigris river, ruining valuable texts from some of the greatest minds of the time. Survivors said that the rier ran black from all of the ink. I feel the exceptional thing here is not that they were actively trying to destroy knowledge, but rather the knowledege they destroyed was a consequence of the attempt to \"teach a lesson\" by utterly devasting the city due to the Caliphs actions.\n\n\n\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "conr745" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Weimar wasn't the capital, Berlin was. The assembly that came up with the constitution took place in Weimar." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cjmqg9n", "cjmxusd" ], "score": [ 57, 3 ], "text": [ "WWII:\nWar Claims Commission\n\nIn the United States, payments to WWII POWs and internees were made by the War Claims Commission (WCC), which was established by the War Claims Act of 1948 (50 U.S.C. App. 2001 et seq.). Under Section 12 of the War Claims Act, German and Japanese assets seized by the United States after December 17, 1941, under the Trading with the Enemy Act of October 6, 1917, (40 Stat. 411) as amended, were to be liquidated and placed in a War Claims Fund created on the books of the U.S. Treasury. According to 1959 testimony by the head of the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, the total amount of these liquidated assets amounted to $228,750,000.15 The 1952 amendments to the War Claims Act (P.L. 303, 66 Stat. 47, 49 [1952]), designated April 9, 1953, as the last day for the Commission to receive claims relative to WWII, and WCC programs were completed on March 31, 1955.\n\nThe War Claims Act of 1948, or Public Law 80-896 (62 Stat. 1240; 50 U.S.C.) is a United States federal law passed by the 80th United States Congress on July 3, 1948. It created the War Claims Commission to adjudicate claims and pay out compensation to American prisoners of war and civilian internees of World War II.[1] It authorized ten prisoner of war and civilian internee compensation programs, and four war damage and loss compensation programs. Payments and administrative expenses for all but three of the programs were paid by the liquidation of Japanese and German assets seized by the U.S. after World War II.[2] Payments to prisoners of war were at the rate of US$1 to $2.50 per day of imprisonment, payments to civilian internees of Japan amounted to $60 for each month of internment. Civilians were also eligible for compensation for disability or death. The act did not authorize compensation for civilian internees held by Germany.[1]\n\n----------------\n\nTLDR; The compensation was $1.00- 2.50 a day, or $13-33 a day adjusted for inflation.\n\nPay for an infantryman (private) was $500 a year, so that gives you a comparison.\n\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n\n\n\n", "Would be curious if anyone had information on this from an Australian perspective as well. \n\nMy grandfather's family was told he had been killed as a POW in 1941 but turned out he survived until mid 1945 before dying. The paperwork must have been a nightmare." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.usmm.org/barrons.html", "http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/usprisoners_japancomp.htm", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Claims_Act_of_1948" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "caasozx" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "I find it very interesting that Douglas MacArthur suggested that his father came up with the idea of the capture of Aguinaldo - a raid that happened in 1901, had no involvement whatsoever by him and was really a lucky opportunity taken advantage of by a group of skilled soldiers. I've written more about this before, but I can't seem to find the thread. This is what I did write on it, since I had a copy around:\n\nIn 1901, during the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), the capture of an enemy courier led to the acquire to a letter from Emilio Aguinaldo, the commander of the Philippine insurgents. The letter was to Aguinaldo's cousin and was a request for reinforcements to his headquarters (and hiding place) in the mountains of Palan. After further investigation (and interrogation of the courier), it was decided to make up a plan to capture him.\n\nThe plan was as follows: 80 Macebe scouts (these were Filipinos from the town of Macebe which traditionally served Spain) who could speak Tagalog would be dressed up as insurgents together with 4 Tagalog loyal to the Americans who would dress up as officers. These men would then enter the hideout together with 5 American \"prisoners\". One of the prisoners would be none other than Brigadier General Fred Funston himself. Two letters would also be sent to Aguinaldo, complete with official stationary from an insurgent base and forged signature, to make the party with prisoners seem less suspicious.\n\nAfter a grueling 100-mile trek and the crossing of the Palan River, two of the disguised Tagalog officers entered the base while awaiting the Macebe scouts to show up (since they had to cross the river). Aguinaldo had taken the bait and greeted them with a complete honor guard. When the Macebe scouts arrived, they took position as to prepare to salute Aguinaldo, only to open fire at the guards at the hideout when a signal was called out. Startled and surprised, the Tagalog officers quickly seized Aguinaldo and together with the five American \"prisoners\", escaped.\n\nAguinaldo was taken to Manila to meet with General MacArthur and a month later took an oath of allegiance to the United States together with a proclamation to all the insurgents to lay down arms. Despite the loss of the highest ranking commander that the Filipinos had, the war continued on for another year. \n\nFrom the accounts I've read on it, not once have I really heard Arthur MacArthur's name being mentioned alongside it except what happened after the raid. While it's truly that he capitulated and swore loyalty, it would take yet another year before the fighting ceased. The account seems to simplify the US Army's counterinsurgency in the Philippines as being completely about the capture of Aguinaldo - something which just isn't true. \n\nThe claim that the hatred disappeared almost overnight is obviously an exaggeration, but what you deem impossible was something actually put into reality. The policy was called \"The Policy of Attraction\" and was meant to convince the average Filipino that siding with the US was a great idea by providing them with schools, medical help and other public services which would be of help to provide a better quality of life. I am, however, limited to the counterinsurgency aspect of this particular conflict and would like to some input from anyone on this subreddit who has further knowledge to offer.\n\nTo sum it up, it sounds to me like Douglas MacArthur greatly exaggerated the role of his father but as with all stories, they have a basis in the truth." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cvprk4j" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "Very possible. I would recommend Ingo Hasselbach's memoir *Fuhrer-Ex* if you're interested in this topic. Hasselbach was a Neo-Nazi leader in East Berlin in the 1980s and 90s before abandoning Nazi ideology in 1993. His book is fascinating; it methodically details the building of the East German Neo-Nazi movement, both before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He mentions social circles of elderly Nazis in the DDR, who had hidden Nazi propaganda materials in their houses and in some cases indoctrinated their children and grandchildren. Hasselbach mentions at least one case of a third-generation secret Neo-Nazi in the DDR. However, he makes a clear distinction between these elderly Nazis, most of whom were not particularly high in the Third Reich hierarchy, and several Nazi war criminals he met while imprisoned in the DDR. These men had adopted false names and lived in DDR society for decades before becoming uncovered and imprisoned for their wartime crimes. They also indoctrinated many young people, including Hasselbach, who served in prison with them. \n\nHasselbach doesn't specifically address the issue of how 'ordinary' DDR citizens with Nazi sympathies were able to hide them, but it's worth mentioning that in the case of many younger people, they *didn't* exactly hide them--Neo-Nazi activism was a form of rebellion against the DDR state, and many of them were in a revolving door of prison and parole for years. It's also my recollection from other sources that de-Nazification in the DDR, while more extensive than in the BRD, was very selective in areas where the DDR had shortages of certain skilled professions. \n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.worldcat.org/title/fuhrer-ex-memoirs-of-a-former-neo-nazi/oclc/32854164" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cms2317", "cms7mtq" ], "score": [ 35, 4 ], "text": [ "\"All men may be created equal, but not all ships are created equal.\" -- some old white dude \n\nI'm going to be brief here, but what it boils down to is that the American naval buildup of, say, 1880 to 1914 or so occurred in an era in which America was generally interested in a coastal defense force (rather than an expeditionary force), and in which America was either a close friend to Britain, or at the very least not an enemy of Britain. \n\nDuring that time the US fought one naval war, the Spanish-American war, during which the American navy's gunnery performance was utterly abysmal (but ever so slightly less abysmal than the Spanish), and during which the *USS Oregon* made its famous \"dash\" from San Francisco to Florida in 66 days. \n\n*Oregon* and its two sister ships were coastal defense battleships, with a freeboard insufficient for much time spent in the open sea. The next 10 battleships the Navy built were also meant for coastal defense, with a relatively slow top speed and short range. It wasn't until the *Virginia* class, which only commissioned in 1906, that the U.S. had a truly oceangoing battleship, and the *Virginia* and ongoing classes were obsoleted by *HMS Dreadnought*. The *South Carolina* class was the first US dreadnought class, and they didn't commission until 1910; the US had 10 dreadnought battleships by the time the war broke out in 1914. \n\nSo, the short answer is that the US didn't have true oceangoing battleships before 1906, and didn't have dreadnoughts until 1910. The distance of the US from Britain and the amity between the two countries meant that the American threat to Britain was nonexistent. (Amity between the two is also helped by the fact that the US did not intend to build a colonial empire, in contrast to German ambitions.) \n\nBy contrast, Germany had, after the Franco-Prussian war, the largest army in Europe. Britain could deal with that though its continental allies, but Germany building a fleet to challenge the British fleet, combined with that army, would make Germany unstoppable. The German fleet was a direct existential threat to the existence of the British empire, and the British reacted accordingly. \n\nSome reading on the period: \n\n* Robert K. Massie, *Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War:* A naval-centered but wide-ranging story of the missteps, misunderstandings, and hubris that led up to the outbreak of World War I.\n\n* Robert K. Massie, *Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the winning of the Great War at sea*: The follow-up volume to *Dreadnought,* which takes a global look at the British navy during World War I. Includes a very balanced section on Jutland which avoids some of the personality-driven history that has cropped up around the event.\n\n* Robert L. O'Connell, *Sacred Vessels: The Cult of the Battleship and the Rise of the U.S. Navy*: An examination of the power of the idea of the battleship and how it shaped and was shaped by Mahanian thought, leading to the development of the modern American navy. Also has interesting sections on asymmetrical threats to the battleship (planes, torpedoes) and how those were subverted or sublimated by naval thinkers. \n\n(The quote at the top isn't a real quote.) ", "America wasn't a country with a military mindset that guided everything it did. Germany was, it was an every increasing economic powerhouse and had the largest professional army in Europe. Wilhelm II also wanted a Navy that would rival England's. Britain could easily put 2 and 2 together.\n\nThe US on the other hand was genuinely trying to guards it's trade and sea lanes, as well as the coasts etc.\n\nThe UK was wary of American Naval power being built up before 1812 for obvious reasons." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "crkolkk" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "I appreciate the honesty, but [metal detecting is illegal in Ireland, and may get you a fine of €60k or 3 months of jail.](_URL_0_) There is also a similar law for Northern Ireland, so the English PAS does not apply there." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.museum.ie/en/list/metal-detecting-law.aspx" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c6kutmu", "c6kxpok", "c6kyy27", "c6l5y2g" ], "score": [ 5, 3, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "I'd offer Massasoit of the Wampanoag who managed to use the Massachusetts Bay settlers to his advantage and play various parties off against one another to maintain peace through most of the 17th century. As for a lasting legacy, the Wampanoag still maintain a tribal identity and have a reservation on Martha's Vineyard. Realistically, that's about the best legacy that an East Coast tribe could hope for.", "The two I'd throw down are [Pachacuti Inca](_URL_0_), founder of the Inca empire, and [Motecuhzoma I](_URL_1_), the second Aztec Emperor after the formation of the Triple Alliance. Pachacuti Inca transformed a single city-state, Cuzco, into the largest empire in the Americas. He and his son together conquered a stretch of land half the size of the Roman Empire. He's almost like the new world equivalent of Alexander the Great. \n\nMotecuzoma I, while not as prolific in his conquests as Pachacuti, was instrumental in helping the Aztec Empire come to power. The early Triple Alliance faced fierce resistance from the confederation of Tlaxcalla, which had powerful allies in the Mixtec region, like the city of Coixtlahuaca. Motecuzoma I broke up this confederation by raising an army of 200,000 soldiers, the largest army ever assembled in Mesoamerica, and sacked Coixtlahuaca.", "He isn't 'new world', but he's decidedly not European.\n\n[Shaka Zulu](_URL_0_) was regarded as a military genius by the British.\n\nThe 1980s miniseries about him compared him to Napoleon and Caesar, owing to the growth of Zulu power under his reign.", "That's a tough question because with the exception of the Indian Wars in western America there were no(few?) cavalry units. Artillery was unheard of. Those are the kinds of troops that, when used effectively, can turn defeat into victory.\n\nI think it would be easy to underestimate the skills of new world commanders because of this. " ] }

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[ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualpopoca" ]

[ [], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachacuti", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motecuhzoma_Ilhuicamina" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaka" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cnjq86s" ], "score": [ 13 ], "text": [ "Neither/Austria-Hungary.\n\n* [Why did Germany get all the blame for WWI, when it was Russia who started it?](_URL_1_)\n\n* [If Serbia started the ball rolling on the events that triggered WW1, why is Germany always portrayed as the prime evil in the war?](_URL_0_)\n\nThere's a lot of redundancy between the two threads (as it's basically the same topic and I referenced the latter for the former) but it's two slightly difference focuses so I'll link both for a sure thing.\n\nTo summarize my thoughts: \n\n1. Germany is most responsible as they were most directly responsible for creating the European power blocs (Russia/France/Britain & Austria-Hungary/Germany/Italy/Ottomans) and divisions which made war nearly inevitable. That is traditionally why they are given war guilt; it was their expansionism and policies which divided the world and made the proverbial 'powder keg' in the first place. \n\n2. In a technical sense Austria-Hungary did declare war first but it would have only came if Germany gave them permission. Austria-Hungary delivered demands to Serbia that was tantamount to Serbia becoming a protectorate of Austria-Hungary and demanded every item on the list be accepted -- and they were all but one. She delivered that ultimatum knowing full well Serbia would deny it and it would mean war and Germany gave Austria-Hungary permission to do it knowing full well it meant war. \n\nSo blame is placed on Germany for creating the powder keg, filling it with powder, and handing Austria-Hungary the match. Austria-Hungary gets blame for actually dropping the match. Though this analogy breaks down when we also consider the fact that it was Germany who turned it from a local conflict (A-H vs Serbia & (maybe) Russia) into a world war by preemptively invading neutral Belgium (dragging Britain into the war) and then France bringing, well, everyone else into the war.\n\nSo either neither to your original question (because Germany) or both Germany & Austria-Hungary depending on your analysis. I'd hardly call Serbia responsible when they said no to a blatant expansionist move by Austria-Hungary." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2adute/if_serbia_started_the_ball_rolling_on_the_events/", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2o5rs5/why_did_germany_get_all_the_blame_for_wwi_when_it/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "csrjwsr" ], "score": [ 28 ], "text": [ "One of the first actions by the Union were to push troops across the Potomac and seize Alexandria, and the area around it including Arlington the home of Lee and of course the eventual cemetery.\n\nAs the Army of the Potomac was built massive fortifications were constructed on both sides of the river around the capitol, and many units spent almost their entire war manning the guns.\n\nFrom the National park Service: \"By 1865, the Defenses of Washington included 68 forts, supported by 93 detached batteries for field guns, 20 miles of rifle pits, and covered ways, wooden blockhouses at three key points, 32 miles of military roads, several stockaded bridgeheads, and four picket stations. Along the circumference of the 37-mile circle of fortifications were emplacements for a total of 1501 field and siege guns of which 807 guns and 98 mortars were in place.\"\n\nThey were only seriously tested once in late 1864 when troops under Jubal Early tested the outer defenses at Fort Stevens in an attempt to relieve pressure at Petersburg, however after a blooding they withdrew.\n\nAs for the rest of the river frankly it was hard to defend the entire length and was obviously not as evidenced by the Army of Northern Virginia as a whole crossing and going back on two separate occasions.\n\n_URL_0_" ] }

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[ [ "http://www.nps.gov/cwdw/learn/historyculture/index.htm" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "do37epb" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Also his son seems to have something similar, but I don't know if that will come on the wrong side of the 20 year rule due to him not being very well known until he was older" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dcvxf5u" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Hiya, this is a fairly popular question on here. I am not discouraging any new answers coming in, but I think you'd enjoy reading the discussions in [the relevant part of the FAQ](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/science#wiki_ancients.27_views_of_static_electricity" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "daxxb5b" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "I can answer the questions on mental health issues. I have to leave so I'll add more to this when I'm back home in a bit. It might be best to start by explaining that I'll be coming from this from a cultural perspective.\n\nFrench philosopher Michel Foucault has a lot on the construct of madness. In *[Madness and Civilization](_URL_2_)*, he divides insanity (i.e. mental illness) into three time periods. The Renaissance, the classical age and the modern age. The classical age made up the 17th and 18th centuries, so we can look at that. He believed that the mentally ill were dehumanised and should be confined/kept away from society because they presented a deviation from popular culture (Andrew Scull agrees with this). Mental illness at this point was not medicalised and people didn't really understand the consequences. Regardless of what you think of Foucault, it's important to realise that mental illness was not viewed as a medical problem (for the most part, obviously there were exceptions). So if a soldier were to have some sort of mental trauma, people would believe it was a break in his moral composition/character that would cause it.\n\nAdditionally, it's worth noting that there aren't any records that PTSD in its modern form actually existed prior to the late twentieth century. [Edgar Jones](_URL_0_) has a really interesting paper on this. Psychological trauma, however, would have been overwhelmingly viewed as the fault of the individual. Memory and trauma can be read more about [here.](_URL_1_)\n\nTo answer your question in the title, you might want to look at ideas of the deserving poor and the undeserving, too (I'll get sources when I'm back home)." ] }

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[ [ "http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/182/2/158", "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=onlQ989DdKQC&amp;pg=PA51&amp;lpg=PA51&amp;dq=foucault+madness+ptsd&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=ss7DunP5Yp&amp;sig=NHMxDr32hEc5C1Rx6ICYgcI4EW0&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjpsPnK7uTQAhXsDsAKHVIUABsQ6AEIKTAB#v=onepage&amp;q=foucault%20madness%20ptsd&amp;f=false", "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Gs5PRR9-8BcC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=foucault+madness+and+civilization&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjqs72N7-TQAhWeF8AKHedmBKUQ6AEIKzAD#v=onepage&amp;q=foucault%20madness%20and%20civilization&amp;f=false" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "eibzkxc", "eic3m3l" ], "score": [ 10, 9 ], "text": [ "It might have been arguably the strongest ship in the war firepower wise, but as an asset in the long term and in a strategic sense? It was not that great of a ship. While powerful, it was the right ship for the wrong war. The Bismarck represents the overall flaws of the Germans during World War 2: heavily armored, up gunned, technologically“superior”, but an overall drain in resources and a strategic and operational failure. \n\n\nIt’s overall goal was to disrupt Allied shipping by getting out into the Atlantic after trying to move stealthily as possible through either the North Sea or The English Channel. With only one escort vessel the cruiser Prinz Eugene, which matched its profile to try and confuse gunners, it had a tough job ahead of itself. While it was expecting more ships to escort it, much of the German surface fleet was either sunk, damaged and being repaired, or being built. When the British caught up with the Bismarck they engaged the ships. But the British HMS Hood was sunk, the pride of the British Fleet, and the other ship Prince of Wales was heavily damaged. But while they were defeated and let the Bismarck get away, the Bismarck had also got damaged in some ways. One was its “state of the art” fire control system which helped it aim its guns were knocked out ironically by its own guns’ recoil. A round from Prince of Wales went into the ship and caused it to leak oil, giving aircraft a way to find it. And then it was engaged by Swordfish biplanes armed with torpedos later on. These wooden biplanes only got one hit on the Bismarck but caused its rudder to be jammed. This meant it was dead in the water and when the British caught up to it they sunk her. \n\n\nWhile in the end it did sink HMS Hood and caused the Royal Navy a bit of headache, it didn’t really accomplish anything else. When it died a lot fuel, men, and resources to build the ship went to the bottom of the Atlantic. Not even accomplishing its goal of sinking merchant shipping, it was just a huge waste of nothing. Many people argue the Bismarck could take on any ship in World War 2, but this ignores the fact of how fleets move together and how they are composed. These fleets had destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships, subs, and the most importantly aircraft carriers. These can hit you from miles away, out ranging even the biggest battleship guns. They also can scout even farther than your ship can with its air power. They can strike anywhere and swarm you, while you do have anti aircraft guns, this can’t shoot down every plane and some will get through. The Bismarck may have been the most technological and advance battleship at the time, it was clear it wasn’t ready for such a monumental task. It could not fight the entire Royal Navy by itself or even the limited support it got. \n\nNow compare this to what the U-Boats did: they accomplished sinking millions of tons of Allied shipping, caused a lot of resources to be devoted by the Allies to deal with this problem, and the ability to stealthily move into the Atlantic. This in the strategic sense was a much better plan and may have caused the Allies to postpone invasions or other operations. \n\nThe Bismarck needed a lot of help to even accomplish its goals, but for this to happen a lot more resources that Germany doesn’t have to spare, that must be devoted to ship building. And every ton of steel used for ships is a ton of steel not used for tanks, heavy weapons, or even subs. This would also take years or possibly a decade of ship building to accomplish. And the British would not like that at all and probably either build up her forces earlier or even challenge Germany for breaking a term in the Versailles treaty. Overall the Bismarck was a powerful ship that could win a battle or two, but it can’t win a war by itself. \n\nSources:\n\n\nFerris, John Robert, et al. The Cambridge History of the Second World War. Cambridge University Press, 2015.\n\nMilner, Marc. Battle of the Atlantic. History Press, 2011.\n", "I'd actually argue (and this is a fairly common opinion among naval historians) that the Bismarck was honestly fairly archaic for the final generation of battleships. It was certainly not the most powerful battleship of the war, (that would go to one of the Yamato-class or Iowa-class most likely and Bismarck and Tirpitz certainly wouldn't make the top ten,) and had a twenty year out of date armor scheme, that honestly didn't compare particularly well to even the Hood's armor (including placing essential equipment above the main armored deck.) She was also designed for short ranged brawling instead of a longer ranged fight like her contemporaries were, and suffered dearly for it when faced with superior opponents as was seen when HMS Rodney and King George V were able to deal significant damage at range in Bismarck's final engagement. \n\nAs for technological advancement, it did have a relatively advanced fire control system when the radar did work for that first salvo. Which was not an issue that the Yamato's radars had, or any of the sets installed on American battleships by the end of the war. It was also relatively fast for a battleship of the time, being capable of thirty knots in trials when most designs of battleship built before 1942 were notionally only capable of 28kn, and exceptionally stable as a gun platform to boot.\n\nRealistically, it wasn't that much of a waste, despite being more or less a World War I design built in the late thirties. As a fleet in being Tirpitz and the other capital ships of the Kreigsmarine did a good job of presenting a threat which had to be actively accounted for by the Royal Navy, and soaked up bombing raids that could've been targeted at actually important facilities. Bismarck could've done that, but instead she was sent off onto a death ride in the North Atlantic as a Commerce Raider and wasted as a result. \n\nSources:\n\nNavWeaps - _URL_1_, 2019 generally. (in general one of the best assets for post-1880 naval history out there, and really the best reference online for naval gunnery.)\n\nJurens, William J. \"The Loss of HMS Hood A Re-Examination\" Warship International No. 2, 1987 as transcribed for NavWeaps _URL_0_\n\nGarzke Jr., William H., et al. \"Bismarck's Final Battle\" Warship International No. 2, 1994 as transcribed for NavWeaps _URL_0_" ] }

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[ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RTuaqL-eD4" ]

[ [], [ "http://www.navweaps.com/index_inro/INRO_Hood.php", "navweaps.com" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dk7c3vq", "dk7deli" ], "score": [ 10, 19 ], "text": [ "One of the most entertaining books I've ever had the fortune to read, and reread again, is Ozzy Osbourne's autobiography, *I am Ozzy*. While I have read more than my fair share of rock and roll biographies, it's the rare book that I feel confident recommending to the general public, because even if you couldn't care less about the subject, the book itself is just plain entertaining.\n\nSo for starters, rock and roll was never entirely the kind of thing a good Christian would be involved with. Even when you get away from Jerry Lee Lewis' issues and AC/DC being on the \"Highway to Hell,\" the simple fact was that the music was originally for dance halls for young people to drink, smoke, and possibly find themselves in the back seat of a car doing things they weren't supposed to be doing before marriage.\n\nThe 1960s brought a whole different flavor to this; while anti-war sentiment is hardly theologically un-Christian, Conservative America was generally Christian and generally aligned with the War, and the Hippies were generally not church-going and *were* tending to do those sex and drugs things that Christians are definitely opposed to.\n\nNow I'm telling you about stuff that is *merely* not Christian, and stuff that is particularly American, just to fill in the backdrop for where the association truly began, which as you'll gather from my first paragraph is the story of a little band called Earth, made of 4 kids from a blue-collar English town, Birmingham. Earth formed when the most talented guitarist in the town was victim to an industrial accident that lopped off his fingertips, and he not only had to change the way he played the guitar to do so, he was desperate enough to grab the craziest kid in school to join the band as a singer largely because he had his own PA system -- and after the accident, few were desperate enough to board that particular ship. (Would-be rock stars, take note; owning his own PA system is also how David Lee Roth smuggled his way into being in the band with *his* home-town's best guitarist and became the lead singer of Van Halen.)\n\nSo Earth struggled and worked on their craft at the beginning in the middle of hippies, Free Love, the Beatles, flower power. Songs were all about peace and love and good happiness stuff.\n\nTwo things happened to change everything. First, there was another band touring around that time that was already named Earth, so they needed another name. And second, they went out to watch a horror movie (not their first), which Ozzy recalls as having had Vincent Price in it, and they got the notion that they could try to be for Rock and Roll what horror films (which they all enjoyed) were for the cinema.\n\nSo Iommi sat down with his detuned guitar (for practical reasons -- it was easier to play with his finger prostheses that way; that this also gave his guitar a unique sound that went well with the with the new direction was a bonus) and they began the songs; and not only did they find themselves inspired, they quickly found an audience; here was something that, for those people, they'd never heard in rock 'n' roll before, and they liked it. \n\nTake one of their very first songs, *titled* \"Black Sabbath\". Not only are the lyrics dark... \n > *Satan's sitting there, he's smiling* \n > *Watches those flames get higher and higher* \n\n...but the guitar riff is a diminished fifth, long known as \"The Devil's Interval\" or \"The Devil's Tritone.\" Iommi didn't know that's what it was, he just used it because \"[it sounded right](_URL_0_).\" \n\nCritics hated it. They despised it. Most critics have revised those opinions over time, or simply come to grips with the fact that the band Black Sabbath essentially invented the genre. And as with all acts that are both successful and novel, imitators arose that did the same thing. When you chase down other stories of rock and roll bands, you see the veneration they have for who Black Sabbath were.\n\nSo I mentioned the hippie craze to highlight the novelty of what they did at the time, but I also mentioned America, and the reason for that is a point Ozzy makes in his book; when he went on an American tour, he was taken aback that the occult elements that were in Black Sabbath's (and his solo career's) shows were taken very seriously by a group of American fans, to the point of being terrifying to him. To him, this was just the stuff of scary movies; to them, they genuinely believed themselves to be followers of Satan.\n\nSo on the one hand, you have rock music, which is already critical of certain Christian morality, where the pastors had long been railing against its (in their minds) evil influences already. And then here comes a band that is apparently embracing the evil the pastors have thought was behind rock music all along. And last, you have fans who have essentially gone full Kylo Ren mode, idolizing the evil side even though for the original it was merely a means to an end.\n\nThe short version of the above is that rock was never particularly Christian, but all the occult influence can be traced back to Black Sabbath; and for them, it began with a need to change, their enjoyment of horror films, and a fateful and (at the time) highly unusual decision to make the occult part of their band's identity. Because Black Sabbath was both original and successful, they influenced the genre, spawned imitators, and every band in rock that has used occult elements can trace their influences back to them.\n ", "1950s rock'n'roll, by and large, has little occult symbolism or lyrical content - instead the lyrical focus is on love, sex, dancing, and teenage life (in much the same way that the lyrical focus of most pop music today is on love, sex, dancing, and teenage life). There's a couple of exceptions in 1950s rock & roll, however, which basically play on voodoo symbolism as a schtick not meant to be taken entirely seriously. Bo Diddley is one: [his 1955 track 'Bo Diddley'](_URL_3_) mentions 'mojo come to my house, ya black cat bone', while his 1956 track 'Who Do You Love?' also has a voodoo feel to it. Bo Diddley's schtick was a sort of primitivism (the 'bo diddley' being a primitive string instrument), and Diddley was using occult references along with African-based rhythms as a sort of way of evoking 'primitive' African roots. The other is the has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed [Screamin' Jay Hawkins, whose song 'I Put A Spell On You'](_URL_9_) hams up the voodoo stuff in a 'black Vincent Price' kind of way.\n\nIn terms of the rock music of the 1960s, one important source for occult symbolism is in the blues. In the wake of the Beatles, a British blues movement came to prominence - groups like The Animals, The Rolling Stones, and the various groups Eric Clapton was in (The Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, etc) - which found inspiration in the acoustic Delta blues of the 1920s-1930s and the post-war Chicago electric blues on labels like Chess. The symbolism of the deal with the devil at the crossroads was common in the Delta blues - ['Cross Road Blues'](_URL_4_) and 'Me And The Devil Blues' by Robert Johnson are two obvious examples (it's been argued that the specifics of this symbolism has roots in west African theology reinterpreted in the black Christian environment of the Mississippi delta). Similarly, post-war Chicago blues artists like [Muddy Waters \\(e.g., 'Hoochie Coochie Man'\\)](_URL_1_) and [Howlin' Wolf \\(e.g., 'Evil'\\)](_URL_0_) played up voodoo symbolism. Anyway, of the British blues movement, [The Animals covered 'I Put A Spell On You' in 1965](_URL_5_) (playing it straight, rather than for comic effect). 'Hoochie Coochie Man' was covered by Manfred Mann in 1964 and the Graham Bond Organisation in 1965. Eric Clapton's group Cream was covering 'Cross Road Blues' live in 1966 and eventually [released it as 'Crossroads' in 1968](_URL_11_).\n\nHowever, as far as the British blues movement went, some of the voodoo references came across as ...exotic to British audiences rather than eerie and foreboding. Additionally, in the heyday of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, rock musicians started experiencing unsettling, occult-seeming experiences - were they bad trips or genuine occult experiences? This is reflected in a variety of music from the era. The Rolling Stones' overtly psychedelic 1967 album was titled *Their Satanic Majesties Request* (e.g., [the track 'We Love You'](_URL_10_)). Pink Floyd's 1967 *Piper At The Gates Of Dawn* album has [a track called 'Lucifer Sam'](_URL_2_), playing around with witches' familiar imagery. 1966 saw the release of [Donovan's song 'Season Of The Witch'](_URL_6_), with a session musician by the name of Jimmy Page prominently featured on guitar. An American psychedelic pop group who released their debut album in 1967 called themselves 'H.P. Lovecraft'. And the American rock group Love released a single in 1966, 'Six And Six Is', and an album in 1967, *Forever Changes* (e.g., ['The Red Telephone'](_URL_7_)) with occult overtones.\n\nIn the later 1960s, the British folk-rock movement chronicled in the book *Electric Eden* by Rob Young also dabbled with occult imagery, seeking to portray a weird old England a la that chronicled in (the 1970s version of) *The Wicker Man*. I've no doubt that many a metalhead has bought an album by the band Pentangle sight-unseen and discovered to their horror that it's psychedelic jazz-influenced folk rock with Joan Baez-style vocals. Bands like Pentangle and Fairport Convention often did versions of traditional songs like ['The House Carpenter'](_URL_8_) which featured narrators coming into contact with powerful occult beings.\n\nThese various cultural currents came together by the 1970s, when you get bands whose whole image more-or-less revolved around the occult, like Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. Led Zeppelin neatly tie all these trends in a bow: Jimmy Page had played in a British blues rock band (The Yardbirds) as they fought to stay on top of the psychedelic trend, and played prominent parts in more than a few psychedelic singles of 1966-1967. There was also a fascination in Led Zeppelin with the British folk-rock movement; 'Black Mountain Side' from their first album is heavily based on an arrangement by Pentangle guitarist Bert Jansch, while Fairport Convention singer Sandy Denny is prominently featured on 'Battle Of Evermore', from *Led Zeppelin IV*. Jimmy Page was also famously fascinated by the occult, to the extent of buying the occultist Aleister Crowley's former residence, and representing himself in symbolic form on *Led Zeppelin IV* using a symbol from a 16th century alchemical text (the 'zoso').\n\nSources: \n\n1. Ted Gioia, *Delta Blues*\n\n2. Andrew Hulktrans, *Love's Forever Changes (33 1/3)*\n\n2. Rob Young, *Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music*\n\n2. Erik Davis, *Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3)* \n\n" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/oct/12/popandrock.classicalmusicandopera" ], [ "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osnDVXlhxPw", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_l6A7krjrQ", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f35gUESUFvU", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJj22Z006ec", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsB_cGdgPTo", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBUICBz2-L4", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3PRkOZvAa0", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRQKvA827AI", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4jXfMEu1YY", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGPhpvqtOc", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klTw94kTstg", "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVH_si6N5pM" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cefv483" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "Yes, they did make extensive use of native Greek infantry. For example, Pompey's army at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC included large amounts of men sent from his Greek allies. However, it is likely that they fought more like the Thurepos (medium infantry/heavy skirmishers) than in a hoplite phalanx, as that formation had more or less been abandoned in Greence after the victories of Philip of Macedon against the Greek city states 250 years earlier.\n\nRegular auxilia regiments were almost exclusively raised in border regions, which neither Greece nor Magna Graecia (southern Italy) were during the heyday of the Marian Legion." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccfuqnw", "ccfv9vr" ], "score": [ 41, 17 ], "text": [ "Not a \"scam,\" but Marcus Crassus would rush to the scene of a fire with a cohort of slaves with water buckets. He would then negotiate with the owners of the house and neighboring houses in danger of burning. The price went down as the fire got worse. Once the contract of sale was made, the slaves would put out the fire.\n\nIt is conjecture, but highly likely that Crassus' men would also have hindered attempts by other people to put out the fire.\n\nThis was before Roman cities provided any kind of public fire-fighting service.", "Plutarch tells of us Crassus running to the site of a fire with slaves in tow ready to put out the fire, and offering to put the fire out only if the owner would sell the structure. \n\nIf the owner sold the building (for a significant markdown, as you can imagine), then he would put the fire out - otherwise he'd just leave. \n\nMaybe not the most elaborate scam, but with the slave (read free) labor he had, he could then rebuild and increase the rent, and he did, becoming more and more rich in the process. \n\nNot so much a scam but an abuse of power is found in Diocletian's price edict. Though it was largely ignored and not enforced, in it , one pound of purple-dyed silk had the maximum price 150,000 denarii, a luxury good par excellence used almost exclusive by the imperial household and government. The price to pay if you disobeyed the edict - death. The only buyers for the item, the people in charge of enforcing it. Sneaky. \n\nIt goes without saying that throughout its history, but especially in times of imperial decline, there was gross debasement of the currency. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cpjcaaq" ], "score": [ 17 ], "text": [ "Stone buildings actually take a surprising amount of maintenance to keep from falling apart. Stone can be worn down by rain and weather, foundations shift and settle, and lightning strikes and open-flame lamps can cause fires. York Minster, a medieval cathedral I visited last summer, has suffered from all of these things, and there are full-time stone masons constantly replacing damaged and aging sections to keep it from collapsing from normal wear-and-tear.\n\nIn antiquity, maintenance was a constant concern. During the most properous periods of the Roman empire, elite patrons would pay vast amounts of their incomes to refurbish, remodel, and replace aging monumental urban architecture. But by the fourth century, several things were changing which began to discourage this reinvestment. New laws made it increasingly expensive to hold public office within cities, and many elite families moved out of the city and invested their resources in rural villas (semi-private/public country palaces). At the same time, the church was becoming an increasingly attractive recipient of patronage, and other elites began donating money once used to maintain civic buildings to bishops (who used it to feed the poor, build churches, and establish their own country estates). As these changes were happening, the centers of power in the western Roman empire were shifting away from the city of Rome toward Milan, Ravena, and other northern-Italian cities (and, of course, to Constantinople). As these cities grew, money that had been used to maintain Rome's monumental architecture was diverted elsewhere. The destruction of Rome in 410 didn't help matters, but what really did it in were the factors above, each of which diverted resources away from completely rebuilding, renewing, and maintaining the city in its previous monumental glory.\n\nAs resources were diverted and patrons spent their money building and maintaining structures in other parts of the Mediterranean world, people in Rome began pulling down decrepit buildings to recycle their materials. Roman stone buildings were held together with iron staples; there was a lot of useful material in a run-down badly maintained building beyond the stone (which was, itself, incredibly valuable). And many buildings appear to have been replaced with parkland - Rome was full of chestnut trees by the early middle ages. It's likely that many of the people doing this remodelling preferred the new parkland to the crumbling, dangerous old buildings it replaced. Compare this with the current situation in Detroit, MI, and you can get a good idea of many of the social processes involved." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "chbhadk" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "The largest whaling fleet in the mid 17th century was Dutch. The Dutch pioneered the whaling grounds around Spitsbergen, mostly hunting the Bowhead Whale.\n\nThe Dutch whaling fleet consisted of 70 ships in 1654 and 148 ships in 1670.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nMost of these ships seem to have been three masted. See these paintings:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\nJudging by the paintings, the ships look to have been circa 100-130 feet long on deck.\n" ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Netherlands", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Abraham_Storck_-_Walvisvangst.jpg", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:18th_century_arctic_whaling.jpg" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ceum1r0" ], "score": [ 26 ], "text": [ "Not an aerial battle per se but the hysteria of the \"Battle of Los Angeles\" in 1942 over 1400 AA rounds were fired into the skies over Los Angeles. Some buildings were damaged and 5 people died (though not from the artillery fire itself, from car wrecks attributed to the chaos I think).\n\nIt is not unfathomable that unexploded ordinance killed someone falling from the sky over the course of the war. I'll keep looking to see if I can turn up something concrete." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "e1pewic" ], "score": [ 11 ], "text": [ "Oh! I collect old, weird cookbooks, and love culinary history. Aspic's been around for ages - references to gelling food go way, way back. I'm guessing you mean America (and possibly other Western countries) in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, though. As a note, \"head cheese\" is a sort of aspic which is still quite popular in many countries which are not the US. The history of Aspic's *decline* in popularity might actually be more interesting, as it ties into modern food purity concepts and advertising. \n\nGiven the usual caveats of trying to determine why a thing became popular - it's fairly safe to say aspic's visible popularity in the United States pre 1970 was partly driven by practicality, partly by availability, and partly by the increase in marketing. \n\nRefridgeration was still relatively new (I have a fun cookbook from the 70's calling it \"your secret servant\" if that gives any context, displaying the wonders of how an average person could set up the logistics of a major party by preparing elements beforehand and using cold storage). So if you look at the timeline of refridgeration becoming prevalent in American households and the timeline of Aspic's popularity as measured by cookbooks with pictures of things floating in gel, throughout, having a fridge was still a major purchase in most households, almost a status symbol in a lot of cases.\n\nGelatine itself in the US has an interesting history - you have Knoxx and Jell-O as major American companies selling it today. Koxx was actually a company developed in the late 1800's in New York after the main guy watched his wife make gelatine at home and went \"that's a lot of work, what if I pre-granulated it?\" So gelatine before Knox was time consuming hard work. Something to consider with the status impact of food is that things which are difficult and take time for a purely aesthetic result are generally the provision of that part of society which has time and money to spare, and when you have a change in technology which suddenly places a previously difficult status item into the reach of a larger population of folks with fewer resources you can expect the popularity of that item to experience a small surge. (The history of Knox Gelatine is both technically gross and very sweet.)\n\nSo you also have nutrition: aspic, using gelatine, was a high protein addition to a meal and could make other items cooked hot in it last longer by keeping air off it. You have food storage evolving with fridges being sold throughout the early to mid 1900's. Then you have this new gelatine tech in the late 1800's meeting a this with two major, major wars which had huge impacts on food availability, and you have the rise of the cookbook publishing industry with ilusteations and then photography and a rise in popular literacy and a rise in the average homeowner being able to engage in formal dinners and entertainment, much like the upper class did. And in all this you do *not* have our current squeamishness over sweet vs savory when it comes to Jell-O, because their marketing was still in it's infancy as far as selling the concept of Jell-O as a solely sweet desert. \n\nSo housewives with a frugal mindset can extend the protein dish using leftovers in a visually striking suspension which frankly looks a bit like a floating magic trick, especially back then. Think of the modern person eating bubbles of something full of smoke to experience weird cuisine today - aspics were *interesting* looking. Same fascination with new tech combined with an increasing middle class with time and energy for hosting parties combined with marketing combined with a wartime frugality mindset and a bunch of other factors. \n\nIt's worth noting that there are modern interpretations which use the visual metaphor of \"things trapped and floating\" as an emotional response to the state of the housewife in the 50's and 60's, and there was definitely an interesting sense of rebellion - women worked the factories in the war but we're kicked out after, then you have the generation fed up with the frustration of their parents rebelling against taking hours in the kitchen for a status they didn't value. \n\nAspic's *decline* in the US might be as interesting as its popularity. After all, this is a food with a long, long history, right? What made us *give it up* in favor of other foods? What led to the current squeamishness with which we currently regard it? Is it the translucency, or the association with Jell-O as a poverty food for cheap deserts? \n\n\n\n " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d4eutz0", "d4f1yk4", "d4fwec2" ], "score": [ 44, 34, 4 ], "text": [ "FWIW, [here](_URL_0_) is my earlier answer to a similar question. \n\nTL;DR: Stalin did in fact believe that Germany was the biggest threat to the Soviet Union, and the war was all but inevitable. However when exactly it would begin was unknown. The intelligence wasn't nearly as obvious as it may seem without the benefit of hindsight and the Soviets had reasons to distrust the British (who were obviously not a disinterested party). Lastly Stalin didn't want to jump the gun and hasten the war by declaring a premature mobilization of the Red Army. ", "Stalin did not expect Hitler to keep to the agreement indefinitely, what was a surprise (to him at least) was that Hitler attacked so soon, while the British were still in the fight. The Germans were trying to avoid a two-front war, hence the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in the first place. From Stalin's perspective, it appears that it would then be somewhat implausible for the Germans to launch their attack on the USSR while their flank was exposed to the British. What was not counted on in his thinking here is the idea that it was not truly going to be a two-front war, *assuming the Germans could force capitulation within the first year*. \n\nIn terms of why he disbelieved his spies and warnings from the west, that's harder to answer. Stalin trusted the British about as far as he could throw them, and he assumed (correctly) that the British would make efforts to attempt to convince the Soviets to intervene. His assumption that British or American intelligence on the impending German attack was thus fabricated was not correct. Hitler reportedly gave assurances regarding the increase in forces on or near their border, which could not possibly be concealed on such a grand scale, saying that he was shifting forces to protect them from bombing and scouting as part of a buildup to an invasion of the British Isles. In hindsight this excuse is completely ridiculous, but if Stalin already believed that it was unlikely that Hitler would attempt to take on the USSR and UK simultaneously, and if he beloved that he was being deliberately fed bad intelligence to try and pull him into a war he didn't want to get involved in, then perhaps it is not completely out of character for him to think in this instance that the Germans were legitimately not about to attack. I could perhaps speculate that part of it is that it was what Stalin *wanted* to believe, that the Germans and the UK would be locked in a long term struggle and the Soviet Union would gather strength unmolested on their periphery. But unfortunately we do not have full access to Stalin's real thoughts on this matter, we can only attempt to infer from his actions, the information he had at his disposal, and so on. ", "As others have said, Stalin knew that war was going to happen eventually. What he assumed, though, was that Hitler wasn't crazy enough to open a second front against the Soviets (at least not at the outset). He thought that the Germans would drive westward and only turn eastward later, to avoid a two-front war. In fact, at the outset of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, he was probably very confident in the Soviet position - he had averted war for a time with the Nazi's, who he predicted would drive westward and weaken capitalist states, while at the same time taking back territory in eastern Europe lost over the past couple decades during war and revolution.\n\nHe also didn't expect the Germans to advance so quickly. The swift surrender of France was alarming to Stalin and threw into question his entire strategy towards the Germans; if the west is conquered too quickly, then the Nazi's would turn eastward much sooner. So even before the front was opened he was already worrying about impending war. The Soviets accelerated their plans for \"Sovietization\" of the Baltic states. Further, the disaster of the Winter War in Finland not only showed the poor state of the Soviet military, but also was coming close to a German conflict, as the Nazi's drove eastward through Norway, something he obviously wanted to avoid.\n\nIn November 1940, in a meeting with Molotov, Hitler invited the USSR to become a partner in the Tripartite Pact, effectively offering them to join the axis. This of course wasn't a reality, given that both sides knew war between them was coming, but both wanted to buy time. Both sides negotiated on how to come to an agreement, but ultimately Hitler approved the invasion of the USSR in December. During this entire period the Soviet leadership was working to get the military in a war-ready state.\n\nThe Germans attacked in June 1941. The night before, a German sergeant defected and warned the Soviets, who weren't sure if he was telling the truth or a provocateur. Despite the request of his generals to make the troops combat ready, Stalin denied that an invasion was imminent and asserted that it was possibly the latter.\n\nStalin was informed shortly after 3am that the Germans had invaded. Military leadership arrived to meet with him shortly thereafter, at which he continued to express doubt about the invasion, positing that it could merely be a provocation by German generals and that \"Hitler surely doesn't know about this.\" He sent Molotov to meet with the German ambassador and refused to order a counterstrike until he returned.\n\nMolotov returned. His meeting with the Ambassador did not go well (obviously). The German claim was that they had to take countermeasures in response to the aggressive military build-up on the Soviet's side. They had clearly not needed much of an excuse to invade. In response to Molotov's account of the meeting, Zhukov claims Stalin \"silently dropped into his chair and became immersed in thought. A long and painful pause ensued.\" He concluded that a counterattack was acceptable as long as the troops didn't violate German borders. This was four hours after the invasion commenced. Zhukov continues:\n\n > During the first day he was not able to really take himself in hand and get a firm grip on events. The shock to I.V. Stalin caused by the enemy invasion was so strong that his voice even became softer and his instructions on organizing the military effort were not always appropriate to the situation.\"\n\nChadaev later recalled:\n\n > Early on the morning of 22 June I caught sight of Stalin in the corridor. He had arrived at work after a brief sleep. He looked tired, worn out, and sad. His pockmarked face was sunken. You could see he was depressed.\n\nIn short, the reason that Stalin was so surprised was because he was so committed to both a strategy and an idea of Hitler that were both wrong. His strategy for dealing with the Germans was to enter into an agreement with them, to ensure that they didn't drive eastward. This was precluded by the Nazi's swift westward advance through Europe and Hitler's foolish idea to open a second eastern front (something Stalin didn't think him stupid enough to do). His assessment of Hitler was that of a relatively reasonable man, who he didn't think would subvert the agreements made between the two countries as easily as he did. Remember that even in November and December as Hitler was preparing to formally approve the invasion of the USSR, Stalin and Molotov were still attempting to negotiate with him on the Tripartite Pact, Finnish occupation and Eastern European issues (Romanian oil fields, for example). So when the invasion commenced, even though he had a pretty good idea of it happening at some point in the future, he didn't think it would come either as soon as it did, or in the manner it did. His denial of the invasion, claiming the possibility of a provocation by German generals and *not* Hitler's order, is evidence of his commitment to this idea and his disbelief at the notion that he was wrong.\n\nRemember also that Stalin was just never wrong. He never admitted wrongdoing and hardly changed his mind on anything. The only times he ever changed his mind on issues were when he was faced with a physical impossibility, and in every instance of this he did so very slowly and grudgingly (and of course never admitting so). This is a great example of that.\n\nSource: Stalin, New Biography of A Dictator. Khlevniuk, Oleg V." ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3px35z/why_did_stalin_choose_to_trust_hitler_before_the/cwabwa5" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "drv00d5" ], "score": [ 3 ], "text": [ "They identified as Muslims or Druze or Christians, i.e. based on their religion. They also identified with their locale, i.e. Mt.Lebanon, Bekaa Valley, this or that village. \n\nMany did identify with the Ottomans also btw, as loyal subjects. Christian and Arab disloyalty is overblown. Mostly just nation state historiography trying to justify 19-20th century politics by retroactively inventing a subversive history i.e. “we were always struggling to become what we know think we are!”\n\nChristians were so loyal that the Ottoman state armed them to the teeth for the first time to put down Yahya Ali’s revolt and also the Anatolian Jelalis a century earlier. " ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d1c6z76", "d1cddxo" ], "score": [ 71, 1823 ], "text": [ "If true, may I also ask how they picked the man? It seems almost a death sentence.", "The Spartans liked to play up the idea that they were, in Xenophon's words, \"the only craftsmen of war\" in a world of military amateurs. They alone forbade their citizens from pursuing any other profession, to make sure they would dedicate themselves entirely to preparation for war. They alone organised their armies for maximum efficiency in battle, drilling their troops to carry out basic manoeuvres and managing large formations through a detailed officer hierarchy. When allies asked them for help, they would often argue that their expertise was sufficient, and that actual \"boots on the ground\" would not be needed.\n\nThere are a couple of famous examples of them responding to a request for help by sending one Spartan. Someone already mentioned Gylippos, who was sent to help the Syracusans withstand the Athenian siege of 415-413 BC. However, Gylippos was accompanied by thousands of allied troops and *neodamodeis* (Spartan serfs given their freedom in return for military service). He was merely the only \"Spartan\" they sent. A better example would be Salaithos, who was sent to aid Mytilene on Lesbos against the Athenians in 428/7 BC, and had to sneak in alone through the bed of the stream that ran into the town. Both of these men would expect to be given supreme command over the forces of those they were sent to help.\n\nHowever, we shouldn't make too much of this as a symbolic expression of Spartan superiority. The example of Gylippos shows the Spartans were well aware that their allies would need more substantial help. The real issue here is that the Spartans were incredibly hesitant to deploy their own citizens in situations were they might come to harm. Citizen numbers were dwindling throughout the Classical period, and full Spartiates were fast becoming a precious commodity. Both the military power of Sparta and its internal stability ultimately rested on the ability of its citizen body to maintain its numbers and dominate its serf population and its allies. As a result, if Sparta was asked for help, the Spartans would send basically anyone except their own citizens. They would avoid risking the lives of Spartiates if they possibly could. Gylippos is a notable example, because he was not, in fact, a citizen - he was a *mothake*, the bastard of a Spartiate and a helot. The same goes for the famous Spartan admiral Lysander, whose campaigns ended the Peloponnesian War. The Spartan Salaithos I just mentioned gives striking testimony to the Spartan approach to war: when he was captured and executed by the Athenians in 427 BC, *five years* into the Peloponnesian War, he was to the best of our knowledge *the first Spartan citizen to die.* \n\nMany Spartan expeditionary forces of the later Classical period were organised in a standard pattern where a Spartan commander and a staff of Spartan citizens (usually just 30) led a force composed entirely of *neodamodeis*, mercenaries, and allied troops. The commitment of citizens was, again, deliberately minimal. Even when Sparta got sucked into a war with the Persian Empire, they merely sent successive groups of 30 Spartiates in command of thousands of allies and mercenaries who did the actual fighting.\n\nIt was only when Spartan interests were directly threatened, or the reputation of Sparta itself was at stake, that the Spartan army would march out in full force. They led the usual 2/3rds of their levy into Athenian territory each year during the early stages of the Peloponnesian War, knowing that they needed to show their allies that they were willing to walk the walk, but also knowing that the Athenians would never come out to meet them. They only really got involved when the Athenians began to raid Spartan lands, and especially when the Athenians built a fort at Pylos in Messenia that provided a refuge for runaway helots. The largest Spartan levies were actually not sent against Athens at all, but against Argos, when this city-state challenged Spartan supremacy on the Peloponnese in 420-418 BC. The pattern is very clear. If the Spartans could get away with it, they would send as few as they possibly could. If they cared, they would send as many as they could spare." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cyin1nu" ], "score": [ 10 ], "text": [ "Here are some past posts on the topic, with room for expansion and followup questions:\n\n* [*Why did Chechnya want independence from the Russian Federation?*](_URL_2_) \n^(28 Jul 2014 | 2 comments) \n^(/u/kaisermatias analyzes the issue in context with the fall of the USSR.)\n\n* [*Please explain the Chechen rebellion/war*](_URL_0_) \n^(15 Oct 2012 | 23 comments) \n^(/u/blindingpain contextualizes both recent and long-held grievances between Chechnya and Russia.)\n\n* [*Wednesday AMA: Chechnya*](_URL_1_) \n^(08 May 2013 | 354 comments) \n^(/u/blindingpain does an AMA on the topic which may provide for further background info.)" ] }

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[ [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11i74e/please_explain_the_chechen_rebellionwar/c8z5ia9", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dxxob/wednesday_ama_chechnya/", "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2bxjh5/why_did_chechnya_want_independence_from_the/cjabamf" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "esrw6wl" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "Do you mean between the Achaemenid Empire and the Sasanian Empire? They were both Persian, unlike the Arsacid Empire, which was ruled by a Parthian(-ish) dynasty." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cisqqeb", "cisuoyi", "cit4i98", "ciww7xj" ], "score": [ 13, 2, 2, 2 ], "text": [ "Haha, a great question inspired by a fun (though not historically accurate) movie. \n\nAs it sounds like you've already guessed, the diverse communities of Indigenous peoples of the Americas were (and are), like pretty much all other groups of people, as diverse as the individuals who made them up. Even in Pocahontas, you can see this: Kokoum is different from Powhatan is different from Pocahontas. Some individuals were perhaps more inclined to violence than others, some more likely to broker peace. This is not just true of Indigenous people, though, is it? There were significant battles between rival Indigenous groups in the precontact period; a great essay on this is \"The Battle at Maple Bay: The Dynamics of Coast Salish Political Organization through Oral Histories,\" by Bill Angelbeck and Eric McLay (Ethnohistory journal, summer 2011, p. 359-392). Essentially what this essay describes is how diverse Coast Salish communities united to fight off threatening Lewkiltok raiders. This is an example which shows that the picture is much more complex than what is presented in Disney's Pocahontas movie. Certainly the arrival of Europeans caused the relationships of peace and war between Indigenous communities to become even more complicated; as colonizing powers duked out the balance of power in eastern North America, some Indigenous nations would side with the English, while others took up with the French. \n\nOne thing that I hesitate to declare as a universal truth (only because I am reluctant to use sweeping generalizations) even while I have only ever seen it to be the case, is the depth of Indigenous knowledge about their territories. When your ancestors have lived in the same place for millenia, you inherit the benefit of all of their combined knowledge about the natural world you live in. So especially in the precontact period, people likely knew a vast deal about the land they lived on. \n\nI am also a bit wary of answering the question as it pertains to Indigenous spiritualities. In the Disney movie, Pocahontas seems to be able to speak to animals as well as Grandmother Willow. I do not specialize in Indigenous histories of the eastern coast, so I can't really explore those ideas significantly. On the west coast, Indigenous spiritual lives were directly tied to the land; Coast Salish origin stories explain how the world was made by spiritual beings, who set it right when it was unformed and chaotic. It is likely that for many Indigenous people, there may have been little distinction between \"spiritual\" and \"natural\" knowledge about their territories. \n\nBut getting to the heart of your question, I think it European texts written about Indigenous histories are often problematic. Some of them, like the Disney movie, romanticize Indigenous cultures, creating an overly-sunny picture of Indigenous lives prior to contact. This is a problem because it means we do not see the full picture. On the other hand, many of these texts are extremely critical of Indigenous lives, calling Indigenous people \"savages,\" \"heathens,\" and referring to them as subhuman. This body of European literature is, of course, also problematic, because it imposes European morality and social mores onto another culture, reinforcing the European idea that Europeans are at the top of a racial hierarchy. \n\nI guess the TL;DR here is this: most texts about Indigenous peoples have issues, and Indigenous communities in the pre- and early-contact periods were made up of diverse individuals reacting to sometimes difficult circumstances. ", "This question cannot really be answered because of the sheer diversity within various native tribes. Some were fairly peaceful, others were incredibly violent, and many were places in between.\n\nMy own study has focused on early Colonial America, so I'm more familiar with various native groups prior to the real establishment of the United States. \n\nSeveral books I recommend would be *Changes in the Land,* by William Cronon, *Journey into Mohawk Country,* by George O'Conner, and *The Narative of Cabeza de Vaca,* by Rolena Adorno and Patrick Pautz. \n\nIn addition, I can recommend several journals and online resources if you are a little more specific in your interest. Again, there is incredible diversity within various native groups, and the natives of Florida are not at all going to resemble those of the Five Nations.\n\nSeveral examples:\n\n-Many native groups did indeed have very different ideals of property rights and ownership. In some groups, possessions were traded freely, and when visiting another tribe, it was customary to give valued objects to visitors under the assumption that the next people you visited would give you their stuff. This caused many problems with European immigrants who would be outraged at natives coming into their houses and taking their things.\n\n-Many native tribes practiced slavery, or forms of it. Various south-western tribes openly enslaved each other, mentally breaking captives through torture and putting them to work. In other tribes, this process was actually meant to replace casualties, and only the strong were selected. Captives were brutally tortured, and if they bore through it, would be admitted into the tribe. Some of the procedures were pretty graphic - for example driving arrows longways through the forearm. If you screamed, they killed you.\n\n-Many groups, especially those in the plains and northern midwest engaged in a self-fueling process of \"mourning wars.\" Young men gained status through stealing horses, which often led to skirmishes with neighboring tribes. When someone was killed, the tribe would seek revenge on a one-to-one basis, attempting to kidnap a rival tribe member to replace the one they had lost. This could lead to generations of tribal warfare.\n\n-During the journeys of Cabeza de Vaca, the author writes about his experiences through much of the Southeast of North America. He encounters drastically different tribes and customs. At one point he is enslaved, along with an African man. Some tribes he encounters helped him. At one point, three African slaves who escaped from a Spanish colony are found to have had their kneecaps cut out and been burned alive by a native tribe. At other times, several Africans and a European man seem to have been openly welcomed into a tribe.\n\n-There are many accounts of white settlers being kidnapped by natives and not wanting to return to Colonial society. Some of this is likely Stockholm-symptom-esque, the result of torture, but many accounts indicate no maltreatment, (though women were usually given to a native man, with all obvious implications)\n\nAnyway, I'm rambling at this point, but let me know more specifically what you're interested, or if there's anything you'd like clarification on, and I'll see what I can find.\n\nedit: Did not see the bit about spiritual/nature stuff, ooops: \n\nYes, they were definitely spiritual in many senses, but we should not pretend their medical knowledge was too effective. In many cases, Europeans were asked for assistance in healing. H.M. van den Bogaert in his travels writes that in every medical ceremony he witnessed, the primary act seemed to be the village priests literally vomiting on the head/body of the sick individual. Lots of singing and dancing were involved as well. \n\nAs far as spiritualism was concerned, religious beliefs seemed to be very flexible and open to interpretation. European ideas of strict Christianity and heaven/hell made little sense, but many natives sort of adapted aspects of Christianity into their spirituality. Jesus sort of became another spirit - one of many.", "Short answer, No.\n\nModern day depiction of Native Americans often portray them as those who respected nature, and were some how connected to nature in some spiritual sense, but this idea of \"Noble savage\" is a misconception and misunderstanding of the Native American culture.\n\nPre-Columbian Native Americans were just as exploitative of natural resources and were environmentally destructive. For example the Hohokams in Arizona, known for incredible canals, completely salinating the area, they burned fields on the plain for trivial reasons, hunted buffaloes and dears without much concern. Essentially they were pretty environmentally destructive. Not on the scales of capitalist Europeans destructive, but still pretty destructive and not much care regarding nature either way.\n\nSource: \"The Ecological Indian\" Shepard Krech", "Others have talked about various Native cultures, either generally or with specifics fairly far removed from the Powhatans. Since you're question was inspired by Disney's *Pocahontas* I thought it would be good to focus on the culture at the center of the movie.\n\n**Peaceful?**\n\nThough there were efforts to establish peaceful relations with between the Powhatans and the English, these eventually broken down into a cycle Anglo-Powhatan Wars punctuated by intermittent peace for 70 years. Even before the English arrived, the Powhatans had their share of offensive and defensive violence, like most other cultures.\n\nWhen the English arrived in Virginia, the Powhatan had numerous enemies. One of these, the Massawomecks--a little-known Iroquoian nation that came down fom the mountains along the Potomac River to trade and raid around Chesapeake Bay, gets name-dropped at the beginning of the movie as Powhatan and the other men return from ending that threat (an ahistorical military campaign).\n\nHistorically, the Massawomeck were a peripheral threat to the Powhatans, overshadowed by others like the Susquehannocks, an Iroquoian nation named for the river along which they lived; the Monacan, a Souian nation living inland from the Powhatans; and the Spanish, an Indoeuropean nation that had relatively recently come to the shores of the Southeast.\n\nOf these, the Monacan and their Manahoac allies were a perennial concern for the Powhatans, particularly for those living along the Fall Line which served as the border between Powhatan and Monacan territory. The Powhatans suffered yearly attacks by the Monacan, in part because the Powhatans frequently crossed that border to hunt in the Piedmont between the mountains and the Fall Line, particularly in the fall and winter. Because of the Monacan threat, Powhatan towns near the Fall Line were usually fortified while those closer to the coast were more dispersed and lacked defensive walls. After the English arrived, the Powhatan was quite concerned about keeping the English and the Monacan apart, so that the Monacan could not benefit from trade with the English. The English's persistent attempts to establish trade contacts with the Monacan contributed to the early souring of Anglo-Powhatan relations. Eventually the Powhatans and the Monacan put aside their differences to unite the common English threat.\n\nAs for the Spanish, since the early part of the 1500s, they'd been creeping up from the south, making several vain attempts to colonize the region. The story of the one most relevant to the Powhatans begins in ~1560, when a Spanish vessel arrived on the York River. When they left, they had a young man from Kiskiack (a community that may or may not have been part of the growing Powhatan confederacy at the time, but would be by the time the English arrived) on board. Eventually, this man would be known as Don Luis de Velasco, after traveling from Virginia to Spain to Mexico City. After Mexico City, he was part of a failed effort by the Spanish to colonize the Eastern Shore which retreated to Cuba. In September 1570, he was part of a second colonizing effort, this time to establish the Ajacán Mission (Axacan being what the Spanish of the time called the territory north of La Florida). Where the Ajacán Mission was founded is unknown today, but it was somewhere in the vicinity of Kiskiack. So close to home, Don Luis abandoned the Spanish priests. In February 1571, the three of the priests went looking for Don Luis, which seems to have triggered a confrontation. Don Luis led warriors back to the mission; there was one Spanish survivor. The destruction of the Ajacán Mission ended Spanish efforts to colonize north of La Florida.\n\nWhen Powhatan came to power, he sent about to expand the confederacies influence--by force when necessary. The best known example of what happened to people who did not integrate peacefully into the confederacy occurred in 1597. At the time, Kecoughtan was still an autonomous community at the end of the [Virginia Peninsula](_URL_1_). The weroance (\"chief\") of Kecoughtan was killed, and the Kecoughtans were forcibly relocated to new settlements elsewhere within the confederacy. Powhatan appointed a new weroance of Kecoughtan--his son, Pochins--and the area re-settled with people more loyal to the Powhatan and the confederacy. The Chesapeakes, who lived just south of Kecoughtan, may have suffered a similar fate--that situation is more ambiguous.\n\nWithin Powhatan society, crimes might also be severely punished. Sometimes a crime might only result in the loss of property or a beating, depending on the nature of the offense. But for the most severe crimes, the executioner's mace, flaying shells, or fire awaited. Henry Spelman, who was in his early teens when he arrived in Jamestown and was sent to live among the Powhatans for a time to learn their language, observed five executions during his stay with them (about 18 months). Four of these executions all resulted from the murder of a single child by its mother and two accomplices--the forth execution was a witness whom the conspirators had bribed into silence. The last execution Spelman saw was of a man who had been caught stealing copper from a traveler--one of two varieties of theft that could result in a death penalty (stealing corn being the other). The murderers had their bones broken before being burned alive; the robber met a swifter end with a blow to the head.\n\nSome prisoners-of-war might meet similar fates, but not certainly not all. Women and children were preferentially taken a live, and even some men could be expect kind treatment ([as John Smith received](_URL_2_)). \n\n**Spiritual?**\n\n\"Spiritual\" is an ambiguous word, and means different things to different people. The Powhatans did have their own religion, [which I've discussed before](_URL_0_) in comparison to the native religion of southern England. If you have any follow-up questions on that front, let me know.\n\n**Knowledgeable about nature?**\n\nThe average Powhatan man made his living by hunting and fishing; the average Powhatan woman made hers by farming and harvesting wild plants. Both sexes started learning the essentials of their trade at young ages and plenty of opportunities to learn the necessary knowledge and skills to be successful at their designated roles. Men knew where build their traps and when best to hunt which species. Women knew when to plant and harvest, where favored wild plants grew best and when they were in season. The average person might know a bit about herbal remedies too, but the majority of medicinal knowledge was monopolized by the *kwiokosuk*--the priests." ] }

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[ [], [], [], [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/257216/did_the_native_americans_john_rolfes_group_met_in/chee4dd", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Peninsula#mediaviewer/File:Virginia-peninsula.png", "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ab5bf/ive_recently_heard_two_conflicting_accounts_of/ciuakxe?context=3" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "ckee6ww" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "There are quite a few accounts. There is a [comprehensive list on wikipedia](_URL_4_), and a list with more information but fewer entries in the [Jewish Encyclopedia](_URL_0_). Some Jewish sects — especially Hasidic ones — believe that there is a potential Messiah in every generation (this is [Chabad's view](_URL_1_), for example).\n\n[Bar Kokhba](_URL_3_) (- 135 CE), the leader of a large revolt against the Romans, was believed by Rabbi Akiva and many others to be the Messiah. \n\nThe most infamous Messiah claimant was [Sabbatai Zevi](_URL_2_) (1626 - 1676), who was forced to convert to Islam by the Ottoman Sultan. \n\nMost recently, the Lubavicher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson was regarded by many of his followers as the Messiah until his death in 1994. A small sect still continues to believe that he was the Messiah and predicts his return. If you want to learn more about him and his movement, I recommend reading [The Rebbe's Army by Sue Fishkoff](_URL_5_)." ] }

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[ [ "http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12416-pseudo-messiahs", "http://www.chabad.org/library/moshiach/article_cdo/aid/101679/jewish/The-Personality-of-Mashiach.htm", "http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13480-shabbethai-zebi-b-mordecai", "http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2471-bar-kokba-and-bar-kokba-war", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Messiah_claimants", "http://www.amazon.ca/The-Rebbes-Army-Inside-Chabad-Lubavitch/dp/0805211381" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "dxhsya0", "dxj8vcc" ], "score": [ 4, 5 ], "text": [ "As you've probably figured out, the single most important thing to do is to pick a topic and just *go*. Forget the others. So with that said...\n\nIn any of these cases, you're not picked the thesis of your argument, or even the question that you will be answering. That will come later, out of your research! \n\nTake your first idea, GIs in Vietnam. So you read a bunch of books about the experience of soldiers in the Vietnam War. And not just firsthand accounts. You read secondary analyses about race and racism within units, morale, POWs, injured soldiers, medics' views, chaplains, what have you. Follow footnotes in the books and articles you read to more footnotes. Eventually you'll start to zero in on a couple of things you're interested in--say, soldiers' changing relationship with all things America (pop culture, family members, politics, etc). You read more down that route. Eventually, you get to a point where you realize hey, there's not much research on how social class mattered in the effect that the war had on GIs' relationships with their girlfriends back home. (...I dunno, this isn't what I do).\n\nSo don't worry about getting too far ahead of yourself just yet! It's natural for your topic to evolve and narrow down into your question. (I had to propose a question and thesis for my PhD dissertation, even--while my topic has stayed the same, the question is VERY different, and this is not just okay but *expected*).\n\nIt's really good that you're already thinking of language issues. Access to primary sources in your language is another topic. I can see how looking at the British Empire would be useful because there are probably lots of published collections of sources there. Or stuff like 19th century travelogues available for free on Google Books/_URL_0_. Maybe you could start by reading a bunch of those, along with the scholarship on their authors or on the genre of texts, and work your way towards a thesis that way. How do authors of travelogues in Africa vs Asia talk about Empire? etc.\n\nBasically: pick a topic--just do it, you'll pull it off--and start reading. You'll read your way into your question, and you'll read your way into your answer. :)", "This might sound dull but whatever you pick for your proposal make sure that there are likely primary sources are not just in your language but are to some degree local to you. The Internet is great but even in this day and age there's still no real substitute for archival work. \n\nTake the British Empire topic for example, would there be documents at a local / accessible national archive for you to use or are they held overseas. \n\nReading is super important but don't neglect the practical side of the topic you chose for your dissertation (or indeed in your proposal) , I knew lots of people in my undergraduate days who chose to go for some big exciting topic only to find that it meant a trip all the way across the country (and in some cases multiple countries) which severely hampered them. Choosing something for which the primary sources are accessible will make your life so much easier. \n" ] }

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[ [ "archive.org" ], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cf6kl4o" ], "score": [ 2 ], "text": [ "[According to this previous answer, Pliny the Younger survived and described the eruption in a letter](_URL_0_)." ] }

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[ [ "http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1adul6/what_did_the_romans_believe_happened_to_pompeii/c8wh2n0" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cmu7qtx" ], "score": [ 9 ], "text": [ "The Battle of Stirling Bridge, listed in the movie only as \"Stirling\", was definitely inaccurate. The single most important aspect of the battle was the bridge and that appeared nowhere in the movie.\n\nWallace patiently allowed 40-60% of the English army to cross the narrow bridge. These men after crossing the bridge were tightly trapped in a loop of the river with their only escape to swim or use the bridge. The bridge was very narrow so that only two men abreast could ride across. When Wallace sprang his trap men with long spears forced charged the English troops. The right flank advanced quickly and secured the bridge ensuring the only escape was to swim. By splitting the numerically superior army and by crowding the cavalry with long spears the Scots defeated a much larger force. The key to the victory was the use of terrain specifically the narrow bridge and the bend in the river.\n\nI loved the movie but I couldn't watch it anymore after I learned that they had shortened \"The Battle of Stirling Bridge\" to merely \"Stirling.\" \n\n[The Battle of Stirling Bridge](_URL_0_) " ] }

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[ [ "http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/articles/battle_of_stirling_bridge/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "da0eoqj", "da0rv8o" ], "score": [ 23, 40 ], "text": [ "The paucity of sources for ancient history can certainly be frustrating, but the upside is that when someone wants to know all there is to know about something, it is often possible to say, well, here it is. So, well, here it is:\n\n**Tacitus**\n\n[**Annales** *XIV.31-37*](_URL_0_). It is a long section so I'm just linking it, suffice to say virtually everything I am about to post is connected with that.\n\n**Agricola** *14-16*: \n\n > So was maintained the ancient and long-recognised practice of the Roman people, which seeks to secure among the instruments of dominion even kings themselves. Soon after, Didius Gallus consolidated the conquests of his predecessors, and advanced a very few positions into parts more remote, to gain the credit of having enlarged the sphere of government. Didius was succeeded by Veranius, who died within the year. Then Suetonius Paullinus enjoyed success for two years; he subdued several tribes and strengthened our military posts. Thus encouraged, he made an attempt on the island of Mona, as a place from which the rebels drew reinforcements; but in doing this he left his rear open to attack.\n\n > 15 Relieved from apprehension by the legate's absence, the Britons dwelt much among themselves on the miseries of subjection, compared their wrongs, and exaggerated them in the discussion. \"All we get by patience,\" they said, \"is that heavier demands are exacted from us, as from men who will readily submit. A single king once ruled us; now two are set over us; a legate to tyrannise over our lives, a procurator to tyrannise over our property. Their quarrels and their harmony are alike ruinous to their subjects. The centurions of the one, the slaves of the other, combine violence with insult. Nothing is now safe from their avarice, nothing from their lust. In war it is the strong who plunders; now, it is for the most part by cowards and poltroons that our homes are rifled, our children torn from us, the conscription enforced, as though it were for our country alone that we could not die. For, after all, what a mere handful of soldiers has crossed over, if we Britons look at our own numbers. Germany did thus actually shake off the yoke, and yet its defence was a river, not the ocean. With us, fatherland, wives, parents, are the motives to war; with them, only greed and profligacy. They will surely fly, as did the now deified Julius, if once we emulate the valour of our sires. Let us not be panicstricken at the result of one or two engagements. The miserable have more fury and greater resolution. Now even the gods are beginning to pity us, for they are keeping away the Roman general, and detaining his army far from us in another island. We have already taken the hardest step; we are deliberating. And indeed, in all such designs, to dare is less perilous than to be detected.\"\n\n > 16 Rousing each other by this and like language, under the leadership of Boudica, a woman of kingly descent (for they admit no distinction of sex in their royal successions), they all rose in arms. They fell upon our troops, which were scattered on garrison duty, stormed the forts, and burst into the colony itself, the head-quarters, as they thought, of tyranny. In their rage and their triumph, they spared no variety of a barbarian's cruelty. Had not Paullinus on hearing of the outbreak in the province rendered prompt succour, Britain would have been lost. By one successful engagement, he brought it back to its former obedience, though many, troubled by the conscious guilt of rebellion and by particular dread of the legate, still clung to their arms. Excellent as he was in other respects, his policy to the conquered was arrogant, and exhibited the cruelty of one who was avenging private wrongs. Accordingly Petronius Turpilianus was sent out to initiate a milder rule. A stranger to the enemy's misdeeds and so more accessible to their penitence, he put an end to old troubles, and, attempting nothing more, handed the province over to Trebellius Maximus.\n\n\n[**Cassius Dio** LXII 1-12](_URL_1_)\n\nAnd that is pretty much it. There are a handful of other passing mentions, but nothing really substantial.", "u/Tiako has given a nice list of the available sources, but no interpretation thereof.^1 So I'll add that all those sources (Dio & two different works of Tacitus) are problematic, and none of them can be fully trusted. \n\nTo begin with, all three sources tell a different story. People usually prefer the Tacitus account from the *annales*, because it is the longest and most detailed and, well, frankly, it is by far the best story with the best speeches and the most plausible-sounding motivations. Roughly paraphrased by me, Tacitus' version goes like this:\n\n_____________________________\n > Boudica is the wife of a pro-Roman British king, Prasutagus of the Iceni. When her husband dies, he leaves half his kingdom to their two daughters, and half to the Roman emperor Nero, probably because he is afraid the Romans might otherwise contest his will. Unfortunately for him, they do so anyway: the procurator of Roman Britain (who is the villain of the piece) sends some slaves and soldiers to take over the kingdom. When Boudica protests, she is flogged (an outrage: as the wife of an allied king she'd be a Roman citizen, who must never be flogged in Roman law) and her two daughters are raped by the Romans. \n\n > In response, the Iceni rise in revolt, and other British tribes join them. They march on the hated *colonia* of Camoludunum, modern day Colchester, where many retired Roman soldiers live, and burn it to the ground. They defeat a detachment of Roman troops of the Ninth legion sent to stop them. They then march on Londinium, the biggest Roman settlement in Britain.\n\n > Meanwhile, the governor of Britain, Suetonius Paulinus, is rushing back from Wales. (Where he was trying to exterminate the druids, as one does when one is a Roman general.) He warns the citizens of Londinium that he doesn't have enough men to defend them and tells them to evacuate, but many refuse. The Britons attack, sack the city, massacre the population and move on.\n\n > By this time Suetonius Paulinus has finally gathered most of the Roman forces in the province and picks a good place to face the giant British horde. Made overconfident by their success and their vastly greater numbers, the Britons march straight into his trap. Boudica and Paulinus deliver some rousing speeches to their respective troops, hers full of passion and fire, his reserved and practical, and the fight is on. Roman order and discipline quickly breaks the British army, who are massacred. Boudica kills herself, and the rebellion is over.\n_____________________________\n\nTo this story they then add the physical description from Dio, because... well, he's the only one to give a physical description at all.\n\n > _____________________\n > \"In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips; around her neck was a large golden necklace; and she wore a tunic of divers colours over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch. This was her invariable attire. \"\n > _____________________\n\nThe problem is that all three accounts of Boudica are extremely Roman in context. They're written by Roman historians, and are full of Roman ideas about virtue, femininity, justice, government, etc. The famous story of greedy Romans flogging Boudica and raping her daughters? It's only in the *annales.* Not only does Dio not mention it, but neither does Tacitus himself in his *Agricola.* (Which, I might add, he actually wrote much earlier.) In Tacitus' *Agricola* the Britons rebel for freedom, not to avenge the assault on the royal women and the usurpation of Prasutagus' kingdom. In Dio, taxation and extortion by Roman officials is the cause. \n\nLater in the *Agricola* Tacitus refers to Boudica as leading the Brigantes, not the Iceni, and mentions the sacking of a Roman camp that the *annales* tell us she avoided. The end of her rebellion likewise is different in each case: in Dio, she dies of disease. In Tacitus' *annales*, she kills herself, in his *Agricola* there's no mention of her fate at all.\n\nWhenever the supposedly Briton characters in these sources speak (and all speeches in all Roman histories are the work of the author, not the actual words of the historical personages) they do so for a Roman audience, referring to the Roman context. It's laughably obvious in Dio's history, where Boudica spends half the speech referring to legendary queens from Greek and Roman myth such as Nitocris and Semiramis, or to powerful women from recent Roman history such as Agrippina and Messalina. Dio actually puts a parenthetical \"For we have learned about these from the Romans\" after \"Boudica\" says this, because otherwise all this classical learning from a British queen might have been too much even for his audience to stomach. Even the rather fun dig Dio's Boudica aims at Nero, \"[the Romans] are slaves to a lyre-player and a poor one too,\" is clearly more something a Roman historian would say rather than a British queen.\n\nHowever, even the much more subtle and believable-sounding passages in Tacitus are replete with such Roman contexts and Roman ideas about morality and justice. Where Dio's Boudica is a brutal, masculine, Barbarian queen, and Tacitus' Boudica in the *Agricola* seems quite similar to Dio's version, his Boudica in the *annales* behaves and is described like a virtuous Roman matron, avenging a wrong done to her as a Roman citizen by greedy and low-born servants of a rapacious procurator. Tacitus' version of the rebellion is a morality tale: The greedy Romans offend against the natural order whilst the (brave, disciplined, properly Roman) governor Paulinus is away, and as a result they are punished by death and defeat at the hands of the Britons. However, the Britons aren't satisfied with their revenge and continue their war, and are then punished by the returning governor, who restores proper law and order. \n\nTacitus version is by far the best story. It is also the most appealing to us, because it is written with a much more sympathetic and understanding view towards the rebelling Britons, whom we are naturally inclined to sympathise with. (Particularly if we're British. Which, incidentally, I'm not.) But there's no more reason to take it at face value than the other two accounts we have. *Maybe* everything he tells actually happened, if not quite in the way he tells it. Likely parts of it are made up. It's impossible to tell for sure.\n\nSo what do we know for certain? The broad strokes of the story must be true. Roman historians were relatively free to add their own slant to what they wrote, but they wouldn't get away with making big events or battles up wholesale. There was a rebellion. We know Boudica's husband Prasutagus existed: we found coins minted in his name. We know the rebels sacked two Roman cities: archaeologists have found the layer of burning caused by the Britons' sack of Camoludunum and Londinium. (No mass graves matching this period have been discovered, though it's difficult to interpret what this means. Perhaps the population managed to flee, or perhaps the corpses weren't buried? Or perhaps the casualties were just wildly exaggerated?) Did Boudica lead the rebellion? Probably, though it's possible she was not the only leader and just the one that stood out the most to the Romans, who weren't used to seeing female leaders. Finally, we know that Paulinus defeated the Britons. \n\nWe'll probably never know what kind of a person Boudica actually was, or what motivated her. The sources on her life are extremely interesting, but they teach us much more about what conservative upper-class Romans thought about women, foreigners and justice than they do about the actual personality and motivations of the characters they're ostensibly describing. \n\nStill, no matter what we believe or do not believe, Tacitus tells one hell of a story.\n\n_______________________\n\nSources:\n\n* Tacitus, *Annales* & *Agricola*\n* Cassius Dio, *Roman History*\n* Braund, David. *Ruling Roman Britain: Kings, Queens, Governors and Emperors from Julius Caesar to Agricola.* London: Routledge, 1996.^2\n\n1) Initially, I'd accidentally posted this as a reply to u/Tiako's [post](_URL_0_) when it was meant as a top-level comment. Oops. Apologies to anyone who's confused by this. \n\n2) Much of the above interpretation about the inherent Romanness of Tacitus' account and the difficulty in accepting any of our sources on face value comes from Braund's analysis, which I find very compelling. However, it is possible there are counterarguments or more modern scholarship I am not aware of. Anyone who is is more than welcome to add to this." ] }

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[ [ "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/tacitus/annals/14b*.html", "http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/62*.html#1" ], [ "https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5cxtr4/how_much_do_we_know_about_the_historical_boudica/da0eoqj/" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "c8cfitp" ], "score": [ 5 ], "text": [ "Not in the sense your TKD instructor told you, no.\n\nAlthough all combat training can be considered martial arts, and thus, soldiers/armies used them, there were no flying kicks to knock raiders off horseback done by subsistence rice farmers.\n\nEven a great fighter/martial artist cannot reliably fight two or three opponents. If there are multiple weapons involved then it would be even worse for the kungfu master.\n\nsource: common sense, bullshido, 4 years of TMA, 7 years (now) of 'MMA' (Bjj & Kickboxng with some boxing)" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "c72jlj7", "c72k3x7" ], "score": [ 5, 5 ], "text": [ "It has been a part of the [Hypocratic Oath](_URL_0_) since at least the 5C, and if actually written by Hypocrates, since the 4C BC. In many countries, the oath has been traditionally used by doctors to the present day.", "Partially answered my own question by delving further into wikipedia:\n[17th century to 19th century](_URL_0_)\n\nUp until the mid 1800s, abortion was only illegal after \"quickening\" or when the fetus starts to move. Then things got more and more drastic, here are the key changes in law:\n\n* 1861 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the Offences against the Person Act 1861 which outlaws abortion.\n* 1869 – Pope Pius IX declared that abortion under any circumstance was gravely immoral (mortal sin), and, that anyone who participated in an abortion in any material way had by virtue of that act excommunicated themselves (latae sententiae) from the Church.[10]\n* 1869 - The Parliament of Canada unifies criminal law in all provinces, banning abortion.[10]\n* 1873 – The passage of the Comstock Act in the United States makes it illegal to send any \"obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious\" materials through the mail, including contraceptive devices and information on contraception or abortion and how to obtain them. (see also advertisement of abortion services).[11]\n* 1820–1900 – Primarily through the efforts of physicians in the American Medical Association and legislators, most abortions in the U.S. were outlawed.[12]\n* 1850–1920 – During the fight for women's suffrage in the U.S., some notable first-wave feminists, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mary Wollstonecraft, opposed abortion.[13]\n\nI'm still interested in the details though - what was going on in society to bring about such drastic changes." ] }

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[ [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocratic_oath" ], [ "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_reproductive_rights_legislation#17th_century_to_19th_century" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d0ptn22" ], "score": [ 48 ], "text": [ "I would be hesitant to say that the 1848 Revolutions were more influential than the French Revolution of 1789. While both push for liberal ideologies, they do so with different means.\n\nThe Revolutions of 1848 overall were good for Continental Europe with France becoming a Republic again while other nations in Europe (Such as Prussia and Austria) becoming Constitional Monarchies, which lasted until WW1. Arguably it stands that the Revolutions of 1848 had a longer, more visible impact through the foundation of lasting governments that gave people more rights.\n\nHowever, the French Revolution is one of the most important events in world history, if not the most. The French Revolution had a lasting impact on the introduction of nationalism to the world, which became a major component to the 1848 Revolutions, the spread of liberal ideology through Europe due to the Revolution, and being a major inspiration for The French (and Europe in general) whom had one major Revolution in between the 1789 and 1848 Revolutins.\n\nIf anything, the French Revolution of 1789 was foundational and necessary for the Revolutions of 1848 to even happen." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "dje628z" ], "score": [ 4 ], "text": [ "It's called the \"Hindu-Arabic\" numeral system. It was invented in India and transmitted to Europe via Arabs and Persians.\n\nThe system isn't actually one thing, it's a set of developments dating to different periods, incrementally building to what we call Hindu-Arabic numerals.\n\nIt starts with the Vedas in the second millennium BC. Hindu cosmology consists of some pretty big numbers (in the billions), so the Vedas used a kind of shorthand using powers of 10 to represent them. This was the idea behind positional notation.\n\nThe next development was what we call a named place value system. Initially, this system didn't have an explicit zero. Instead, a zero was a blank, or sometimes represented by a dot (called shunya or bindu in Sanskrit).\n\nWe don't know exactly when this was invented, but it was probably in use around the time of Christ. The oldest written mention we have is from the Bakhshali manuscript, dating around 400 AD. This manuscript was found near Peshawar, which is probably where you got the Pakistan reference. However, the manuscript describes a system that had already been in use for a few hundred years at the time, so we don't know exactly which part of India it originated. We do know it was written by a brahmin named \"son of chajaka\".\n\nThe next and final development was a proper mathematical zero. This happened sometime during the Gupts dynasty. The oldest written mention is from the book Brahma Sphuta Siddhanta, by the astronomer Brahmagupta, in 628 AD. Brahmagupta was from Ujjain in east India.\n\nSo the Hindu-Arabic system we know today was the culmination of these 3 separate developments.\n\nThis system spread to the Arab world. The earliest Arsb mention is a report from the court of Caliph al-Mansur saying that an Indian astronomer visited and described a system of numerals that was extremely interesting. It says he slso brought a book (probably Brahmagupta's math manual), which was translated to Arabic.\n\nBoth Arabs and Persians very quickly adopted Hindu numerals. Between about 900 to 1200 AD, they wrote many mathematical texts, which eventually introduced the system to Europe.\n\nProbably the most influential in transmitting to Europe was the Persian mathematician al Khwarizmi. He wrote a book tilled \"On Calculation with Hindu Numerals\" which was translated into Latin and then many European languages in the 13th and 14th centuries. That's how the system arrived in Europe.\n\nThe glyphs for the numbers themselves originate in the Brahmi script, which was used in India around the time of Ashoka. The glyphs have somewhat diverged since then in different scripts - devanagari in India, Arabic, Roman - but they are all derived from Brahmi." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "df3iyoe" ], "score": [ 15 ], "text": [ "Despite its ignominious end, the invasion of India had a certain logic to it from the Japanese perspective. The Japanese had a number of forces within SE Asia and within Burma. The Imphal campaign was the culmination of two separate, but mutually reinforcing, strategic imperatives in IJA thought. \n\nThere was a pragmatic aspect behind the Indian invasion. Wingate's Chindit penetration into northern Burma had underscored the growing Allied strength in India and had shaken Japanese planning in SE Asia from complacency. There had been some thought given to invading India since 1942, but such plans were now moribund. The Chindits had shown the Japanese the danger Allied forces held for the whole Japanese position in Burma. The IGHQ Directive No. 1776 of January 1944 framed the invasion of India as a prophylactic against further invasions from this sector into Burma. \n\nAs counter-intuitive as it might sound, the Imphal invasion fit within the wider defensive reorientation of Japanese grand strategy around 1943. Once it became clear that the tide of the Pacific War had turned against Japan, the IJA began to conceive of a more defensive inner imperial core as the lynchpin of Japanese defenses. Using the remaining IJA forces in both China and SE Asia for brief offensives would eliminate emerging threats on the edges of the inner core and allow Japan to remove these troops to the Pacific once these operations had been completed. \n\nYet, simultaneous to this pragmatic and defensive thinking was a more ambitious offensive line of thought centered around the IJA 15th Army's chief Lieutenant General Mutaguchi Renya. This general did not see the Chindits so much as a warning of growing Allied strength, but rather as an example that could be emulated. Mutaguchi felt that IJA troops could penetrate the northern Burmese jungles on a modicum of logistical support. Mutaguchi felt that the lack of Japanese air cover would be a benefit as it meant that the Japanese would have to advance along the trails least expected by the Allies. Moreover, Mutaguchi also expected that the Indian National Army (INA) under Chandra Bose would spearhead a wider Indian uprising once the Japanese had penetrated India. Mutaguchi's thoughts dovetailed with the pragmatists in IGHQ, but the differences between the two strategies became apparent once Japanese had reached Imphal. As one IJA officer recalled postwar:\n\n > Wingate's Chindit expedition changed Japanese thinking. We thought that north Burma jungles were a defense against British advances into Burma. We now realized that they could be traversed by both sides. We had no intention of advancing into India, just to occupy Imphal and Kohima to further the defense of Burma. But Chandra Bose and Mutaguchi wanted to invade India after occupying Imphal. There was a serious anti-British movement in India, so it was hoped that the INA would operate in Bengal to assist the uprising. \n\nThe infighting within the 15th Army became quite intense during the arduous advance in northern Burma and peaked during the battles of Imphal and Kohima. The operation's shortcomings and failures were apparent even before the Imphal battle, but Mutaguchi could not admit that his conception and execution of the operation were deeply flawed. \n\nThe problem with both the pragmatists and the dreamers of the IJA was that both were operating on incorrect assessments both of their own capabilities as well as that of the Allies. One of the crucial aspects of Wingate's limited successes was something the Japanese completely lacked: airpower. The lack of air cover had already complicated the operation, but it also proved fatal once the IJA had reached India. Additionally, IJA planning for the operation considered that their tactics and light equipment would be suitable for the job. While this might have been true for the ill-equipped British forces in Malaya and Burma in 1942, the Allied forced in India were considerably stronger. The lack of heavy artillery and armor in any quantity rendered Japanese attempts to take Allied strongpoints futile. Japanese light infantry tactics just did not work very well against an enemy in a prepared position with access to tanks, heavy artillery, and airpower. IJA planners took it as a given that the invasion would be much like that of 1941/42, and in this respect they were sadly mistaken. By the same token, the IJA grossly overestimated the political strength of Bose and the INA. While there was a strong Indian independence movement at the time, this movement was really independent of the Japanese despite British fears to the contrary. Indian Independence was not reliant upon Japanese successes and this meant that it was the INA that needed Japan to remain a relevant player in Indian politics. Mutaguchi's expectation that Bose could launch a wide-scale insurrection once they had reached India was thus putting the cart before the horse. The 15th Army expected to shore up its tenuous position within India through such an insurgency, when it was the other way around. The INA could not operate independently from the Japanese and thus they were hostage to Japanese military fortunes. \n\nIn hindsight, the U-Go operation was a foolhardy idea executed rather poorly. While British penetrations had shaken the Japanese out of complacency, it encouraged some of the worst strategic habits within the IJA. Even the pragmatic wing of IJA planning operated on assumptions of Japanese and Allied capabilities that were optimistic to the point of strategic myopia. There were no real good options for Japanese strategic interests in SE Asia at the start if 1944. Allied material superiority meant they were likely to invade Burma sooner or later and Allied airpower was becoming an inescapable reality throughout SE Asia. Unfortunately for Japan, the IJA decided upon the worst of these unpleasant alternatives by launching an invasion it could not win to meet a political objective that could not be met. \n\n*Sources*\n\nBond, Brian. *British and Japanese Military Leadership in the Far Eastern War 1941-45*. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012.\n\nDrea, Edward J. *In the Service of the Emperor: Essays on the Imperial Japanese Army*. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. \n\nKatoch, Hemant Singh. *The Battlefields of Imphal: The Second World War and North East India*. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "ccw7994", "ccwag0y", "ccwb0mu" ], "score": [ 10, 3, 2 ], "text": [ "They did, the Persians hired Greek mercenaries to act as hoplites: the most famous of which would be Xenophon's ten thousand. Greek mercenaries even fought against Alexander the Great when he conquered the Persian Empire.\n\nThose mercenaries generally suffered a lot, for instance after the battle of Grancius River, Alexander had thousands of Greek mercenaries who had served on the Persian side massacred rather than accepting their surrender. ", "Phalanx is pretty nice but it is also really really unwieldy. There is a few trees on the battleground? Your neat formation has to break even before the battle began, opening a potential breach in your formation. \n\nPhalanx were really hard to beat in open ground, but put a few rocks, some trees and suddenly they are a real pain to coordinate no matter how disciplined they are. And do not even dream of fighting in a foresty landscape. \n\nPersians still used greek mercenaries to fight for them in this fashion but phalanxes are not the invicible weapon some people think they had their pros and cons, just like every tactic (more pros than cons but they still have some huge cons). ", "As everyone else said, they *did* hire greek mercenaries to fight, but did not field their own. There are a few real reasons for this. \n\n1. Hoplite gear was *expensive*. The average soldier in a persian army wore little to no armor with wicker shields and a spear, sometimes with a helmet. The east had a history of superior cavalry, so the soldiers that had money for armor and fine weapons were usually part of the cavalry\n\n2. Hoplites required training. Most of the levy forces the Persians used were of very poor quality, just being pulled off their farms or businesses and handed a spear, or they were from tribes of hunters used to bows and light armor. The only people who had the money and time to train were generally on horseback. The exception to this would be the immortals, but they still weren't heavy enough to stand in front of a phalanx.\n\nThe Persian way of warfare evolved more about wide plains and cavalry maneuver. They didn't really find the need for extremely dense and heavy infantry formations until it was too late." ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "cxcodtu" ], "score": [ 29 ], "text": [ "The Soviets had been pioneers in the development of airborne infantry warfare in the 1930s, but despite having the largest number of airborne combat formations at the outbreak of war — and the important potential role of airborne troops in their 'deep battle' doctrine — the Soviets mounted very few airborne operations during the course of the war. \n\nThe evolution of the *spetsnaz* ('special purpose'), Russian special forces, happened in parallel with the development of the airborne forces (VDV). The Soviets didn't fully adopt the commando/unconventional warfare model during the war: the first dedicated 'special forces' units were established in the late 1940s, under the auspices of the military intelligence service GRU. But the roots of *spetsnaz* are to be found in the partisan formations which were first created *ad hoc* to harry the German rear during Operation Barbarossa, and which later evolved into more organised behind-the-lines irregular warfare units.\n\nThe Stalinist purges of the late 1930s gutted both the Red Army and the state security organs. GRU defector Victor Suvorov claims that a by-product of the purges was the destruction of the USSR's ability to carry on unconventional warfare in the event of invasion:\n\n > During the pre-war years, in the areas of western military districts the intelligence directorates had extended the existing reserves of underground armies in case of the occupation of these areas by an enemy. Secret depots and stores of weapons and explosives had been established, radio sets had been secreted and refuges for partisans and intelligence officers had been set up. In the terror, all this was destroyed, and tens of thousands of trained partisans and saboteurs, ready to meet the enemy, were shot or perished in prisons and concentration camps. Military intelligence ceased to exist.\n\nWhen the Germans invaded in 1941, panic set in. First, propagandists exhorted Soviet citizens in occupied areas to harass German forces wherever possible. Later, as the Red Army fought its desperate rearguard action, and gradually turned it into a large-scale counteroffensive, partisan operations were brought under central control with the creation of the Central Partisan Headquarters in early 1942. The NKVD, GRU and SMERSH (the dedicated counterintelligence service created in April 1943) quickly began deploying their own partisan units behind the lines. KGB statistics, quoted in Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin's *The Sword and the Shield*, claim that the NKVD ran 2,222 'operational combat groups' behind German lines during the war. \n\nThe authors also express some skepticism, however, about the effectiveness of Soviet partisan operations — as have many others. Partisan groups throughout Europe were commonly riven by ideological and strategic disagreement, and in many areas spent a great deal of time engaged in internecine warfare. Perhaps more pressingly, there was as yet no coherent doctrine of unconventional warfare: the tactics and strategy of partisan formations behind the lines varied wildly. \n\nIn the Soviet case specifically, the chaotic state of Soviet intelligence and military command at the outbreak of war had a significant impact on the effectiveness of both their intelligence-gathering and sabotage/irregular warfare operations. The result was a mixed record: where *Stavka* could achieve effective command-and-control, and properly integrate partisan operations into wider manoeuvres — as in [Operation Bagration](_URL_4_) in Belorussia in 1944 — they could have a striking impact on German logistics and communications infrastructure. But in many other cases, the partisans' really made little to no meaningful contribution to the war effort.\n\n**The Odessa partisans**\n\n(This is something of an aside from the core question, but it's a fascinating illustration of some of the point about the dubious wartime record of the Soviet secret services.) \n\nAndrew and Mitrokhin highlight the dubious exploits of the [NKVD in Odessa](_URL_1_), immortalised in the '[Museum of Partisan Glory](_URL_8_)' in Odessa, as a bizarre example of the underwhelming wartime performance of the Soviet intelligence services — and of Soviet hagiography at work:\n\nIn October 1941, before the fall of Odessa, the NKVD in Moscow dispatched one Captain Molodtsov and six other officers to act as the kernel of a '[stay-behind](_URL_7_)' force in the city. Along with 13 officers from the Odessa branch of the NKVD, under a Lieutenant Kuznetsov, the NKVD set up a base of operations in the Odessa catacombs from which to launch raiding operations against the occupying forces. In fact, KGB records suggest that the Odessa and Moscow groups spent almost as much energy fighting among themselves as they did against the Germans.\n\nIn July 1942, Molodtsov was captured and executed. Kuznetsov then seized the Moscow detachment's weapons and placed them under arrest. Over the coming weeks, Kuznetsov executed 5 of the 6 Muscovites, and three of his own men. Finally, in October, the surviving Moscow *chekist*, Abramov, killed Kuznetsov. By this time, only three NKVD men were left alive — Abramov, Glushchenko and Litvinov. \n\nAt this point, it gets positively Shakespearean (if it wasn't already): Abramov and Glushchenko conspire to kill Litvinov; Glushchenko then reportedly murders Abramov (who apparently survived, and escaped to live in France), and eventually leaves the catacombs to go and hide out in his wife's Odessa apartment instead. Later, he returns to the tunnels for supplies and is killed when a grenade accidentally detonates.\n\nAbsent any (known) survivors, the adventures of the NKVD in Odessa — or rather, a myth that was created to replace the bizarre true story — were dressed up by Soviet propagandists as a fine example of spirited resistance, and a testament to the skill and dedication of the *chekists*. In actuality, it's a long way from being any kind of case study in effective special operations.\n\n**Sources**\n\n* Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin, *[The Sword and the Shield](_URL_3_)*\n* Jonathan Haslam, *[Near and Distant Neighbours](_URL_6_)*\n* David Glantz & Jonathan House, *[When Titans Clashed](_URL_0_)*\n* Victor Suvorov, *[Inside Soviet Military Intelligence](_URL_5_)*\n* Victor Suvorov, *[Spetsnaz](_URL_2_)*\n\n*Edit: typo*" ] }

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[ [ "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WS2ArgEACAAJ", "http://szru.gov.ua/index_en/index.html%3Fp=1247.html", "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vIPfAAAAMAAJ", "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9TWUAQ7Xof8C", "http://www.historynet.com/operation-bagration-soviet-offensive-of-1944.htm", "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kJssAAAAYAAJ", "https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tLOYCgAAQBAJ", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay-behind", "http://www.odessatourism.org/en/do/museums/muzej_partizanskoj_slavy_katakomby" ] ]

{ "a_id": [ "cvai90c", "cvakp6o", "cvcef40" ], "score": [ 36, 243, 2 ], "text": [ "It's not that bronze weapons were worse. It was that bronze is made from copper and tin, which are both reasonably rare (tin is rarer than copper, and copper is rare enough that we make coins from it). Bronze itself almost ranks as a precious metal (think of how we still give gold, silver, and bronze medals at the Olympics).\n\nSo in the bronze-age *Iliad,* a single suit of bronze armor (Diomede's) is said to have cost 9 oxen, which was beyond the resources of the average soldier. By comparison, a suit of golden armor (Glaucus's) is said to have cost 100 oxen. (See line 300 [here](_URL_0_)).\n\nPeople in Eurasia used bronze weapons before iron ones because bronze is a lot easier to work than iron. To make a good iron weapon requires much hotter temperatures and better control of the ingredients and the purity. Bronze is more forgiving.\n\nBut once you've figured out how to work it, iron is (comparatively) everywhere.\n\nSo ironworking cultures don't necessarily have better weapons and armor than bronzeworking ones (in fact, even [down to the 19th century](_URL_1_) cannon, where quality matters a lot more than for a spearpoint or a sword, were often made out of expensive bronze rather than cheap iron) but they have a lot more of them, giving them a big advantage on the battlefield.", "You're right to think that simply having iron weapons was not, in itself, enough to turn the tide of a battle. The shift from bronze to iron was much more complicated and nuanced.\n\nOn a purely practical level, bronze makes better weapons than (pure) iron. Bronze has a Vicker's hardness (HV) of about 300, while pure iron is closer to 100HV. Practically speaking, that means that iron weapons are more difficult to keep sharp and are more likely to bend. You may have heard of the passage from Caesar's *Gallic Wars* where the barbarian warriors have to stop mid-battle and straighten their bent iron swords? Metallographic analyses of surviving swords from the period suggest that this was probably a true story. Gallic swords were typically made from pure iron with very high ductility (easily bent), and would not have stood up well to a protracted fight. Early iron weapons were, on the whole, not very good, and this didn't really change until steel became widespread in the early middle ages. Given a choice between a well-made bronze spear and an iron spear from antiquity, I would probably choose to fight with the bronze.\n\nThe real reason for the shift from iron to bronze had more to do with economics and, probably, with magic.\n\nCopper and tin are both relatively rare, and access to bronze depended, consequentially, on maintaining long trade routes to ensure steady supply. Single Bronze Age copper mines like the one on Great Orm (Wales) appear to have provided copper for a wide geographic area, and the community which controlled it must have leveraged their monopoly to enormous social advantage. Iron ore, in contrast, is much more common, making it easier to produce a stockpile of weapons locally without having to trade with distant monopolies. The greatest limit on local iron production is charcoal, as smelting iron ore into useful metal requires a *lot* of trees.\n\nMost scholars agree that the collapse of long-range trade routes around the 12th century BC (the 'Greek Dark Age' or 'Bronze Age Collapse') pushed many people to become more reliant on local resources, which sparked the slow transition to reliance on iron weapons.\n\nThe transition from bronze to iron took a long time, though - bronze weapons and armor remained common well into the 1st millennium BC. This is almost certainly in part due to bronze's superiority over pure, soft iron, but also may have been connected to the 'magical' or ritual functions of weaponry in the ancient world. Chris Gosden recently made this argument, suggesting that the conceptual shift from bronze to iron working required more than the development of new technological processes. Bronze is melted into a liquid and cast into a mold, while iron is hammered into shape while still a solid (it's only much later that the technology to cast weapons-grade iron became available in the western world). Switching from one metal to the other wasn't, therefore, as simple as swapping out one material for the other. It required both new technological processes and a new understanding of what a metal could be and what it could do. Bronze was a liquid, and Gosden notes that bronze weapons were frequently thrown into water as sacrifices. Iron, in contrast, is more closely connected with the soil (iron ore is often rusty sand, iron is worked as a solid instead of a liquid, and - left alone - iron quickly transforms back into rusty dirt), and Gosden notes that iron technology really took off on in many parts of Europe only after there was a cultural shift away from religious / magical rituals connected with water toward new rituals concerned with fertility and the ground (and in these rituals, iron - instead of bronze - objects start to be sacrificed). It was only with this conceptual shift, Gosden argues, in which earth - and iron - replaced bronze's ritual, magical role that people were willing to embrace the new material and finally abandon bronze weapons.\n\nSo when an army equipped itself with iron weapons instead of bronze, it wasn't a simple trade of bad/old technology for newer/better. The new iron weapons were likely more difficult to keep sharp and more likely to be damaged. They were, however, also likely less expensive (or at least, easier to come by locally without reaching too far afield), which meant you could arm a larger warband in your back yard than in the old bronze-dominated economy. And the new iron weapons likely had different ritual and magical associations which made them more (or less) suitable for the grim business to come. All these factors were ultimately much more significant than the simple hardness of the metal.", "Fundamentally, bronze is more expensive and more difficult to work than iron/steel.\n\nBronze is initially easier to discover, since both copper and tin ores have a distinctive and intriguing look about them, so they would naturally be collected. And with both ores if you happen to place them in a more or less ordinary wood fueled fire you will often produce metal from them. From that it's a fairly straightforward matter of refining the smelting, mixing, and casting process. However, producing good bronze weapons takes a considerable amount of skill, and in the Bronze Age these skills were limited to a select few. Additionally, copper and tin ore deposits are geographically sparse, so it required continent spanning trade networks to supply the raw materials for the bronze age. It was always, and still is, a semi-precious material. Imagine a world where, say, silver was an adequate metal for tool and weapon making. That's sort of like what you have with bronze, only slightly less so.\n\nIron smelting an iron (properly steel) working is very much different from bronze. With copper and tin ores you simply reduce them with carbon monoxide (by heating them inside a fireplace with lots of charcoal) and then you melt them, and that transforms them into raw metals and separates them from impurities. With iron this doesn't work as well. You'll just end up with a puddle of low quality iron co-mingled with glass and slag. That process only works if you have an industrial age blast furnace (using the Bessemer process). Instead, what you need to do is reduce the iron ore as you would with any ore (using charcoal) but heat it to the welding temperature of iron, not the melting point. What happens is that the iron welds itself into a porous structure called a \"sponge\" while the whole thing is hot enough to melt glass and slag which then falls out of the ore. When most of the ore has been reduced the sponge is removed while still hot and the remaining molten impurities are beaten out of it. Further working of the iron involves not casting but beating and forming the iron/steel at temperatures well below the melting point. Following the same steps of processing bronze as with iron will lead to very low quality extremely brittle pieces.\n\nThese differences are a major reason why iron working took so long to become established. However, while these steps are complicated, they can be learned and put into practice by anyone. Manufacturing steel does not require continent spanning trade networks, typically, it usually involves fairly local materials and local artisans. It's also easier to produce iron in much greater quantity, because it's not heavily reliant on rare ore deposits. Perhaps most importantly, iron tools can be repaired quickly and easily, and iron is immensely recyclable. If a bronze sword snaps in half it needs to be completely remade. Melted down and recast from scratch. A steel sword can be welded back together by anyone with a decent forge and tools, which could be done even in the field.\n\nThese are the things that led to iron's eventual dominance in warfare. If one army has 100,000 men and 50,000 bronze spears how will they fare against another army with 80,000 men and 80,000 iron spears, for example? It was easier and cheaper to produce greater quantities of iron weapons for armies. As is so common in warfare, logistics trumps nearly everything else.\n\nUltimately, steel weapons have many advantages over bronze weapons. They can be harder, and critically they have much more spring. So they can be subjected to forces that would permanently bend a bronze weapon and will bounce back unscathed. However, steel weapons with these qualities weren't developed until well into the iron age, it was abundance and cost more than anything which led to iron displacing bronze." ] }

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[ [ "https://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/homer/iliad6.htm", "http://www.staugustinelighthouse.org/LAMP/Conservation/Meide2002_Bronze.pdf" ], [], [] ]

{ "a_id": [ "d2zm8wt", "d2zpfvu" ], "score": [ 5, 6 ], "text": [ "So to break your question down you seem to be asking three things did the 1953 coup cause the radicalization of Islam, Did it lead to Iran becoming more conservative and how liberal was Iran anyway.\n\nSo to answer the first question no I don't think the 1953 coup can be said to have caused the radicalization of Islam for a couple reason's. First Iran is Shia and a majority of Muslims are Sunni, what is today termed \"radical Islam,\" generally tends to be Sunni groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS are Sunni and follow mix of a radical mix of Salafi and Wahhabi traditions which have an entirely different lineage than anything in Iran. Indeed most groups which fall under the term radical Islam consider the Shia, and thus the majority of Iranians, aspostates. Additionally by the time of the Iranian revolution these ideas were well developed on there own right, and indeed the idea of *Wilayat al-Faqih* as implemented by Khomeini has little appeal to Sunni groups do to their different relationship with the clergy. The only place they were really able to spread it was Lebanon and even there the Shia are not large enough to create an Iranian style Theocracy.\n\nNow as to the resistance in Mosques I do not know enough to speak about Iran. But I do that in Arab dictatorships this was not to uncommon and in the 1960s and 70s the opposition was much more secular than it is now. But it's not really because they were \"to sacred to interfere,\" most governments in the Middle East even \"secular\" ones interfere heavily in the management of religion, but it's more that mosques were the only places young men could gather in significant numbers, also while you can shut down all the offices in an opposition party you can't shut down all the mosques, nor can you prohibit people from going to them. This naturally leads the centers of resistance against a regime to be more religious, and it means when new resistance does spring up it comes from the mosques as it is the only place people can actually gather. Whether this is true for Iran or not I can't say. The factors are very similar though with a secular government trying to destroy the opposition in a Muslim country.\n\nNow as to the thing about hijabs,in most Muslim majority countries it's not unusual to see women in big cities without hijabs so it's not so unusual to see the same thing in Iran. \n\nAs to the level of conservatism in Iran there are a couple things you should consider.\n\n\nIran was never even remotely as conservative places like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan and still isn't even with it's current government and laws.\n\n\nThe second is to remember a shift in government is not necessarily a shift in attitudes. I may be misreading your question but you seem to be implying that most people in Iran were fairly liberal and now they aren't. It's important to remember that Iran is not a democracy While the revolution brought conservative religious leaders to power I wouldn't say the attitude of places like Tehran have changed that much and if all of the restrictive laws were removed tomorrow it would be likely that we would find them more liberal not less. People cover up because they have to not necessarily because they want to. Look at pictures of woman from Tehran sometime and see how much they toe the line of actually \"covering\" their head. It's not uncommon to have parties featuring alcohol, as long as it's kept somewhat discrete. So in terms of the liberalism of the population I think it's fair to say they remain quite liberal. At least in the big cities and especially Tehran.\n\n", "While BP and the British Crown were the primary beneficiaries of the coup, most of the funding came from the CIA. In 1952, the CIA spent 10% of its global budget in Iran. \n\nLeading up to the Iranian revolution, there was plenty of opposition from students and other liberal groups, but their leaders were always prime targets for the Shah's SAVAK secret police. As a result, secular opponents of the regime were not nearly as well organized as the mullahs, and their common cause revolution soon fell under the Islamist banner. \n\nBoth Shahs of the Pahlavi dynasty pursed a modernist secular agenda similar to that of Kemal Ataturk. Reza Shah Pahlavi banned the chador in the 1930's, and mandated Western garb. He pushed for women to have an education and a role in the workplace. \n\nIt's hard to see a direct tie between Iran's revolution and the broader radicalization of Islam. Because of the Shia/Sunni split, Iran was never in a position to export its revolution in a big way. \n\nIt could, however, be argued that Iran demonstrated a path to harnessing Islamists as a potent force. This agenda was initially realized in Afghanistan, after the Saur Revolution declared equality of the sexes. President Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinksi saw an opportunity to bolster the enraged Islamists, prompting the USSR's fraternal invasion. Afghanistan then became a fertile breeding ground for Islamists, supported by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and various Gulf states, along with the US. This campaign succeeded so well that the US had to go to considerable lengths to stop the Islamist insurgency from spreading to other muslim-dominated Soviet republics. If you wanted to identify ground-zero for radical Islamism, Afghanistan and the contiguous Tribal Areas of N.W. Pakistan were the region where this dogma flourished. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n" ] }

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{ "a_id": [ "d5qn52h", "d5qs9x9", "d5s3aip" ], "score": [ 19, 195, 2 ], "text": [ "I can't think of any medieval female warriors. Who might be an example? ", "We have very few records of women wearing armour, let alone fighting in it, during the Middle Ages. Sikelgaita, for instance, allegedly wore armour and commanded one of the battles during the Battle of Dyrrhachium in 1081, Joanna of Flanders allegedly wore armour and led a major sally during the Siege of Hennebont, and Joan of Arc had armour made for her.\n\nSikelgaita lived during a time when plate armour was non-existent, so she couldn't have worn boob plate, and it's unlikely she would have had her breasts emphasised in any case. Not only do you want as little movement in your breasts as possible when being active, but the layers of padding and the mail over them would have de-emphasised her bust in any case.\n\nJoanna of Flanders is an interesting case in that she is alleged to have actively participated in fighting twice: once on her sally from Hennebont and then again when she returned to break back into the city. Froissart mentions her fighting a third time onboard a ship, but this is a story I take with a grain of salt. In any case, as a middle aged woman with no prior recorded experience with fighting, I don't think it's likely that she had custom armour and was probably wearing mail or a borrowed coat of plates from a wealthy squire or short knight. This would again preclude boob plate.\n\nFinally we have Joan of Arc. While she probably never actually fought, she did have armour made for her, and [near contemporary depictions](_URL_1_) of her in armour show it quite clearly as being of the same kind used by men.\n\nAs to the practicality of boob plate, it's not going to be very practical. Armour tends to bulge out from the chest in a curve in order to keep the metal at a distance from the skin to reduce the chance of injury when an attack gets through your guard, as well as to deflect blows to as great a degree as possible. The less energy absorbed by the plate, the better it was for the wearer. Boob plate would not only transfer more energy through the metal than a proper breast plate, but you also redirect and trap some attacks so that they hit full center in the wearer's sternum, drastically increasing the chance of injury.\n\nThere are other considerations as well. Those women who wore armour in command roles were a rarity, women performing a man's role in a time when there was a lot of misogynistic rhetoric from both secular and ecclesiastical authors. By emphasising their feminity, those women would have only drawn attention to their alien presence on the battlefield and likely undermined whatever authority they had claimed through force of will.\n\nFinally, there probably was a small subsection of women who fought disguised as men. I'm not aware of any medieval records of this, but with 17th century examples such as Catalina de Erauso and many later women who were extremely successful at passing themselves off as men for decades, I think it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility of some few women in medieval times fighting as men-at-arms of foot soldiers. These women, of course, would not have worn boob armour.\n\nFake edit: also, yes, armour would need to be fitted differently for a woman than a man, but plate armour was generally custom fitted in any case, so that would have posed no problem.\n\n**Real Edit:** Tagging in /u/TheLordHighExecu and /u/sunagainstgold: I found [a drawing of Isabell of Castile's armour](_URL_0_) while looking her up. I think you might be both interested.", "Hi, you'll find a few more comments in this post from a few weeks ago:\n\n* [Was \"Boob Armour\" ever a real thing?](_URL_0_?)" ] }

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[ "https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoOLefIWgAEUjnB.jpg" ]

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