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In Ron Chernow's "Washington: A Life", GW is described as having such bad cash flow that he had to borrow money to travel to New York for his own 1789 inauguration. Then in 1797 following his presidency, he had to sell off land in order to fund his trip home.

Like most farmers, Washington was land rich, cash poor.

Flexner's "Washington: The Indispensable Man" points to how he was a traditional plantation owner prior to the Revolution when he amassed his wealth. (pg. 37) It took time to realize returns on working capital for farmers. When the money did come in it would be reinvested in the product; land, seed, labor. Any money removed from this cycle would slow the growth of his estate.

Remember too that Washington's wealth was largely the result of his marriage and his accumulation of land. Many of the large estates in Europe that you reference are the culmination of successive generations; each building upon previous successes. The large estates and country homes would be built up over time when money became available.

They weren't wealthy with large estates because they owned large tracts of land; they were wealthy because their families had controlled that land and its output for generations.

The rise of the American Right is a major area of research among historians. One of the better studies is <em>Suburban Warriors</em> by Lisa McGirr which uses Orange County California as a case study.

McGirr argued that the American Right was created

>within the context of the Cold War; postwar demographic transformation; the dynamics of economic, cultural, and political change; and their cumulative impact on the values and beliefs of ordinary people... (p. 12)

She further notes that modern conservative movement in the US started as a fiscal and social cause but very quickly became tied into a different politico-religious cause through the work of groups like the John Birch Society and people like Billy Graham.

Reagan gets so much credit because he succeeded where other conservative leaders failed. Barry Goldwater was the arch-Conservative who was defeated by Johnson for the Presidency. If he had won (in what would have been among the greatest electoral upsets in American history) he, most likely, would have the position Reagan occupies among your conservative friends. Reagan's election to Governor of California two years after Goldwater's crushing defeat kept the movement alive under the new standard bearer.

None of that addresses the particular fiscal/political beliefs of so-called Reagan Republicans, but it does give a little idea about why Reagan and not someone else.

Check out McGirr, its a pretty easy and very interesting read. She approaches the movement like an anthropologist, which is an interesting way to go about it.

The earliest mention I was able to find was in &quot;<strong>THESAURUS GEOGRAPHICUS. A NEW Body of Geography: Or, A Compleat DESCRIPTION OF THE EARTH:</strong>&quot; dated 1695.

The passage reads:

>"The Figure or Shape of this Country is very Remarkable, and may be well compar'd to that of a Man's Leg, the End whereof seems as it were to kick the Island of Siciliy into the Sea ; the Toes appear toward the Faro, or Watch-Tower of Messina, round Reggio, and the Cape of Spartivento ; the Heel toward Ancona ; the Ham about Ravenna; the Knee toward Piembino, and the Port of Leghorn ; and the Thigh toward the Alps.

>Italy is stretched forth toward the South, as it were a Peninsule, in form of a Boot, into the Mediterranean-Sea..."

well not exactly: this is an international subreddit, and our April Fools theme kicked off as soon as it was April 1 anywhere - here's the world clock right now

One important factor here is the American oil glut in the early 20th century. Diesel engines are more efficient, but American oil was too cheap for this to matter; "in 1938, it extracted nearly 60 percent of global output, compared to less than 15 percent produced in 2006 by Saudi Arabia". So there was little drive in the US to meet the engineering challenges of designing light diesel engines; GMC didn't establish its diesel division until 1938, after Mercedes-Benz had introduced the first diesel car in 1936.

In addition, it really is harder to engineer a diesel engine; they were heavier, dirtier, noisier, and less reliable for a long time.

Source: end of ch. 3 in Vaclav Smil's "Prime Movers of Globalization". http://www.worldcat.org/title/prime-movers-of-globalization-the-history-and-impact-of-diesel-engines-and-gas-turbines/oclc/839821680

There absolutely were. The Western Allies ran into hilariously outdated vehicles like the Renault FT and TKS tankettes. The Free French also captured some unused Char B1 bis tanks, more as a status symbol than anything else, but it goes to show that the Germans had a large amount of vehicles lying around without the crews or resources to throw them into battle for a desperate defense.

As for the Soviets, I have more detailed records. After the end of the war the GRU counted 5000 German tanks "transferred after capitulation". Generalmajor Mueller-Hillebrand reported in a post-war interrogation that 12545 tanks and SPGs were "ready to use" as of March 1945, plus over 800 vehicles deemed worthy only for security service and training, so that's a fairly realistic number. Presumably the Western Allies captured a good number of tanks as well, but I don't have those counts. Some adjustments must also be made for "creative accounting" (for instance, looking at the number of Tiger II tanks lost reveals that the losses reported by the Generalmajor are vastly incomplete), but a few thousand leftover vehicles would be realistic.

The French also operated a battalion of 50 Panther tanks after the war, which would mean that these were 50 tanks deemed suitable for post-war service. Presumably a whole lot more were captured that were not suitable. The British also captured entire factories, with "gently used" and brand new Panthers sent back to Britain for testing, in addition to inspection of hulls in various stages of manufacture.

Sources:

Y. Pasholok Char B1 in German service

Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation f.38 o.11355 d.2726 p.42

M. Singer French Panthers

I'm skeptical as well, but it might be the phrasing of the post, rather than Keegan's own phrasing. Double checking on a rather obvious one, Jutland seems to have been fought 60 miles off shore, which I'm fairly certain puts it "outside the sight of land", but I wouldn't disagree with calling it a "coastal location" which is used at the end of the post. So I'd need to see Keegan's phrasing to be certain, but petrov76 might just be a bit too literal when he describes Keegan as meaning in sight of land. The Japanese fleet was several hundred miles from Midway after all.

The etymology of the word Earth itself can be found here: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=earth&amp;allowed_in_frame=0

As for why it (and the Sun and the Moon) is Germanic, not Latinate, it's because these are things that the common people spoke of in England while the Middle English was becoming Modern English. They had reason to talk about these things regularly, and so the old names stuck around. The [other] planets were only dealt with by scientists [and thinkers generally] who were much more likely to use French or Latin when writing about them.

It's a general rule (with exceptions) that the more formal a word is in English, the more likely it is to be derived from French, or Latin if it's extremely formal. One good example I've seen of this is Ask [Ger.] -> Question [Fr.] -> Interrogate [Lat.]. That's roughly what's going on here too.

Edit: I a word.

Robert Robinson is a pretty interesting example. He was a black autoworker at Ford who was offered a contract to come work in the Soviet Union in 1930 where they desperately needed skilled workers for their rapid industrialization. He re-upped his contract several times and earned a degree in mechanical engineering in Russia. After the war he was repeatedly denied an exit visa until 1974 when he was allowed to move to Uganda. Finally in 1980 he was able to move back to the United States. He offers a pretty nuanced account as he rose to heights professionally that he never would have been able to in the United States at that time while also having a front row seat to Stalin's purges and living through years of a different kind of oppression in the Soviet Union.

Here's a short newspaper blurb about his life: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=wChUAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=mo0DAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=6545%2C179684

and his autobiography is called "Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union"

It may be based on a misinterpretation of certain architectural features. For example, due to the prevalence of grave robbing/looting in ancient Egypt, pyramids were built with sliding portcullises and other methods of blocking access to the grave goods contained within the tomb. Various shafts and chambers were also included, which may fuel the perception. However, no actual traps have been excavated, anywhere in the world. Some traps were rumored in a recently discovered ancient Chinese tomb, which has been deemed too dangerous to excavate, but the danger is probably more due to toxic mercury and unstable ground rather than traps, though I believe the traps are a consideration. There also was supposedly a situation where a large quantity of hematite was placed on a pyramid floor, which caused hazards for the workers until they got hazmat suits.

The trope is probably a recollection and embellishment of the measures taken by pyramid builders to make the tombs inaccessible.

I think you are going to need a state by state answer. Statistically the number imprisoned almost doubled during the great depression. But congress passed laws to limit the selling of goods produced with prison labor (Notably the Hawes-Cooper Act). But I don't have enough knowledge to address how these twin stresses on the prisons and the prison population were dealt with in any particular locale.

Here are a few sources:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-3408900129/hawes-cooper-act.html

http://law.jrank.org/pages/1782/Prisons-History-Modern-prisons.html

BTW, this period saw the growth in black men being incarcerated grow three times faster than the general population so a state by state analysis should probably consider the racial differences in how prisoners were treated.

Survival was the hope and the goal! The texts/stories I'm familiar with emphasize the part about the baby getting to baptism (which meant she or he would be cleansed of original sin and thus go to heaven, in medieval theology) rather than growing up into an adult, that's all.

Monica Green, who is one of if not the leading scholar of medieval women's medicine (and history of medicine in general!) put together a bibliography on C-sections in the Middle Ages back in December, with the aid of the medieval feminist listserv. In case you're interested in reading more. :)

The traditional 'execution speech' was to admit your guilt, and admit that you deserved to die. This is tied into the Christian faith and the belief that all people are sinners and must admit this in order to secure the grace of God. The king ordered the execution and was operating under divine right, therefore, absolving him and his agents of any wrongdoing, praising the king's justice, or begging the king's forgiveness were all part of this admission of guilt. Eg: 'I am guilty. I am sorry. I accept god's judgement, and I do not blame these mortal men for carrying out my sentence.'

Anne Boleyn did not admit her guilt (according to Lacey Baldwin Smith, she was unique in failing to do so), but she did absolve her executioners: "I have come here to die, for according to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and thereof I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die..." She then goes on the praise Henry VIII specifically, which was in part to mitigate this failure to admit her guilt and in part served a practical purpose.

Death by beheading was a more desirable way to be executed because it was quick and relatively painless (in comparison to being burned at the stake, strangled in a noose, or disemboweled). There was a realistic fear that being anything but submissive on the chopping block might have resulted in this quick/clean death being taken away in favor of a more agonizing method. Also, people who were executed were often leaving family behind, and didn't want those families to be further punished by the king (lands seized, titles revoked, etc.). Anne Boleyn had Elizabeth's future to consider. It was important that she not appear resentful towards Henry VIII.

Google Books shows a few slightly earlier hits, of which the first is from <em>Ladies' Home Journal</em> 1952:

> if they have an easy class at school they're taking "underwater basket weaving".

That 'radio silence' isn't really what happened. What happened was a bit more extreme than that. In Hiroo Onoda's own words, there were actually plenty of attempts to make contact. In fact, the Japanese government flew Onoda's family in to shout into the hilltops for him. Japanese newspapers explaining both the surrender and life in post-war Japan were delivered and dropped - entire stacks of them. Onoda and the men with him, and those like him in similar situations, interpreted these to be some sort of disinformation campaign.

The reason for this is fairly simple: the idea of a Japanese surrender seemed to be a literal impossibility. It isn't that Onoda had some idea of what the end of the war would look like if Japan surrendered, and then found ways to tell himself that things hadn't yet reached that state. It was more that it wasn't at all a possible outcome. When Onoda shipped off to war, domestic, internal propaganda had been hammering home that literally every single Japanese person would die fighting before the country surrendered. According to Onoda, the average Japanese citizen on the street expected all 100 million Japanese to die in defense of the country, surrender was simply not an option. The term "100 million" was used in a number of ways in this exact 'until the last man' context. Onoda took that at face value. Because Japan still existed, still had Japanese newspapers, it must not have surrendered, and everything delivered or transmitted to him therefore must be doctored by the OSS.

A (likely ghost written) autobiography is available, https://www.amazon.com/No-Surrender-Thirty-Year-Hiroo-1974-12-06/dp/B01N07LQ16/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=dancarlin-20&amp;linkCode=w00&amp;linkId=aa8f275dc60fd8b95fbdeffcd35d0420&amp;creativeASIN=B01N07LQ16

I wouldn't call it a tribute, as much a misplaced bit of enthusiasm. The mohawk hairstyle was well-known in popular culture due to depictions in American "Westerns" such as John Ford's 1939 movie Drums Along the Mohawk, starring Henry Fonda. Westerns were very popular with American males of WWII age group, many of which would have been young teens at the time of influential American Westerns such as John Wayne's The Stagecoach. It will not surprise you that all of these depictions of Native American hair and dress were inaccurate. See: <em>Celluloid Indians: Native Americans in Film</em> by Neva Jacquelyn Kilpatrick

The Mohawk people specifically, are a branch of the Iroquois nation, who were known to wear the mohawk hairstyle during specific times of battle, as were other Iroquois. The Omaha, however, speak a language in the Dhegihan branch of the Sioux language tree (thus related to the Sioux nation), and were forced out of Iroquois land in the 1600s, likely due to the "mourning wars" inflicted by Iroquois at that time toward other nearby tribes. The Iroquois were also firm allies of the British, and this was obviously not a very popular stance with other Native American peoples. See: <em>Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars</em> by Jerry Keenan.

So. The answer is that yes, there must have been. We have limited evidence for the public toilets, and none that I can quickly link you to right now. Some (anonymous) websites claim that there was a complex drainage and therefore sewage system from the site. This is not necessarily accurate. Drainage does not have to equal sewage. There were public toilets in Rome, and it would be unusual for there not to have been in the Colosseum, whether it held 50,000 or 73,000 (alternative figure, less likely).

A recent(ish) monograph from Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow (2015) has examined the issue of public sanitation in Roman Italy. As a counter to that website's claim regarding the drainage meaning sewage, she argues that Rome's drainage system was better suited to being a storm drain, to prevent the city flooding. More common were cesspit type toilets. Unfortunately, given the nature of the Colosseum, I am not sure we will ever really have a definitive answer, but one thing I think we can be certain of is that you should never use a public toilet in the Colosseum, ancient or modern. They're not pleasant places.

> Yeah a 14 year old girl just happened to write a best selling novel,

No. She wrote a diary. A diary. Not a "novel". A diary which was then published.

> while suffering through WWII.

... While locked up in an attic for two years with nothing better to do.

I strongly recommend you read that Wikipedia article I linked to before you make even more of a fool of yourself than you already have.

> The Diary of a Young Girl is a book of the writings from the Dutch language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944 and Anne Frank ultimately died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The diary was retrieved by Miep Gies, who gave it to Anne's father, Otto Frank, the only known survivor of the family. The diary has now been published in more than 60 different languages.

Just to be clear, I cannot read Latin, so I cannot say for certain, but I may have found a Latin reference to the shape of the Italian peninsula being similar to that of a human leg.

The passage is from "Descriptio totius Italiae: qua situs, origines, imperia civitatum", which according to Google means "The description of the whole of Italy: where the location is determined, the origin, the government of the commonwealth".

The first mention is in the index, whose passage states "italiae figura iuxta recentiores, crus humanum", which Google translates as "Italy, according to recent figures, the human leg". This leads to a page that states

>"Demum litoris egressus, vastusque circa Venetiam ambitus per intimum Adriae angulum ad Arsiam vsque sit, ubi femoris exitus, & coxae latitudinem incipere paulo ante dictum est, absolui; prorsus integrum videtur crus. Itaq;sic nobis huius terrae figura comode satis est expressa..."

Which Google translates as:

>"Finally he went to the shore, about Venetia Huge circuit of Adria intimate angle to maintain the Arsa is where the issue of the thigh, and hip width begin shortly before it is acquitted; seems completely intact leg. Thus the shape of the land, so we have conveniently enough is expressed..."

Can anyone versed in Latin weigh in on the content in and around these passages to confirm if this is truly related to the shape of the Italian peninsula or not?

This is the book, dated 1566. The content is on page 6, I can't seem to find a way to link directly to it.

For actual denazification, see Frederick Taylor's Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany.

For a more philosophical look at German cultural memory, I'd recommend Susan Neiman's <em>Learning from the Germans</em>, which takes a comparative look at how both the US and Germany have come to terms (or not come to terms) with their respective histories.

On the one hand, you have Napoleon's stated intentions, and on the other, what he might have actually had in mind. Here's the former, in a statement he drafted while exiled on St. Helena:

>I went with confidence to England, with the intention of living there, or in America, in the most profound retirement, and taking the name of a colonel, killed at my side, resolved to remain a stranger to every political occurrence, of whatever nature it might be...

>I am at any time prepared to retire into private life, and I reiterate, that when it shall be judged proper to discontinue this cruel place of Exile, I am willing to remain a stranger to politics, whatever events may occur in the world. This is my intention, and anything which may have been said to the contrary is incorrect.

As for his real plans, given his personality, what happened at Elba, and his state of mind at St. Helena, it's hard to believe he would have been content to live quietly in private life for long.

EDIT: Here's another quote—from Emil Ludwig's Napoleon—which sheds some light on the subject:

>From that vantage ground [America] I should have been able to guard France against humiliation from abroad, reaction from within; the dread of my return would have sufficed. In America I should have established the center of a new French fatherland. Within a year, I should have had sixty thousand men grouped around me...It would have been a most natural place of refuge—a land of vast expanses where a man can live in freedom.

>and probably always sincerely opposed interracial marriage

There's at least some evidence that he was indifferent or cared little about it personally. Here's a self-deprecating quip he made once when asked about it

>The law means nothing. I shall never marry a negress, but I have no objection to any one else doing so. If a white man wants to marry a negro woman, let him do it -- if the negro woman can stand it. ~Source

Your engineering example is spot on, and it is not specific for USSR only. This recent photo from India has made rounds because the world suddenly realized that in India most space engineers are women. It does not mean however that modern India is great in terms of gender equality. It means that different cultures can have different interesting idiosyncrasies about which occupations are more suitable for men and women, producing results that are strange for a Westerner. For example, in USSR, as well as in modern Russia, most physicians were women (about 70% overall, up to 95% in some fields of medicine). Compared to the US, it is great. But is it because of the gender equality? Not quite; it's just a local peculiarity. Somehow during the 20th century caring about the sick became a specialization of women (even though in 19th century it was firmly and undoubtedly a male-dominated profession).

Is there context that makes it clear that 'piece' is not simply a misspelling of 'peace?' The reading that stands out to me is a request that the artillery give things a rest.

EDIT: In the book cited, there is no context given whatsoever, not even to the extent of which side sent the telegram.

Apparently people did. From A History of the Horse Drawn Carriage: 'The commonest French coach of this time seems to have been the borbillard...such a carriage was hung low, and would have swung from side to side, giving such passengers as were "bad sailors" a fit of nausea.' (from 1652)

So yes, there was motion sickness in carriages, and people at the time compared it to sea-sickness.

> If I understand all this correctly, documentation of "whiteness" and "blackness" in medieval Europe was entirely based on the morality of being christian or non-Christian?

That's a big part of it, but not all. Christian artists general depict Jewish people as light-skinned, for one thing. But even with Islam, the 13th-century Book of Games from Iberia features light-skinned Muslim women and both light and darker skinned Muslim men.

I think it's more that medieval people had a different understanding altogether of what made their version of "race". I didn't go into it here at all because it's a complicated and separate topic, but there are also whole behavioral codes and climate theory tied in there.

Suzanne Conklin Akbari's book Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100-1450, is utterly fascinating on these points (including Christian ethnographic writing and art on Jewish people) and pretty darn affordable on Amazon and similar, if you or anyone is interested in the topic!

...And with Luther & Co. in Catholic illustration, I'd say the association being made is less with dark-skinned people and a bit more with multi-headed demonic Antichrists.

Great question!

The word comes from the Latin Exonym, but that does come from Gut-þiuda which means "Gothic people," at least as far as modern historians think based on the Pietrosa Treasure. So yes, they did call themselves "Gothic people." But this was in no way their primary identifier, as they called themselves by the names of their smaller identities like Terfingi, Greuthungi, Amali, etc. etc.

But identity based on modern archaeological or etymological groupings isn't at all relevant to how these peoples saw themselves. A Goth and a Vandal wouldn't think of each other as similar, they don't know they share a language family or similar art styles any more than the average person today does. On a basic level familial ties were the most important to these Germanic groups. This is best explained by Walter Goffart in his <em>Barbarian Tides</em>. We see this most obviously in Jordanes' Gothic history where his work revolves around either fabricating or exaggerating the Amali family line and its ties with other Barbarian leaders.

I hope this answers your question. I would actually strongly recommend the aforementioned Barbarian Tides for understanding these peoples better.

While waiting for answers you might like to check out Was George Washington really a brilliant strategist? with a comment from /u/Sluggian, which draws from The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy by Russel Weigley, and What were George Washington's strengths as a military commander and how did he rate among his peers of the time? with a comment from /u/KingWalnut, which draws from the biography Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow.

Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image actually goes into detail on this specific question. In a short and dirty summary: Vitruvius was a Roman architect who believed building should imitate the perfect human’s dimensions - which he also gives in detail, basing every part of the human body off of the top of the smallest finger. Vitruvius also talks about using squares to represent the mundane and circles to represent the divine.

In the Middle Ages, the Vetruvian Man (i.e. this idea of a perfect human being both mundane and divine, represented in both a square and a circle) becomes a somewhat useful way to depict Jesus. Lester gives examples and pictures of paintings that have Jesus inside the circle and square, but they are often forced- often Jesus is standing straight or sideways and so the circle is smaller or the square is more rectangular in shape.

Da Vinci does two things with his Vitruvian Man. Firstly, he places the body in motion - one pose making the square (feet straight and arms out) and one pose making the circle (the jumping jack pose). Secondly, and far more importantly, his Vitruvian Man isn’t Jesus. Da Vinci instead draws a self portrait, by extension claiming that he, a mortal, contains both the divine and mundane. Lester continues by saying that since all things in the universe are made up of divine and mundane things, if we humans possess both qualities as the Da Vinci’s rendition claims, we humans possess the ability to understand all things in the universe.

The term “allies” only seems to imply “moral high ground” in the modern mindset because that is the way the narrative of World War II is taught in most countries today: simply put, “allies” equals “good” and “axis” equals “evil”. However, the word “ally” itself does not intrinsically carry a moral connotation. The Cambridge Dictionary defines “ally” as: “a country that has agreed officially to give help and support to another one, especially during a war”, and gives as an example: “During the First World War, Turkey and Germany were allies/Turkey was an ally of Germany.”

In other wars throughout history which are not viewed as clear-cut conflicts between “good” and “evil” the way World War II is, there have been alliances, and referring to the countries in such alliances as “allies” does not confer them the “moral high ground”. In fact, the whole matter of the “moral high ground” can be a subject for a lengthy philosophical debate, but while an alliance can be entered into for moral reasons, usually all countries view their own actions as “right” and “just” and those of their enemies as “wrong”, even though the ulterior motives for such an alliance can be later judged as immoral by others.

In other words, the term “allies” has a distinct positive moral connotation in modern use due to the perception of the “good” vs “evil” fight of World War II. I’d like to add that in a similar way, terms like “empire” and “dictator” now tend to have a negative connotation, which they did not have historically (e.g. during the time of the Roman Empire) because of how they are viewed retrospectively today.

Under Lenin's "Land Decree" he wrote retiring workers would

1. Lose the land they worked on, and

2. Gain a pension.

>> "Peasants who, owing to old age or ill-health, are permanently disabled and unable to cultivate the land personally, shall lose their right to the use of it but, in return, shall receive a pension from the state."

-- marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/25-26/26d.htm

If that worker worked 20 years they qualified for a full pension:

>> "In 1987 the Soviet Union had 56.8 million pensioners; of this number, 40.5 million were retired with full pensions on the basis of twenty years of service and age eligibility"

-- mongabay.com/history/soviet_union/soviet_union-pension_system_welfare.html

By the way, the soviet state (the dictatorship of the proletariat) was not a "communist state." Communism (as Marx himself defined it) is stateless & comes after the state "withers away & dies:"

>> "Marx argued that for socialism to be realized, the state would have to be done away with."

-- socialistworker.org/2012/03/23/marx-against-the-state

ie, Marx advocated using the state to advance to socialist/communism, but they are not the same thing. In other words, "communist state" is an oxymoron.

Prester John is best understood as a mythological figure whose stories were influenced by real figures (analogies might be Robin Hood or King Arthur), rather than being a mythologised historical figure (such as Charlemagne).

Prester John quite obviously isn't directly related to Genghis Khan, as some of the earliest written mentions come from Chronica de duabus civitatibus by Otto of Freising which was written 1143–1145, before Genghis Khan was born, and the Letter of Prester John which dates from 1165 when Genghis was 2 or 3 years old.

As far as the influence of Genghis Khan on the legend is concerned, Michael E. Brookes' thesis covers it well:

>The westward expansion of the nomadic Mongols did not go unnoticed in Europe, and the history of Mongol drive across Asia need not be recounted here. However, two particular Mongol leaders, Genghis Khan and Hulagu Khan, stand out as figures that may have played roles in the evolution of the Prester John legend. Europeans retained memory of the Nestorian Christian churches in Asia, and there were a significant number of Nestorians who held important positions in the Mongol government. Moreover, Europeans knew from experience the powerful armies that surged westward across the steppe, and the conquest of Baghdad by Hulagu Khan likely cemented the idea that an eastern ally could open a deadly flank upon the Islamic world.

Brookes' thesis is just generally a good read for analysis of the Prester John myth. I'd also recommend Kurt - The search for Prester John,a projected crusade and the eroding prestige of Ethiopian kings,c.1200–c.1540 for more detail on the later, Ethiopian influences.

This document includes onions with other imports and exports from roughly the same time period - onions don't seem to cost more than similar items the few times they are listed.

One thought - onions are easy to grow and not a major export for any country of the time period. Onions will go bad very quickly in a moist environment like a ship hold.

Perhaps in Wallachia they dried onions for export? That would explain the higher price by weight.

Edit: Here's a good example of what drying does to the price of an exported crop (from the same document above)

I'm currently reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. It tells the story of Louis Zamperini, a B-24 bombardier in WWII.

It says towards the beginning of the book, "Those who enlisted prior to being drafted could choose their service branch. In early 1941, Louie joined the Army Air Corps."

Just two mentions, but it looks like the book is actually titled 1000 Years of Annoying the French (source), and it's definitely not an unbiased source. Are there any other sources that describe the situation and back up that narrative?

It's definitely a cool story though!

For another read that could be enlightening to you --

About 200 years later, an anonymous upper-class Victorian man wrote a long book that similarly catalogues his life and shows how upper-class English men used less powerful English women as sexual objects, sometimes non-consensually. Unlike Pepys this work is specifically about his sexual life. There are many, many examples of the author regularly groping, harassing, and/or raping women he encounters, often servants of his family, lower-class women around him, and sex workers. Some of the girls he assaults are very, very young.

The book is anonymous and author has been much speculated about, but this article in the journal Victorian Literature and Culture makes a fairly convincing case that it was a civil engineer named William Haywood.

First of all I think we can safely ignore the Shakespeare claims which the internet is full of, Shakespeare does have the lines 'Knock Knock. Who's there?' In Macbeth, but since what follow does not seem to be a punch line or a play on words this is very unlikely to be the origin of the joke. I would not however rule out the possibility that the earliest versions were parodies or pastiches of this famous scene.

The earliest print reference I can find cited for recognisable knock knock jokes is from 1929 when the formula is included in the book 'The Games of Children: Their Origin and History' by Henry Betts. It's described as being part of a parlour game called 'buff'. Betts describes the game as being new to him, so it's possible that the actual origin date was around that time.

By 1936 a Pennsylvania Newspaper is reporting on the growing popularity of knock knock jokes, the article explains the joke format to the readers which indicates that it hasn't really hit mainstream culture by this point.

By the 1950s knock knock jokes are appearing in other English speaking countries outside the US and in other languages, given the timing it seems likely that the format could have been spread by American soldiers during WWII and by the emerging mass broadcast media.

And a bit of silliness. My favourite one as a child:

Knock Knock

Who's there?

Dish washer.

Dish washer who?

Dish washn't the way I shpoke before I got falsh teef.

So for one thing, education was available to more people than you might expect. A basic Islamic education (starting with Quran memorization) was available to just about anyone who could afford for their son to spend the time not working, and advancement from there into the Islamic sciences or medicine wasn’t something you could only do with the support of a lot of wealth, because charitable foundations existed and were actually quite common and solvent. The Islamic waqf, a legal trust set up by a wealthy person to support a charitable cause like a school or hospital or mosque after their death, is an incredibly important institution even today and precedes the Western development of similar foundations and trust law by several centuries. And at the same time, education often depended pretty specifically on a relationship with an individual teacher you traveled to meet and who personally agreed to take you on, so you weren’t subject to institutional barriers to entry in the same way you are in the university system today. For these reasons among others, social mobility and educational opportunities were greater in the medieval Islamic world than you might expect.

That said, even having family money doesn’t mean you’re not going to be broke as a student far from home! It’s killing me that I can’t come up with the specific reference/name, but I know I’ve read memoirs of a student complaining about his suffering and the bad food he was eating. He had traveled from his home in Eastern Iran to study with a particular teacher in Iraq and had a lot to say about his hardships.

A wonderful book for exploring the social history of Islamic educational institutions is Berkey’s Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo.

So would the main difference between Cash playing the prisons and Metallica playing a prison be the amount of fame and solidarity in their career?

Like you said, Cash was generally unestablished as an artist and playing these shows because of his mental association with the inmates. Metallica played because San Quentin is close to their hometown of San Francisco. If Metallica had been a more underground band at the time (they had already released albums up through St Anger and had won 6 Grammys by that point), in the same way Cash was, would there have been more controversy with this performance?

B.B. King, blues guitarist, also recorded a live album at SQ, aptly titled Live at San Quentin. What was the backlash like when this album was released?

It's a variant of Sixsmith, a sickle smith.

*I return, bearing sources:Meaning of Sixsmith

Sexsmith as a variant of Sixsmith. (Ctrl+f Sexsmith)

You might find this piece from the New York Times, The Big Sleep, relevant.

It talks about the habits of the French farmers during a time well after the Middle Ages, but I think it's safe to assume that those habits would have been around in the Middle Ages too, as their lifestyles would not have changed too much.

In short, yes, a lot of peasants just did nothing, in part to conserve food, according to this writer.

>Economists and bureaucrats who ventured out into the countryside after the Revolution were horrified to find that the work force disappeared between fall and spring. The fields were deserted from Flanders to Provence. Villages and even small towns were silent, with barely a column of smoke to reveal a human presence. As soon as the weather turned cold, people all over France shut themselves away and practiced the forgotten art of doing nothing at all for months on end. > >In the mountains, the tradition of seasonal sloth was ancient and pervasive. “Seven months of winter, five months of hell,” they said in the Alps. When the “hell” of unremitting toil was over, the human beings settled in with their cows and pigs. They lowered their metabolic rate to prevent hunger from exhausting supplies. If someone died during the seven months of winter, the corpse was stored on the roof under a blanket of snow until spring thawed the ground, allowing a grave to be dug and a priest to reach the village.

The World Heath Organisation, which is a subset of the United Nations, owes its beginnings to the League of Nations. They had some very real and marked success with work throughout the world with vaccinations and education programs. They also carried out a number of assessments and made attempts to formalise healthcare in countries such as china.

A lot of their efforts, especially those in China fell foul of the failings of the league as a whole, and especially activity in China was limited after Japanese protests and then the subsequent invasion.

This is a nice little read that touches on the sorts of activities, and makes some assessments as to their success. I will try and find some more detailed sources too.

https://www.academia.edu/798208/The_League_of_Nations_Health_Organisation_from_European_to_Global_Health_Concerns

EDIT: I'm struggling to find anything of any real substance freely available on the internet, and as my university recently ended its support to alumni for Jstore I'm afraid I'm a tad out of luck on that front too. Hopefully what I have already posted is suitable enough.

The Red Cross segregated white and black blood until 1950, despite the knowledge that segregation served no real medical purpose. Segregated blood supplies became an especially heated issue during WWII.

I remember this coming up in a Freakonomics discussion and I managed to track down a source.

Something from a bit of a later date, but in Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940 by Chad Heap, there is some discussion of fellatio and the author states that it was considered "unnatural" or "foreign" by most Americans at the time. The euphemism for the practice was "French".

He goes on to say that in the brothels where this was offered, the other prostitutes would shun those who offered the workers who did offer the practice, refusing to associate or eat with them.

I would speculate that if in this time period it was considered unnatural and foreign to offer such services, it is possible that in the "Wild West" it may not have been offered.

Edit: Here's the Google books link to save everyone time: https://books.google.com/books?id=Pcs6T-NVz0wC&amp;lpg=PA136&amp;ots=2H8nIIkKnL&amp;dq=chicago%20brothels%20french&amp;pg=PA136#v=onepage&amp;q=chicago%20brothels%20french&amp;f=false

Could someone also clarify what is meant by "life expectancy" in the context of war? The British seem to have calculated such a number for pilots during WWI.
https://books.google.com/books?id=Y82WHKm2QBYC&amp;pg=PA40&amp;lpg=PA40&amp;dq=life+expectancy+british+pilot+wwi&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=Fq24DrYJh_&amp;sig=gH80den5zvThJ9NZcYLAHFzdOc0&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=D9fkVMHLM8LkoAS_zYGQBg&amp;ved=0CB0Q6AE...

My first instinct is that this number is meaningless because the number keeps getting bigger as the survivors get older ... instead, I have the impression that these statistics apply only to those people who ACTUALLY DIE.

So, if 100 pilots go into battle and 50 are killed at the first minute while the rest survive, I think we would say "there was an average life expectancy of one minute ... among those pilots who died in the battle." The same would be true if only one was killed and 99 survived. Right?

Quick sidebar- Tech N9ne is definitely not Muslim (although his stepfather was), and clearly Christian, even if he's not a Christian Rapper (verse 3)

(I hope primary sources are acceptable ;) )

Yep, this is a very important point. The number of civil wars has been seriously overestimated throughout this thread; it was 'endemic', but only during the Crisis of the Third Century. Practically all the emperors from Constantine to the mid-fifth century can be tied to each other in some way, so dynastic succession was very much the norm, not the exception. This is made clear in Henning Borm's recent article on this exact topic, which is very conveniently available to read online here. Random generals generally could not just rebel against the reigning emperor and seize power, as they had no chance of being seen as legitimate.

I address his question in my Virginia City: Secrets of a Western Past (2012). In northern climates, batwing doors would never have worked; saloons in the Intermountain West generally had full-length doors. This is largely a product of movies and television. In the warm Southwest, one might have encountered batwing doors, but they would always have been reinforced by full, locking doors for when the saloon was closed (or when wind and dust was an issue or during cold winter evenings).

Another thing that Hollywood gives us is a different orientation: doors open in films on the longest wall. Saloons, in fact, were orientated to have the least front footage since that was the expensive real estate, so doors opened to long narrow saloons with the saloon leading back to the back wall. But that doesn't work cinemagaphically, so Hollywood turned the saloon so the doors opened to the broad bar on the opposite wall.

One of the coolest books I’ve read on the subject is Side by Side: Parallel Histories of Israel Palestine. It literally has the different accounts of events right next to each other with the Israeli version on all the left pages and the Palestinian version on the right pages.

The cost of living in the West - particularly in the Intermountain West away from the Coast - was notoriously high because everything needed to be shipped in. The other side of the coin is that everything was shipped in, largely because it was possible to charge top dollar for the imported goods. Also, communities grew up isolated in specific locations, usually because there was a great deal of money to be made there.

Contrast this with farming communities in the Ohio and Mississippi drainage regions: here, remote communities were established not because of extreme wealth but because people were able to make marginal existences with farming in remote areas. Importing goods to these locations was difficult and not necessarily purchased because cash flow could be marginal in these places. It was possible, therefore, to be Midwestern farmer who was closer to an urban center but who found it difficult to obtain (or afford) imported goods, while in the West, one could be farther from an urban center and yet be able to afford imported goods.

The upshot of all of this is that while it would be damn annoying to have a window shattered because some jerks were in a fight, it would be relatively easy to obtain its replacement. This was particularly true of boomtowns, where imported building materials were being shipped in regularly. For example, after the 1875 fire devastated Virginia City, Nevada, primary sources describe up to 50 daily trainloads of building materials until the community rebuilt.

edit: here is a chapter on Western town building from my book, Virginia City: Secrets of a Western Past (2012).

In Steve Muhlberger's <em>Formal Combats in the Fourteenth Century</em>, he discusses particular instances of combat that were sufficiently formal not to just be two guys getting into a fight, yet weren't exactly part of warfare or battles.

Given the particularity of the examples Muhlberger uses, it seems to me that it wasn't something that happened as commonly as you might see in Arthurian romance, but that formal combat sparked by personal or trivial motives did happen.

If you have some time and are genuinely interested, your questions can be answered in The History of American Higher Education. I like Thelin's books because he goes into the history of black/African American students, HBCU's, women in college, rural students, and other racial and cultural minorities who are all often not or underrepresented in history. He also includes a lot of primary sources and personal stories that provide a better picture of the higher ed landscape. Pretty much everyone with a Student Affairs/Higher Ed Master's degree has to read this in grad school.

In short, Harvard has always claimed to be the oldest university in America (the argument often goes back and forth with Penn). Higher Education was (still is?) reserved for the wealthy and elite so going to college in the colonial period through the end of the 20th century was a really, really big deal. You could go to college if your family had the money not only for uniforms, fees, tuition, room, and board for an entire year, but also for transportation to Massachusetts and sometimes professor's fees and room and board as well.

The expense and general misunderstanding (new education concept) of what higher education was made it extremely rare for people to go to college, which lead to Harvard's initial branding of prestige. It must be good if only the rich are doing it, right? Harvard's alumni base and endowment has grown through the centuries, only perpetuating their prestigious image.

Havard's extensive history ties in with the other comments on their ability to attract modern day prestige and wealth, and maintain the brand.

>In my limited understanding, the n-word wasn't a slur used in anger, but a general synonym for slave and that it was words like "negro" and "darkie" that were used as hateful insults.

"Negro" was only considered pejorative fairly recently. MLK referred to himself using it in the "I Have A Dream" speech, and the baseball league formed so non-whites could play prior to baseball's integration was called the Negro League. In the 1850s it was probably a normal term. See here.

I'm no expert, so I can't speak to the specifics of word usage in the south, but the n-word was definitely more offensive than "negro". Though its usage could be just a synonym for slave (reflecting social reality, not making it so), it was a slur then by the mid-1800s. Source.

edit: IIRC in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the n-word is written "n--" but "negro" is simply written, indicating that Frederick Douglass felt the n-word was too profane for publication, and censored it with other swears, such as "b--" for "bitch". That was published in the 1840s.

I'm a geologist/paleontologist not an historian, but I think I have something relevant to share.

Where I live the local native people, the Mi'kmaq, have a legend of their god, Glooscap, getting angry at a beaver for making a giant dam. Glooscap smashed the dam, and the Bay of Fundy flooded in.

Spicer, Stanley T. (1991) Glooscap Legends. Hantsport, Nova Scotia: Lancelot Press.

This is just one of the many legends around here, but quite interestingly recent geophysical data, spurred by ongoing interest to harness the bay's tidal energy, has unearthed (hehe) several distinct glacial formations in the bay (long flooded over), including a rather large terminal moraine. That's a big pile of gravel and clay pushed by a glacier, and they can dam things up quite well.

It would have been present long after the Laurentide glacier retreated and the Mi'kmaq likely would have noticed it (they have some deliciously detailed stories that tie into geological phenomena!). It may have broken as sea level rose, and, if so, that would have been a spectacular flooding event.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234127521_Laurentide_Ice_Sheet_dynamics_in_the_Bay_of_Fundy_Canada_revealed_through_multibeam_sonar_mapping_of_glacial_landsystems

The only one that comes to my mind is Gilles de Rais. He was a child serial killer that most likely killed from 80 to 200 children. However, some authors claim that he could have killed around 800 children. It is hard to tell because he either burned or buried the bodies. (http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Gilles_de_Rais.aspx#1-1G2:3403801926-full)

There were a few reasons why did he do such horrible things. The first one is his interest in satanism. He killed those kids as a sacrifice. The second one was his interest in children in a sexual way. The third one was because he was just a psycho. Gilles testified that “when the said children were dead, he kissed them and those who had the most handsome limbs and heads he held up to admire them, and had their bodies cruelly cut open and took delight at the sight of their inner organs; and very often when the children were dying he sat on their stomachs and took pleasure in seeing them die and laughed” (This quote is from Wiki)

The Ranseur (Image no 7) (another page) is the only pole weapon I recall that resembles a trident. The hilt is crescent shaped and was probably used to parry and disarm opponents.

The book is An Illustrated History of Arms and Armour: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, by Auguste Demmin.

Correct; the Art of War COMMENTARY. Alas; I do mention that both times I reference the Art of War in the reply. The Commentary of Li Quan is included with most standard translations of The Art of War. Sorry if that was unclear.

> I've not access to the book

It's available at Archive.org, here's the full text of that portion (p.73):

> Ballista, or Demon's Head. — Algonkin tradition affirms that in ancient times, during the fierce wars which the Indians carried on, they constructed a very formidable instrument of attack, by sewing up a large round boulder in a new skin. To this a long handle was tied. When the skin dried, it became very tight around the stone, and, after being painted with devices, assumed the appearance and character of a solid globe upon a pole. This formidable instrument was borne by several warriors, who acted as ballisters. Plunged upon a boat or canoe, it was capable of sinking it. Brought down among a group of men on a sudden, it produced consternation and death.

So it doesn't sound like a ballista in the same sense of a kind of "giant crossbow" associated with the Romans, but instead was a sort of "giant club" for breaking up boats and men alike.

This is a little more modern than my area of expertise, but if I recall my education, L. Yablonsky estimated between 200,000 and 400,000 hippies during the 1960s.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/american-hippies/oclc/900332629

http://www.worldcat.org/title/hippie-trip/oclc/647315095?referer=di&amp;ht=edition

From the 1850's up until the First World War, quite a lot of emphasis was put on the use of the bayonet as a weapon. British soldiers would have trained with reference to Henry Charles Angelo's <em>Bayonet Exercise</em>, which presents a systematic form of bayonet fighting; there were other bayonet manuals published by Sir Richard Burton and others. Swords and lances were still primary weapons for cavalry at this time. There was quite a general passion for martial arts in the Victorian period, and officers and men may have taken part in Assaults of Arms, though the hey-day of this seems to have been after the Anglo-Zulu war. There was also regimental boxing; competitions between regiments were I think only established in the 1890's, but I don't know about within regiments.

Whilst they may not have had the skill of Zulu warriors who fought primarily with the spear and shield, I think it would be inaccurate to suggest that British soldiers would have necessarily been 'bad' at close quarter fighting. They were trained for it, armed for it and many probably had direct experience using that training.

Great reply! I have one follow-up question.

>Most torture devices from the era are inventions of Victorian era freakshows (that were very popular at the time). Beatings, floggings, suspensions with rope, burning, thumbscrews and the traction table are the only tortures I have been able to confirm was used.

On John Oliver's new HBO show, Last Week Tonight, he referenced various torture/execution devices.

>We loved killing people so much, we kept coming up with new inventive techniques that looked like they were designed by the Marquis de Sade and named by Willy Wonka.

>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the head crusher.

>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These devices have almost childlike names, like penny-winkies.

>(LAUGHTER)

>OLIVER: Ooh, that's right, penny-winkies, a delightful English cousin of the throaty tug-tug and the joggly-shocky-buzz-buzz-tickly-wickly seats.

Do you know what "penny-winkies" were, and whether they actually existed/were used in the medieval period? The only online mention I could find predating this TV program is from &quot;Kirkwall in the Orkneys&quot; by Buckham Hugh Hossack, 1900:

>Besides the torture of the "boot," we hear of the "cashie laws," an iron stocking heated up by a moveable furnace; of the penny winkies, the thumbscrew, and of the simple scourge...

The best version out there is Jeremy Bernstein's Hitler's Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall. It is heavily annotated by Bernstein (a physicist/historian) which helps make a lot more sense of the scientific discussions. You can get it used for a song on AbeBooks, or pretty cheap new on Amazon.

>Do you think they would have ground the beans? Or just steeped them in boiling water after they were roasted?

Depends. It's possible to roast the beans and boil them for a long time and extract a good amount of the soluble material. You end up with what Ukers calls a liquor. This would have been fairly common in Colonial America. More common was grinding and then boiling. After that you would let the grounds settle and pour the water through a cloth to filter it a bit. Less common was pouring water over them just after a boil. That requires multiple utensils, whereas you can just throw a pot of water and grounds in a fire and let that boil together.

> What happens if one attempts coffee from green coffee beans?

Some of the earliest peoples to partake of coffee ate the berries raw, or toasted them lightly. Making a drink from green coffee beans wouldn't taste very good.

Source: Same as OP. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28500/28500-h/28500-h.htm#Chapter_XXXIV Uker, Chapters 34-36.

Follow up question, when you say whore, to what definition do you refer? Because while ~~I~~ ahem Hamilton's mother might have had relations with men other than ~~my~~ her husband, she did not accept monetary compensation for such acts. Please refer to the lovely publication regarding ~~my son~~ Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. His mother by Chernow's account sounds like a neat lady.

Part 2

Studies on the situation of lesbian women are even more scarce than studies on homosexual men, regarding Nazi persecution as well as their situation in the Allied zones of occupation. § 175 did not include provisions for the persecution of lesbian women. Under the Nazis, an unknown number of women were arrested for lesbian activities, not under the category of "homsoexual" but rather under the "asocial" category. Coming from that knowledge, it is likely that some of them were also re-imprisoned by the Allies if they determined that they hadn't "served" their full sentence. Like in the case of Nazi persecution however, it is impossible to say without further research how many people were affected by this.

Sources:

• Michele Weber: <em>When does our liberation come? The policing of homosexuality in the American Zone of Occupation, Germany 1945-1949</em>

• Kai Hammermeister: Inventing History: Toward a Gay Holocaust Literature, German Quarterly 70.1 (Winter 1997).

• Jennifer V. Evans: Bahnhof Boys: Policing Male Prostitution in Post-Nazi Berlin, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Oct., 2003), pp. 605-636.

• Gudrun Hauer: Weibliche Homosexualität in der NS-Zeit. In: Andreas Baumgartner/Ingrid Bauz/Jean-Marie Winkler (Hg.): Zwischen Mutterkreuz und Gaskammer. Täterinnen und Mitläuferinnen oder Widerstand und Verfolgte? Beiträge zum Internationalen Symposium „Frauen im KZ Mauthausen“ am 4. Mai 2006. Wien: edition Mauthausen 2008, S. 27-33, 167-171.

• Günter Grau (ed.): Homosexualität in der NS-Zeit. Dokumente einer Diskriminierung und Verfolgung. 2. überarbeitete Auflage. Fischer-TB, Frankfurt am Main 2004.

Yes it is true. John Dower in Embracing Defeat recounts one tale of a woman listening to the broadcast with her whole village, and she couldn't really understand what the Emperor was saying. But, iirc, he also writes that there would generally be at least one person in each village who'd been educated and was able to relay what was being said. In the above story it was someone who had recently come from Tokyo who said "this means that Japan has lost". You can read an excerpt including this story here.

I can wholly recommend Embracing Defeat if you're interested in Japan's reaction to the surrender and subsequent occupation. It is, in my mind, an example of the kind of standard all historical works ought to aspire too. Rather than just give you a narrative, it does as much as it can (imo as much as is humanly possible) to tell you what people experienced on all levels of Japanese society and to a lesser extend within the American occupiers.

I can't answer your other questions, so I'll leave that to those who can.

So I have spent the morning doing a bit of research in order to answer your question. This practice is called "odd pricing" and it is used as a psychological tactic. Even though $4.99 is closer to $5 consumers will still tend to round down in their head, thinking they are only paying $4. People focus on the dollar component rather than the cent component, retailers realized this so they raised the cent component as high as they can while still keeping to the "odd pricing" tactic.

Now as far as I can tell their is not any evidence that this tactic was used in America before the late 1800's. There is some evidence from newspaper advertisements that the practice was put into use in the 1880's in order to have an edge over the competition. E.g Melville Stone with the Chicago Daily News.

More likely the reason, it was implemented in order to reduce employee theft. Employees would have to give change back to the customer and therefore would need to open the register, leaving a record of the sale. They wouldn't be able to just pocket the bills without having any record of the transaction.

As far as the other half of your question, I honestly do not know if there was an equivalent in Roman times, but I doubt it. Roman coins were based off the amount of gold/silver/bronze in the actual coin itself and was done through a weight exchange.

Anyways here are some sources to read if you want to:

"The Armchair Economist" by Steven E. Landburg - sorry no link

This explains Odd Pricing

From your question, I gather that all the saloons you have visited in the Wild West have been in movies, TV or gaming. Saloons in reality were different. Adapting an answer I provided over eight years ago (your question is frequently asked!):

In northern climates, batwing doors would never have worked; saloons in the Intermountain West generally had full-length doors. They were needed to keep out the cold and to be able to lock the establishment when it was closed. The batwing doors provide a dramatic device for the entrance of an antagonist, but they would not be practical in reality.

Hollywood also gives us is a different orientation for the saloon itself: doors open in films on the longest wall with the bar on the opposite side serving as the back of the "stage," for the drama of the moment to be acted out. Saloons, in fact, were usually orientated to have the least front footage since that was the expensive real estate, so doors opened to long narrow saloons with the saloon leading back, along the bar, reaching toward the back wall. But that doesn't work cinematographically, so Hollywood turned the saloon so the doors opened to the broad bar on the opposite wall. Batwing doors were used occasionally in the Southwest, but they were always backed up with tall doors that could seal the saloon for security or against the wind (and occasionally cold winter nights).

I handle this topic in my book, Virginia City: Secrets of a Western Past (2012) which is based on years of archeological excavations (including the examination of four saloon sites) and work in general with the buildings in the Virginia City National Landmark District in Nevada.

A lot of what you said about engagement, and preparations for battle is also covered in "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu in the 5th Century BC. Specifically, ensuring proper scouting and logistics through spies or prisoners, preventing your own troops from becoming exhausted, avoiding large scale conflict unless you know victory is likely, and ensuring provisions are available for your army. In that text, however, there is nothing that comes to mind other than morale in regards to battle preparation.

OP has posed an interesting question, and I can't help but wonder if the concept of warming up is relatively recent outside of combat. Was warming up common in the ancient Olympics, sporting events during, or gladiatorial battles?

Also just to note the article is also available at ww.academia.edu. Here's the link. After a quarter century, however, my subsequent research has affected what I understood, and I hope my forthcoming book will represent the new standard in dealing with this curiosity of labor folklore.

During the Cold War, the fear of an "atomic Pearl Harbor" was recurrent phrase used by US policymakers to describe an unexpected, undeclared Soviet sneak attack that might try to decapitate the US policy structure or the US military structure. (When the favored terminology shifted from "atomic" to "nuclear" in the late 1950s, the &quot;Pearl Harbor&quot; term shifted too.)

So there's a sort of connection there — it became more than the event itself, it became a symbol of vulnerability, surprise attacks, of "expecting the unexpected," and etc.

But did Pearl Harbor qua Pearl Harbor have the kind of cultural resonance that 9/11 did? After WWII, I'm not so sure. The end of WWII provided so many other cultural resonances — the power of the Soviets, the power of the atomic bomb, the power of the long-range bomber, etc. — whose influence vastly overshadows the actual events of Pearl Harbor. It seems to me that the invocation of Pearl Harbor in the postwar/Cold War is in reference to these events — e.g. the "atomic Pearl Harbor" where the atomic bomb is really the subject, and Pearl Harbor is just the way to say "it could happen."

The Musculata (6-pack ab) armor was most likely for show and reserved for higher level officers as it was form fitted and not easily adjustable.

The Romans were very much about efficiency when it came to military matters. The more common armor of the Roman Legion was the Lorica Segmentata, an armor made up of overlapping bands and panels of metal plates. Much of the information about the lorica segmentata comes from the Trajan's column monument and other friezes and monuments of the time period. There is archaeological evidence of the segmentata all over the place that seems to support that it was far more common than any other type of armor but there are questions as to whether that is because it was more prone to losing pieces as opposed to being more prevalent.

As someone who has made both medieval and roman style armor I would say in my personal opinion based on experience that the segmentata is far easier to construct in bulk and to fit to a user rapidly than any solid piece of armor such as the musculata. It is far more time consuming to make fitted musculata chest pieces or chain mail than to strap together a bunch of pre-made strips in varying sizes. If you want to read more about the segmentata style of armor here is a good scholarly paper on the subject from academia.edu that is the source of some of what I said above.

This manner of speaking certainly had an important place for Romans. The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Emperor, 161) is a book entirely filled by succinct, meaningful pieces of wisdom such as this.

Works filled with this form of language is not surprising, considering that Romans placed such an emphasis on the spoken Latin word. It likely wasn't a strict rule, but it's said that the Romans read texts out loud rather than silently read like we do in the modern western world. The rhythmic, poetic elements of such statements are aural features of language, and because Roman Latin had a strong aural tradition, it's not surprising that their writing gravitated towards this form of speech.

Many would say it's quite elegant, beautiful, and musical.

These wisdom filled musings also have philosophical undertones. Perhaps I'm reading too far into it, since I'm currently reading through Aristotle's works and it is already on my mind, but it is none the less a fact that the ancient philosophers explored the world through language and syllogistic reasoning. Aristotle explains the formation of metals, and it is entirely laid out in natural language. Metaphysical explanations such as the quote from Pliny above abound in the pre-scientific method natural philosophy of the ancient world.

So I'd highly recommend The Meditations to anyone who likes these short quips of wisdom, and of course ancient philosophy as a whole offers many fascinating accounts of natural phenomena from a metaphysical approach.

I’ve always been struck by the account in Sherman’s Memoirs, where he shows a telegram announcing the assassination to the Confederate General Johnston when negotiating the surrender of Johnston’s army in North Carolina:

“As soon as we were alone together I showed him the dispatch announcing Mr. Lincoln's assassination, and watched him closely. The perspiration came out in large drops on his forehead, and he did not attempt to conceal his distress. He denounced the act as a disgrace to the age, and hoped I did not charge it to the Confederate Government... We talked about the effect of this act on the country at large and on the armies, and he realized that it made my situation extremely delicate. I explained to him that I had not yet revealed the news to my own personal staff or to the army, and that I dreaded the effect when made known in Raleigh. Mr. Lincoln was peculiarly endeared to the soldiers, and I feared that some foolish woman or man in Raleigh might say something or do something that would madden our men, and that a fate worse than that of Columbia would befall the place.”

Columbia, had, of course, burned down two months prior after Sherman’s troops drove out the Confederates.

Source: Sherman’s Memoirs, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4361/old/orig4361-h/p4.htm

I am a historian and folklorist who was fortunate to administer the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office for three decades. This gave me the mandate and funding to support archaeological excavations (one of my degrees is also in anthropology). The nature of my public service meant that my efforts were largely restricted to Nevada, although one of my Western history books focuses mainly on the California Gold Rush.

As a peculiar quirk, I began life as a Europeanist and studied folklore in Ireland, where I lived for a year. I managed to keep that line of research alive, but not as vigorously as I would have liked. After completing my public service and retiring, I have moved more aggressively with my European research, and I'm pleased to say that I just received copies of my latest book, The Folklore of Cornwall: The Oral Tradition of a Celtic Nation. While this includes a treatment of the Western Tommyknocker - a North American descendant of the Cornish knocker - the book is squarely in the realm of European folklore, giving me something of a spit personality. I hope the mods don't mind my mentioning that we are planning an AMA on this book and folklore in general at the end of the month.

Thanks for the kind words and the question.

/u/iDavidRex I found a kindle edition on amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Culture-America-Popular-Representations-ebook/dp/B014M481LO/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1495234209&amp;sr=8-1

I know Wikipedia isn't regarded as a proper source, but... NBC broadcast the 1966 final with a two hour delay in the US.

Edit: Found a better source "American Soccer: History, Culture, Class" by Gregory G. Reck and Bruce Allen Dick. It starts on the bottom of page 99, here' a google books link to it.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

The Napoleonic Wars are very well studied, but there are a few books that stand out to me.

The most important in writing this answer were

The Campaigns of Napoleon by David Chandler

Napoleon and the Operational Art of War: Essays in Honor of Donald D. Horward ed. Michael V. Leggiere

With Eagles to Glory: Napoleon and his German Allies in the 1809 Campaign by Jack Gill, plus the first volume of his Thunder on the Danube

Napoleon's Great Adversaries: The Archduke Charles and the Austrian Army by Gunther E. Rothenberg

In addition to the above, I recommend the following for getting into the Napoleonic Wars

Jena, 1806: Napoleon Destroys Prussia by David Chandler

The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon by Gunther E. Rothenberg

The Evolution of the Operational Art, 1740-1813: From Frederick the Great to Napoleon by Claus Telp

Swords Around a Throne: Napoleon's Grande Armee by John Elting

I'll edit in more when I think of them.

Edit: Also be sure to check out the maps West Point has online from its Atlas of the Wars of Napoleon.

Americans, both northern and southern, went on a form of the Grand Tour in the 18th C, though in Being American in Europe, 1750-1860, Daniel Kilbride points out that Americans valued its opportunity for practical education as much, if not more, than sentimental education.

Moving into the Gilded Age, the more traditional Grand Tour figured largely in the lives of the new American super wealthy. I can't think of a good secondary source offhand, but the rich American in Europe is, eg, a very common theme in the novels of Henry James.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was a Harvard man who suffered ophthalmia, in his case usually described as a weakness of the eyes, following having the measles. He took two years off and signed on to a ship that was trading furs on the west coast, in the San Francisco area. He wrote an excellent account of his voyage on the Pilgrim called "Two Years Before the Mast," which is a terrific read [Gutenberg]. Though he had some college education, he was not aboard as an officer, and so his book has the great combination of being about the life of a common sailor and bearing the deft prose of an educated man, an advantage he had over most of his shipmates.

By accounts, the 'cure' worked. Dana went back to Harvard, attended Law School, and went on to some renown. He was on the team that prosecuted Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

I'm sure his ophthalmia isn't what you had in mind, but 2 years on a brig didn't make his bad eyes worse, but rather the opposite, so that's got to count for something.

Absolutely! Roman culture was heavily influenced by Greek thinking, to the point that several prominent Romans were openly critical of it since they felt that it made their young men more effeminate and less effective as warriors (kind of like the lamentations that you hear from every older generation talking about the younger one these days). This site has a much more in depth take on it http://www.ancient.eu/article/472/

Just to clarify, "ein," "aiyn," and "in" are just different ways of transliterating Arabic عين, which simply means &quot;spring&quot; or &quot;source,&quot; so the historian did not get the name wrong. Many settlements in Middle East and other Arabic-speaking regions developed around such water sources and were named after the spring.

It was intended to buy time, mostly.

Japan didn't expect the US to want to commit to a drawn out war in the Pacific, but felt that war with the US was inevitable (the US had stopped trading oil with them in July and FDR moved the fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, among other things; a poll found that a majority of Americans felt war was inevitable), especially if it hoped to realize its plans for southeast Asia and the Philippines. By crippling the Pacific fleet with a single decisive attack, Japan hoped to prevent the US from assuming a dominant position in the Pacific from the get go. The thinking was that a relatively isolated and neutral US would rather surrender the Philippines than get drawn into the war if it wasn't positioned to win quickly.

Even if the US did commit to a longer war, the Japanese hoped that the attack would buy time and allow them to entrench their position in SE Asia and begin utilizing the raw materials and resources that the region would grant them. Japan hoped that, if the US did decide to commit to a drawn out conflict, the attack would delay the US until Japan was ready.

edit: for clarity, the poll linked was conducted just before the attack on Pearl Harbor, but published afterwards.

I'll answer part of your question. In Hollywood, the "blonde bombshell" female ideal which is ascribed to Scandinavian women took hold ca 1930-1933. The 1920s were the era of the boyish and flat-chested Flappers, who had short, dark hair - in 1933 silver-blonde Jean Harlow broke through to be the #1 female film star, and Fay Wray got to wear a blonde wig for her role in King Kong.
Swedish-born Greta Garbo (who had light brown hair) was already a star, topping the charts with Grand Hotel in 1932, and Carol Lombard had her hair bleached for a number of hit comedies from 1930-1936.

Sources:

• Barnaby Conrad, The Blonde: An Illustrated History of the Golden Era from Harlow to Monroe
• Rooney & Viera, Harlow in Hollywood
• Pictures of 1930s stars and their &quot;Hollywood Makeover&quot;

There's a book by Harvard Law School bankruptcy expert (now ~~Congresswoman~~ Sentator) Elizabeth Warren called The Two-Income Trap, which looks at how income and expenses changed from 1970-2000.

I bring it up because Warren covers the differences in expenses between 1970 and 2000. It's been a while since I've read the book, but what I remember the thesis being was that in 1970 people spent a greater percentage of their income on what Warren classified as "non-essential items" but a smaller percentage on "essential items." Again from memory, essential items are specifically housing, health care and education, and non-essential items are everything else.

In short, she contends that today we spend a much smaller percentage of our income on things like TVs, appliances, vacations, etc., but we spend a much greater percentage of our income on housing, health care and education. She also looks at how more households are two-income households today, but how that actually creates potential for disaster should there be a prolonged illness or job loss. Because both spouses have to work to afford the essentials, if one of them experiences a job loss then the family is pinched much harder than an equivalent family in 1970, since they could cut back on non-essential items and more likely had a single income to replace (meaning the non-working spouse could find full- or part-time employment to help bridge the main breadwinner's income disruption).

Anyway, that's what I remember from it. It's definitely worth a read if you find this type of thing interesting.

I think one thing that needs to be understood is that at its core, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is a biased work. Exhorting X's lifelong Black Nationalism, Black Pride, Pan-Africanism and first NOI then mainstream Islamic Faith. Much of the Nation of Islam's theology is based on Pro-black and anti-white rhetoric, including a polemic of white civilizations as you've asked about. This is what Macolm is parroting in his autobiography, that the white man's civilization (whatever that means) is both inferior to and has whitewashed the black mans civilization (whatever that means)

The dirt was used primarily in two ways. First, the initial dirt dug was used to build up the parapet along the front edge of the trench, which would have positions for rifleman to fire from at points along the top of the parapet. The parapet would require more dirt than might be expected, as to make earth bullet or shell proof it has to be compacted as much as possible. At the back end of the trench would be constructed the parados, a compacted dirt defense much like the parapet. Depending on the type of soil encountered, and the depth of the water table, it was often impossible to dig a trench down to a sufficient depth to effectively protect the soldiers. In these cases, much more dirt would have to be built up on both sides of the trench to provide sufficient cover.

The second use of dirt from the trenches would be to fill sandbags, which could then be used to strengthen the walls of trenches, bomb shelters, dugouts and the like. The work of expanding, reinforcing, and improving the trenches was a never ending one, and they would store the dirt in sandbags until it was required for repairing or reinforcing sectors of the trenches.

For more information than you ever wanted to know about trench construction, check out the manual "Trench Warfare, a Manual for Officers and Men" by Second Lieutenant Joseph Smith of the BEF, circa 1917. It is pretty comprehensive, and an interesting read. https://archive.org/details/trenchwarfareman00smitrich

i'm not sure about the historic origins but your pretty much correct on this point. Essentially waving the white flag needs to be accompanied by an envoy for negotiations as a white flag either denotes surrender or simply a wish to parley (according to Hague convention in 1899). The white flag is a flag of truce intended to stop hostilities enough that an envoy can reach the opposing side/communicate with the other side and discuss terms (which may or may not involve surrender).

On your "no point was it a direct sign for surrender" idea: in a siege waving a white flag before the start of an assault especially if terms had already been given the white flag was at the very least an implicit declaration of surrender

https://books.google.com/books?id=UTW0BQAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PA173&amp;lpg=PA173&amp;dq=white+flag+envoy&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=dCwYaZNQvJ&amp;sig=suAU8Ag0Tdks3lVW3Kg9m37NcYY&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=KYOfVLW6HMmlNtu4g9AO&amp;ved=0CCEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp...

This question is not, as PunsAblazin says, a taboo subject.

However, I have removed a few answers here which are nothing more than vague references to "survival of the fittest"^* and other speculation based on half-remembered over-simplified genetic biology. This is r/AskHistorians: we ask that answers be "informed, comprehensive, serious, and courteous", and supported by valid historical sources as necessary.

^* By the way, "survival of the fittest" doesn't mean what most people think it does - in Darwin's day, "fit" meant "suited to the circumstances", not "healthy" or "strong". So, this simply meant that organisms which were suited to their environment were more likely to survive than organisms which were not suited to their environment. The healthiest fish in the world will still die if you make it live on land...

I'll speak on France, as it's probably the easiest to talk about.

Outside of a warzone, or banditry, Rape was not something that happened ALL THE TIME in the high middle ages. Sure it did happen, but it wasn't just a rape fest happening all the time. However, from the records we have, there were VERY low reported cases inside of France. From the Regisre de I'Officialalite de Cersiry begining in 1314, for a period of 85 years there was only 12 cases of rape, or rather, reported rape. This was likely because of the heavy burden of proof put on the accuser of it. They HAD to have a witness to the act, and they had to prove they actually resisted the act. After all in this period of history women were viewed as the far more libidious gender. If there were no witnesses, the accused was absolved of all guilt. And to go further, to get an actual day in court, you had to be rather rich and noble. This wasn't modern times with paid leave. You had to be home to tend to the kids, tend to the harvest, work on clothing, ect ect. Infact Out of the 12 cases of reported rape in the Regisre de I'Officialalite de Cersiry in 1314-1399 10 were actually clergymen.

Source: Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age (Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture) by Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA; Connie Scarborough, Texas Tech University, Dallas, USA.

Well, for starters there were a number of people who were able to successfully escape not only the ghettos, but the camps themselves. We have first hand accounts of people who got out. In Sobibor, there was a mass escape as well of nearly 300 inmates. Many were re-captured, but about 50 survived to the end of the war.

I've run into the same thing when Lovecraft shared a hotel room with Samuel Loveman in New York. I guess folks just want their favorite historical figures to engage in bundling or something.

Here is the full text of Washington Irving's Knickerbocker's History of New York. It is a fascinating read for anyone who is into history, myths and origin stories.

The colors of the Knicks/Mets (orange, white and blue) come from the flag of New York, which has quite a bit of Dutch symbolism (a sailor, a native warrior, a windmill, barrels, beavers, etc.); those are the same colors that flew over New Amsterdam when it was settled in 1625.

If anyone is in the New York area, I highly recommend a visit to Washington Irving's estate Sunnyside and/or to nearby Sleepy Hollow. There is a ton of fantastic old history in the Hudson Valley and it's worth checking out.

Zero is used in British English. I can't fathom why you'd think we'd say "zed-ro", since it is a word not an acronym. Hopefully that was an attempt at a joke.

When I was in university, I took a class that was entirely military history. The professor (who naturally wrote a book) talked at length about what he called the "Tax of Violence".[1] This basically meant that the army would be fed and clothed and sexed by whomever they were near. Friend or foe, it did not matter. The whole food necessity was not nearly as important as the sex and loot promise. Armies marched on their libidos and their desire for plunder. They did not march for what pittance (if any) they got from their lord or king.

Sun Tzu also mentions in the second chapter of The Art of War, "Waging War", "Those adept in waging war do not require a second levy of conscripts nor more than one provisioning."[2] That basically means that you live off of your enemy and his crops, women/boys/whomever soldiers would like to have sex with, and supplies.

A more recent, popular history example would be from the show "The Borgias" which airs on Showtime. During one episode, the French King says something like "My army does not march for the few sou I give them; they march for the promise of glory". I know this is not in the time frame of your question, nor would I consider it really useful in a historical debate, however, I believe that it does illustrate the point quite well and you can see the effects of it if you're looking for a more general idea about it.

Basically, you live off the enemy whenever you can. When invading, you do so. When defending, you live off your population and whatever you can get from any defeated enemies.

[1] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2124447?uid=3738392&amp;uid=2129&amp;uid=2&amp;uid=70&amp;uid=4&amp;sid=21101249196337

[2] "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu. trans. Samuel B. Griffith pg.73 (c) 1963, Oxford University Press

You might find this book interesting, especially the section on "Wives and Crusading: The 'Canonical Quandry'."

According to Hodgson, "the fact that crusaders needed constant reminders about their behaviour suggests that adultery was a genuine problem." But angering wives wasn't the center focus. Angering God was. Prostitutes (& wives) were occasionally thrown out of the military camps in order to soften God's wrath (138).

Some other interesting points Hodgson brings up:

The wives' potentially infidelity was the focus of discussion during the Crusades, with the husbands unable to fulfill their marital roles came the fear women would commit adultery. Also, wives not wanting their husbands to join the crusades was seen as a serious problem, and sermons/speeches encouraged men to leave behind "the alluring affection of wives" for the greater religious good. According to Guibert of Nogent: "the most beautiful wives were reviled like something corrupt, and formerly more valued than any jewel." William of Newburgh "blamed the failure of the Second Crusade on a large presence of women" (Louis VII was supposedly bewitched by a woman's beauty & couldn't leave her behind).

So seeing prostitutes was seen as bad by the people who wrote stuff down (elite white men). Even having sex with your wife (unless she encouraged you join the Crusades by doing so) was even seen as bad at some junctures.

Indeed. They tried twice under Kublai Khan, in 1274 and 1281. Both times, their fleets were destroyed by storms. The Japanese refered to the second storm as "Kamikaze" (meaning "divine wind").
This was because a retired Emperor went on a pilgrimage to pray for divine intervention to thwart the Mongol invasion. However, the term "Kamikaze" later became the name for both storms.

Source Enyclopedia Britannica

Sumerian continued to be used in administrative, legal, and royal writing, usually alongside Akkadian and its descendants Assyrian and Babylonian, and also as a religious language, for over a thousand years after it ceased being used in everyday life by most Mesopotamians. There is evidence of it being studied by at least some people as late as the Hellenistic period, where there are tablets with Sumerian words written with Greek letters.

Sources: http://www.britannica.com/topic/Sumerian-language

http://history-world.org/sumerian_language.htm

An even earlier example than Athens and Sparta is between the Ancient Egyptians and Hittities. They established a treaty after the battle of Kadesh in 1258BCE. This truce was never broken. Text from this treaty hangs at the UN today.

edit: I'm not sure how to link scholarly articles because I have access to them through my school, but I don't think everyone would be able to access them. So here's this

> they would not treat the Scots or Anglo-Saxons any different from how they would treat a Dane.

Do you mean the Vikings who were not Danish here, or Danish vikings? As the 12th century Gesta Danorum definitely indicated that Danish laws discriminated against non-Danes, e.g.:

> "Further, he appointed that if an alien killed a Dane, his death should be redressed by the slaying of two foreigners." (Book 5)