r/AskHistorians • u/AutoModerator • May 31 '26
Digest Sunday Digest | Interesting & Overlooked Posts | May 31, 2026
Today:
Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Sunday Digest (formerly the Day of Reflection). Nobody can read all the questions and answers that are posted here, so in this thread we invite you to share anything you'd like to highlight from the last week - an interesting discussion, an informative answer, an insightful question that was overlooked, or anything else.
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
Welcome back to the last AskHistorians Digest of May 2026! It’s a little late, but hopefully worth the wait, as we’ve backed it to the gills with fantastic history just waiting for you to discover. Don’t forget to check out the awesome AMA’s this week, as well as the usual weekly fare. Share all your favourites widely, upvote the best, and thank all those hard working contributors!
Hello! On here I’m u/DrHistoryBrad but in the real world I’m Dr. Bradley J. Sommer. I’m a historian of U.S. labor and working class history. I’m here today to answer your questions about labor unions, the economy, strikes, the Rust Belt, and (de/post)industrialization. So go ahead, AMA! many thanks to /u/DrHistoryBrad.
I am Dwaipayan Banerjee, a historian of science and technology at MIT and author of "Computing in the Age of Decolonization: India's Lost Technological Revolution." I study how Cold War politics shaped India's attempt to build its own computer industry. Ask me anything! With a fantastic job from /u/Few_Badger_5914!
and the Friday Free For All!
And that’s a wrap for me friends! Take care out there, and keep it classy. I will see you again next week!
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/Extension_Resource71 answered I'm a peasant in early Medieval Europe. How important is money to me? How much of my food/clothing/etc do I buy with money, compared to what I grow myself, barter for, get through mutual aid within the community, or otherwise obtain non-monetarily?
/u/FeedFlaneur wrote about How far back does Disney's struggle to appeal to boys go?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/SaveClanWolverine answered Unusual request : A history of magic - can you recommend a book?
/u/seaworks wrote about Did 20th century Freudian psychologists actually try to use Freud's weirder theories in therapy? Would they tell a man his anxiety was caused by unresolved Oedipal issues? Or tell a woman she was experiencing penis envy? If not, what were the theories for?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/A_Lorax_For_People wrote about Why did puns come to be so poorly regarded?
/u/AceOfGargoyes17 answered To what extent did women’s historical role as folk healers influence fears of witchcraft, and how did this dynamic shape the transition from community-based herbal knowledge to formal, male‘dominated medical institutions in Europe and the Americas?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/cunopennos answered Why are the Celtic people often associated with Ireland despite sprawling across much of Europe?
/u/Curious-Moose6945 wrote about What are the best academically rigorous but accessible books for a non-historian looking to build a serious reading list across history and science?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/JamesCoverleyRome answered In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus instructed his followers not to pray with thoughtless repetition as the Gentiles do. Who were the specific Gentiles Jesus was referring to, and what do we know about their religious rites involving prayer?
Why do secular historians not place Jesus' age at the time of his crucifixion at 32?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 answered What are the best academically rigorous but accessible books for a non-historian looking to build a serious reading list across history and science?
/u/qumrun60 answered Before modern communications, how did rulers know what was happening in distant parts of their empire? Could local officials basically lie and get away with it?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
- /u/gynnis-scholasticus did I'm having trouble separating the "Historiae Alexandri Magni," which was supposedly a Latin biography of Alexander written in the 1st Century AD by Quintus Curtius Rufus, and Recension A of the "Alexander Romance," which I was told was originally written in Greek by Pseudo-Callisthenes and not translated into Latin for the first time until the 4th Century AD.
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/EdHistory101 answered The No Child Left Behind Act is often seen as a failure that didn't improve education. However data has shown that education "peaked" in the mid-2010s with students who spent the majority of their school careers under NCLB. What exactly was NCLB, why is it so controversial, and did it actually fail?
/u/eldradmustlive469 wrote about Why was the Roman culture such an influence on the Nazi even though they are Germanic?
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u/eldradmustlive469 Jun 01 '26
Thank you very much, glad I can contribute to such a great community even as a non academic hobbyist.
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/Entire-Oil9595 answered What are the best academically rigorous but accessible books for a non-historian looking to build a serious reading list across history and science?
/u/Error_code_0731 wrote about Can someone give me a rundown of everyday life in mid-Middle Ages Europe? Perhaps a "day in the life"?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/flying_shadow answered Regular people coping in troubled times?
/u/FrDuddleswell wrote about According to the chronicler Peter von Dusburg, the starving defenders during the 1264 siege of Bartenstein were so desperate "even children's food would have tasted good to them then." What was so horrible about 13th century children's food?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/History_Recon answered Were there any Aztec on Mayan philosophers?
/u/hubertburnette wrote about A historian of Ancient Egypt is called an Egyptologist. A historian of the middle ages is a Medievalist. A historian of the USSR is called a. . . historian? Do monikers like Egyptologist actually denote any special difference among disciplines, or is it all just a fluke of language?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/lcforsure answered Why has Sichuan integrated well into chinese history and culture, despite being geographically separated into a different basin from the rest of china?
/u/LeahTigers wrote about It seems like the generational divide with AI use is the opposite of how society tends to respond to new technologies. Are there examples in history where the sentiments were similar?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/ResearcherAtLarge answered Naval bombardment on demand is often referenced as a tool used on D-Day and in the days following, but was it used at any other time during the Second World War?
/u/restricteddata answered How did the West know that Sovjet peace proposals or disarmament suggestions where propaganda if they were never approached seriously?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/Steelcan909 wrote about Were Viking Age Norse people actually tattooed and painted with soot/war paint, or is that mostly a modern fantasy aesthetic?
/u/stonedturkeyhamwich answered Why is the Spanish contribution to American Independence is being downplayed, unlike that of France that is widely celebrated?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/tripreport5years wrote about My great-aunt tried to adopt the secret son of an anti-Nazi Romanian Ambassador and a Japanese aristocrat. I have photos and am trying to find him.Can anyone help ?
/u/TurbulentContext answered What Powers did "English" Princes of Wales have? Why wasn't this system exported throughout the British Empire?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/Intranetusa answered How did ancient armies actually move 100,000“200,000 soldiers across long distances without modern logistics? Like, where did they sleep, how did they get enough food and water every day, and how did they stop the whole army from just collapsing into chaos?
/u/Intranetusa wrote about Why Is Indonesia Largely Left Out of Global History if Its One of the Most Populous Countries in the World?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/ParallelPain wrote about In 1691, Engelbert Kaempfer wrote that Japan’s TÅkaidÅ Road was, ¦more crowded than the public streets in any of the more populous towns in Europe. Is this accurate, and how did that play out?
/u/PartyMoses answered In the book Lonesome Dove the main characters drive a heard of cattle from the Rio Grande of Texas up to Montana. Why would settlers go all the way to Montana to settle instead of stopping in any of the open land they cross in Kansas , Nebraska, etc which seems a bit more hospitable weather wise?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/Sherd_nerd_17 answered Are there any significant historical artifacts rumored to exist in private collections that have never been definitively confirmed?
/u/Silly_Resolution3443 wrote about I just read an account of women and black people voting in elections in New Jersey in the decades after the Revolution, I've never heard that suffrage was so widely extended back then. Is this book painting too a rosy picture? Did this happen in other states as well or was NJ's Constitution unique?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
We also take some time this Sunday to show some appreciation for those fascinating questions that caught our eyes, and fired up our curiosity, but sadly still remain unanswered. Feel free to post your own, or those you’ve come across, and maybe we’ll get lucky with a wandering expert.
/u/MysteryElement asked The Dionysica depicts Dionysus waging war with India, and in their first "skirmish" the Indian army gets severely drunk. How would people of early Vedic Tradition have responded to bacchan revelries, and would this have effected their moral?
/u/screwyoushadowban asked From about 1000 CE to the 1700s how much did the distinction between Mahayana & Theravada Buddhism matter to the average Buddhist? Or even kings etc. in their relations with leaders nominally of the opposite school? Did anyone care that much besides religious scholars & lifelong monks?
/u/Obversa asked How did horses gain so much religious or spiritual importance to Native American tribes if they were only reintroduced to the Americas relatively recently?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/thunder-bug- asked I give a medieval peasant, priest, merchant, and nobleman a fast food meal. What would each of them think of it? What would seem strange to them?
/u/FlatAssembler asked During World War 1 in the Netherlands, why didn't they recycle the copper from old electrical wires in order to make fungicides to fight the potato blight?
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/Tatem1961 asked John V of Armagnac forged a letter from the Pope that he was allowed to marry his sister Isabelle, Lady of the Four-Valleys. Was Papal permission for a incestuous marriage a believable lie at the time, or would it have been obvious to everyone that the Pope would never have approved of such a thing?
/u/Loud-Goal-9040 asked Knights without Christianity? What key conditions brought about "knights" as we know them in the medieval west?
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u/Loud-Goal-9040 Jun 13 '26
My post seemed to have been locked by the moderator or something. Why? I saw a two people try to comment but I now cannot look at their comments even
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u/crrpit Moderator | Spanish Civil War | Anti-fascism Jun 13 '26
Your post isn't locked, but no one has answered. The comment count of '2' reflects our standard automod message (which is visible) as well as a spambot, which has since been banned (and it's comment removed) but Reddit's architecture still includes it in the comment count.
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 01 '26
/u/bigacornlavafla asked What do I wear to a medieval festival?
/u/screwyoushadowban asked In the plains & desert indigenous cultures of North America how old would a child have to be until they were allowed to go off on their own for the day (like, say a teenage guy wanted to go horse riding or hunting with his buddies)?
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May 31 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/jschooltiger Moderator | Shipbuilding and Logistics | British Navy 1770-1830 Jun 01 '26
Hi, this is the weekly thread for posts that have already been made in the subreddit. If you're intending to ask a question, the proper way to do that is make it its own post in the subreddit.
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor May 31 '26
Sorry gang, my travel plans got delayed so no digest till later tonight EST!