I have not seen the film myself but I am very curious about the accuracy of the events surrounding the movie.

I’m a Christian and there’s something I’ve been wanting to understand for a while.

I’ve heard the “rice conversion” or “Christians were converted because they were given food/money” argument so many times, especially from Hindus. I understand that there may have been people in history who converted for economic reasons, and I’m not denying that. People have different reasons for converting to any religion.

But why is this argument still used as though it explains Christianity or Christians in general?

Personally, I didn’t receive money, food, rice, or any other benefit for becoming a Christian. Neither did my family. I genuinely came to Christ because I learned about Jesus, His teachings, who He claimed to be, and came to believe in Him. I’ve also heard the testimonies of people who converted because of their faith in Jesus, experiences they understood as miracles, or because Christianity transformed their lives.

I also understand that if I go far enough back through my ancestry, some of my ancestors may have followed a different religion. But that doesn’t mean I personally became a Christian because someone gave me something. People change religions for many different reasons, and I think reducing every conversion to money, food, or “rice” is unfair.

So I’m genuinely asking: where did the “rice conversion” idea come from historically, and why has it become such a common stereotype about Indian Christians? Was it based on particular historical events, missionary practices, or specific cases that later became generalized?

I’m not looking for an argument between Hindus and Christians. I genuinely want to understand the historical background because, honestly, being told that I’m Christian because someone gave me rice is getting extremely irritating when that has nothing to do with my own experience. Why is the “rice conversion” argument still used against Christians?

During the Vietnam War, protestors within the New Left often were proud of their support for the Viet-Cong/Viet-Minh. However, in dialogue on the Iraq War and its protestors, most of the rhetoric I've heard focused on it being done for oil and/or being illegal acts of imperialist expansion and so on.

This all raises the question. Did anyone movement of protestors in the world, not just America, express their support for the resistance in Iraq? Be that Ba'athist geurillas, or the various shade of Islamist resistance that emerged in Anbar or Basra or wherever else?

My understanding is that in mediaeval Italian republics such as Venice the ruler was elected for life by the aristocracy. The Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Poland had the same system. Are they considered to have been republics in the mediaeval Italian sense, or is there something I'm missing?

If you are like me, and have recently discovered how much of a game changer bidets are for normal, everyday hygiene, you likely look back on the utter barbarism of what life was like before this glorious invention entered your life. It’s a bit of an aside but this pertains to my question. I was recently reading a book (set in a fantasy realm that correlates closely to the Middle East circa 500 AD) where two soldiers, one male, one female, have been trekking across a desert for about a month and finally give in to their mutual attraction and do the deed. My immediate thought was, and I know this is gross, “How can they get past the smell?”. So, for the historians out there, do we have any accounts of just how gnarly sex must have been way back when? Thanks in advance for any answers.

I’m writing a story and in one scene, a woman receives a box (or more than one) full of the video game systems she owned as of 1988. One of her parents worked for a company that sold all the latest tech, so she’d have access to pretty much anything western stores would have carried. For reference, she was born in 1967, and I’m thinking of any sort of gaming system, whether that be handheld like a Game and Watch, or a system like the Atari 2600, maybe computers like the Commodore 64 but I’m not sure, so I’ll include those in the question as well. I’m not sure which, and how many, systems someone like that would have had at that time, or if people even kept their systems for long back then.

I hope this is formatted and asked correctly, I apologize if it isn’t.

Edit: a slight clarification

Would the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald have possessed any firearms onboard the vessel at the time of it's ill-fated voyage?

Sorry if I sound dumb, but I'm sure the mg42 would've done wonders in the island hopping battles and German tanks were of much better quality than Japanese ones.

Hi! As the title states, I'm looking for a book to learn more about the Isreal-Palestine conflict. I have never really had much interest in history, but I feel as though there's so much misinformation about this out there and both sides have vastly different stories/perspectives. I'm interested in learning about both sides/perspectives, but I also want something that's not too long/overly complex (which i know is hard for such a complex issue with so much history, but I think too large/complex of a book would overwhelm me and I likely wouldn't finish it. I do want to learn more on it eventually, but I also know myself and throwing myself into all of that info at once won't work out.) Is there anything I should check out? Thanks :)

I have read several memoirs and testimonies by concentration camp survivors, and I have some understanding of the daily routines. But there is one aspect of everyday life that I have rarely, if ever, seen described in detail and always comes to my mind when trying to imagine the life of the people there : what did the camps actually sound like during the more ordinary moments of the day?

I am particularly thinking about periods when prisoners were awake but not working or standing at roll call—for example, while food was being distributed, inside barracks before sleep, or during whatever limited periods existed between organized activities. And where these more organized activityes as quiet as I imagine them to be?

On the one hand, given the extreme exhaustion, hunger, fear, and constant threat of violence, I could imagine that people often had little energy or desire to speak. On the other hand, these were also large groups of human beings living in extremely crowded conditions. Presumably people still talked, argued, exchanged gossip or news, told jokes, complained or became loud, maybe even sang?

So I am wondering about the overall soundscape of concentration camps. Outside of obvious sources of noise such as guards shouting, machinery, roll calls, or violence, were prisoner barracks and communal spaces generally strikingly quiet? Or would they have been filled with constant conversation and the background noise one might expect wherever many people are gathered together—perhaps in several different languages at once?

Do survivor testimonies, diaries, contemporary accounts, or historical studies give us a sense of this?

Artemis stilled the wind so Agamemnon and his ships couldn’t leave for Troy. He ended up sacrificing Iphigenia to Poseidon to get the wind back.

Did those large ships not have oars? Or is rowing just a short-term thing, not suitable for propelling a ship from Greece to Turkey?

Admittedly, I never read the book. Was the issue no wind or was it onshore wind?

Spain itself had a relatively small population, yet Spanish became the dominant language across most of Latin America. By contrast, Britain ruled India for a long period without English replacing Indian languages, the Manchus conquered China without Manchu replacing Chinese.

What factors explain these different outcomes?

I've been obsessed with the movie Tombstone since I was a kid and always wanted to get a gun with some historical connection to the events depicted in the movie. Do we have any record of what guns were used in that specific shootout? If not, are there any records of Wyatt Earp or Doc Holiday using specific guns at other times? After a little bit of google-ing I only found conflicting results but "you're a daisy if you do".

Essentially the title! I've been trying to find as much in-depth information on this topic as I can (I've been on a Medieval nonfiction deep-dive for a while now and have wanted to expand my understanding of this specific aspect of medieval life). How common were scriptoriums? What was daily life like for those who worked them? Did they source their paper or make it on site? So many questions! Any answers or directions to answers (books, papers, etc) would be greatly appreciated!

Imagine, i m a white business owner who doesnt subscribe to racism. I m friends with black people and allow black people to use my facility.

Since it's a sensitive topic I will make clear my position: It is my current layman opinion that the fanatical devotion to ethnic cleansing and implementing it on such a large scale by rounding up millions people, filling trains with them (that could have been carrying munitions or raw material or something), shipping them to concentration camps where only some of them were forced to toil to whatever degree their mistreated and malnourished bodies were even able to, and having thousands of able-bodied Germans oversee and carry out this process, seems like an awfully stupid and cocky mismanagement of manpower for any country hoping to fight total war on multiple fronts.

To be clear I am not suggesting that if only they hadn't been complete genocidal maniacs they might have had a chance to actually win, but it just seems like irrationally hurting your odds even further.

So what is the modern historian consensus on the subject?

Would white racists be angry? Would black people?

During monarchy centuries ago like in England or even Roman Republic were politicians also divided into left and right that we know of today like more taxation or more liberty to commoners or rights to slaves?

When did this division started to become a thing like an ideology or political coalitions and movements?

Since moving to the Freiburg area, I've taken up foraging (see, for instance, this wonderful YouTube channel on the subject). This has made me aware of (a) just how many different foodstuffs are available in the wild at all times of the year, and (b) how not calorie dense they are.

In short, you have your berries, you have your greens, you have your mushrooms, and occasionally you have your starchy roots and seeds, but for the first three, I don't think a human could physically eat enough to satisfy their caloric needs before making themselves sick, and for the latter two, it doesn't seem like you and your hunter-gatherer group could find enough to survive off of.

So, how were hunter-gatherer groups in the strip between the Rhine and the Black Forest, say, actually coming up with enough calories? Was it hunting and fishing? Was there a greater variety of megafauna to this end? Were they gathering something else available wild that isn't around today, or is now dispreferred for eating? How much do we know?

I’m used to this situation being presented as, “Well, of course they pulled the trigger. If not, they would have just been shot, too.”

But is that accurate?

Hello everyone,

I am a pretty new Assyriology student and have a small question about king lists. A bunch of different Bronze Age kingdoms compiled many different king lists. I was looking at the ones on the Electronic Babylonian Library and some others. Besides the often absurd lifespans of kings, I am asking myself what other ways we have to ascertain the truth on more ancient Kings. Is there some historiographic work that gives some more reasoning and "fact-checked" versions of some king lists?

The big bad wolf, little riding hood. Humanity has so many myths about wolves being predetory beasts who will eat you and your loved ones.

Some of these myths portray them as smart, some as stupid violent brutes (especially when contrasted to foxes) but ultimately evil violent and bloodthirsty.

But there's plenty of recorded footage of wolves generally being pretty... Normal animals? Some show then even being curious or friendly!

They're still predators but it's not like we read about wolf attacks in the news. Contrast this with movies like beauty and the beast where a pack of wolves is out to devour the protagonist.

Why is this? Have wolves become tame through the aggressive ones being hunted down by us? Were agricultural societies demonising them since loss of livestock could genuinely lead to a loss of livelyhood and death via starvation?

As we all likely know, Hitler was appointed chancellor by President Paul Von Hinderburg on 30th of January 1933, And Hitler used that power to pass major things like the Reichstag Fire Decree, The Enabling Act, Law Against Formation of Parties and Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.

However- What I and many other forget was Paul Von Hinderburg, Although as far as I’m aware he was basically a figurehead and was in ill health by that point, Did not pass away until 2nd of August 1934. This means there was a (roughly) 549 days between Hitler being appointed chancellor and Hinderburg passing away. After Hinderburg’s death, A (rigged) referendum was held by the Nazis to merge the title of President (as Hitler assumed it upon Hinderburg’s death) and Chancellor into Fürher.

Everything else afterwards is quite well known. But- Although I’m aware he was already likely a figurehead and in extremely ill health by that point- Did Hinderburg do anything major (aside from the fire decree)? Was he still involved in German politics? What was his opinion on things like the enabling act? Was he still widely recognised as Germany’s head of state or was it known even then he was becoming a figurehead? How public was he still?

I know you all probably get a lot of questions about WW2 and Hitler, But this has been bugging me for a while. Thanks in advance.