I want to understand what life was like and why someone would have emigrated in 1872. Any sources to back up claims are appreciated.

A couple examples of what I'm talking about:

• How to be a housewife and use more lamb.
• How a transmission works
• Give your eggs a break

Apologies, as I realize this is a bit of an broad question. Feel free to address a subsection or specific type of video if that makes more sense or aligns with your knowledge or whatnot.

Essentially though, I'm trying to get my mind around the how/why of the seemingly massive body of PSA type content that seems to have been produced. Videos about how to be a good homemaker, how to succeed at work, hygiene, yard care, how various technologies worked, etc.

I thought perhaps it just seems more prevalent because they've been collected on Youtube and made more visible. But these videos and their distinctive style of narration have been a trope/meme for as long as I can remember.

TV Shows riffed on them. Disney made entire Goofy cartoons that were just spoofs of these videos. e.g., "How to Fish"

As best I can tell, the public has been plenty familiar with these films for decades and decades. It seems to imply that these videos were a pervasive thing at some point.

But as a 40 something American, I can't recall ever being shown one of these videos in an "earnest" way. e.g., Something other than a collection of found footage, or other situation where they've been repurposed from educational to entertainment content.

I can put some of the pieces together, but can't seem to make a coherent picture of the whole situation. Many seem to be funded by industry to promote their product. Others by various government agencies to promote... seemingly anything. Agricultural practices, kitchen design, industrial knowledge, civic topics, you name it and there seems to be a video for it.

It's easy enough to see why those entities would want to promote these things. The usefulness of video as a educational medium is pretty straightforward.

But it falls apart when I try to figure out what happens after the video is produced. How were people being exposed to them? Were they used as movie trailers? Could I have turned on my TV and just watched PSA's? Would I have shown up to work one day and the boss says "Hey, we got a new video from GE, let's see what they're up to"? Were the videos intended for internal or external distribution? Did salespeople just show up and say "I'd like to setup a projector..."?

To my knowledge, the simplified idea of “latifundia” has been largely debunked by archeological evidence. Yet the surviving Lex Agraria (not the Lex Sempronia Agraria from 133 BCE, the revised version from 111 BCE) seems to indicate that land redistribution is an important issue amongst the citizenry. Additionally, the modern view of Roman politics is that the vast majority of politicians (even the populares, who gained political support from the common workers and lower equites) were motivated purely by self interest. Where do most historians currently stand on the true motives of Tiberius Gracchus?

I watched the film last night, great movie, amazed music by Vangelis, I felt moved by the sense of courage they showed to sail across.

But I'm quite wary of Ridley Scott and historical movies, I did not enjoy his Napoleon as I could list all the nonsense. I'm less familiar with Columbus, so could someone knowledgeable ruin the movie for me and set the record straight?

Nowadays, we often think of industrial mass-produced products as inferior to handmade ones. Was this the case during, say, the 19th century?

I was reading about the Taiping rebellion recently and came across the factoid that the Far East was the largest importers of textiles from factories in Lancashire. Who (among the Chinese) was buying cotton clothes and underwear from Britain, and what did they think of them compared to local equivalents?

A man has done enough in his time in the Heer to be promoted from Hauptmann to Major. What would the process look like? Ergo, what would the ceremony be, who would be giving the promotion, where would it take place, would he need to perform testing or something similar? And, crucially, how did the process change from the beginning of the Second World War to the end?

…and vice versa?

My great grandfather wrote about them as a journalist and I’m curious to learn more of the background.

Specifically:
- According to Wikipedia, they arose between 1905 and 1914. Were they a reaction to the 1905 defeat, the Revolution, or the reforms?
- To what extent were these movements astro-turfed, ie artificially created by the regime and made to look spontaneous? The Wikipedia article has hints that this was suspected at the time but doesn’t go into detail.
- To the extent that they were genuine expressions of sentiment, what was the sentiment?
- Was there any connection between the Tsarist antisemitic incitement, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion being a known forgery, and the antisemitic activities of these groups?
- Towards the end of his career, my great grandfather wrote about the events leading to the Beilis trial (he didn’t live to see the end). Given the prevailing anti-Semitic sentiment, why was Beilis nevertheless acquitted? Were courts generally fair in their treatment of Jews or was this an exception due to the high profile of the case?
- Wikipedia says that the Ukraine-based factions of this movement switched sides and became Ukrainian nationalists at some point. How did this happen?
- Did the movements otherwise simply fizzle out after the 1914 revolution or did they play any role in the civil war?

Was there a tree near the shed whichbthe Jesus was born. Why would people buy or cut down a specific type of tree every year on Christmas to decorate. Is there a Bible reference where the tree plays an important part in the birth of christ?

In a lot of (European) folk stories I've been reading, youngest children often appear as underdog characters, or are otherwise portrayed as unlucky specifically due to being the youngest and therefore less favoured by their parents. This got me wondering when and why the modern perception of youngest children changed to what it is now; the babied and coddled favourites of the family. Was there actually some turning point in history when parents started to prefertheir youngest children over the oldest ones, or is the entire concept of birth-order based favouritism bunk?

I’m assuming here that there’s no plausible scenario in which Lee destroys the Army of the Potomac. Best case scenario for the Confederacy is something like Ewell seizing Cemetery Hill at the end of the first day and Meade disengaging overnight. By July 2nd, the Union outnumbered the confederacy and had established a strong defensive position that Lee failed to break. But even assuming that Lee was able to destroy Meade’s army or force it out of position, what could happen strategically? DC was too heavily fortified to storm, and Lee would have lacked the manpower and resources to control an area much larger than Western MD and Southeastern PA. Maybe Philly falls, but so what? The union took NOLA in March of ‘62 and the confederates didn’t throw in the towel. Meanwhile, Vicksburg and Port Hudson still fall on schedule, Longsreet’s Corps is never sent west, so Chickamauga either never happens or is a Union victory and Atlanta falls on schedule or earlier. With Lincoln having lost confidence in Meade, Grant takes over in the East sooner and starts grinding the Army of Northern Virginia down, just somewhere north of the rappahanock. There is the possibility that a defeat on Union soil would provide a serious shock to Union morale, but Republicans would still control the federal government until the1864 election by which time the Mississippi would be Union controlled, Atlanta and Mobile would have fallen, the blockade would be strangling the confederate economy, and Lee’s army would be being bled white, which closely mirrors the actual situation in November of ‘64.

Dear friends of the Reddit,

I stumbled upon a post on r/PetPeeves where someone was a 'bit annoyed' that people believe the philosopher Hegel held the position that we learn from history that we don't learn from history. Apparently, Hegel's position was quite the contrary, that historical circumstances are always different, so there is not that much to learn.

This got me wondering, is there any consensus among historians about whether we do or don't learn anything from history? Maybe because Hegel is considered 'right' and there is little to learn?

I guess it may be more of a philosophical question and might be impossible to answer meaningfully, but I thought I'd give it a try!

I’m Dr Stephanie Howard-Smith. I have a PhD in the cultural history of the lapdog during the eighteenth century, I’ve published several essays on dog history in academic journals/collections and I’ve lectured in animal history at universities in the UK. And now I’ve written a book for everyone who loves (or perhaps even hates) little dogs. “Yap! A Short History of Small Dogs” was published in the UK last week and in North America this week, and is available from all good bookstores and as an audiobook and ebook.

https://granta.com/products/yap/ (UK)

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803909/yap-by-stephanie-howard-smith/ (USA)

From the publisher’s book description:

“Yap! follows in the pawprints of the breeds we have grown to love and cherish, from the small dogs touchingly memorialised in Ancient Rome through to Paris Hilton’s chihuahua and the pet influencers of 21st-century, via the pug who colonised Napoleon’s marital bed, King Charles II’s spaniels and celebrity terriers in Victorian pubs.

Drawing on her own experience as a pug-owner, pet historian Stephanie Howard-Smith reveals how small dogs have shaped our lives as much as we have theirs, challenging social dynamics, changing the way we spend our leisure time, contributing to a global industry now worth over £250 billion, and offering valuable companionship and a chance for self-expression.

A must-read for any lover of small dogs, Yap! is a paean to the unbreakable bond between humans and their petite pets.”

I’m so excited to answer all your questions about the history of little dogs, the people who love them — and the people who love to hate them! I'll be here from 9am (16 October 2026) EST onwards.

EDIT: It’s 12.15am here in the UK and 7.15pm EST so I’m going to have to call it for the night. I’ll get to all of your questions over the weekend and if anyone has any more please do ask them! It’s been a real pleasure.

You can also find me @doghistorian on Instagram.

I sometimes see karate practitioners saying "taekwondo is just karate" or that taekwondo is highly influenced by karate. Some taekwondo practitioners say that karate itself was very influenced by taekwondo.

I can imagine there is some tribalism in these claims, but I know that Japan occupied Korea for a while and the Korean martial arts are heavily inspired by Japanese arts (not really karate, the ones that involve only or mostly grappling), but the still-existing ancestor of these arts in Korea, Taekkyon, was still the king of kicks. Okinawan Karate (the original) doesn't have a lot of kicks, at least not kicks that aren't low, right? Conversely I have not heard of punches in Taekkyon.

I ask because I wonder if someone knows better of the original coreography/techniques of these arts and documented borrowings.

When reading about the philosophers of Ancient Greece, I often find that little mention is made of their religious beliefs, despite it being clear from other sources that Hellenism majorly shaped the worldviews of the Greeks as a whole.
Democrates and Epicurus are notable exceptions, since their theories of atomism and epicureanism rely on being atheistic, or at least indifferent to the gods (Epicureanism entails that one should rid themselves of an irrational fear of divine punishment to live a peaceful life, and both it and atomism believe that death is an oblivion and there is no afterlife, all of which is contrary to the Hellenistic view).
Plato also seems to be a special case, since he constructs his own metaphysics involving the forms, souls, and reincarnation seemingly independently of the prevailing beliefs about the structure of the universe and the afterlife in his culture (although, I wonder if the idea of the forms was influenced by the Pantheon, since the gods were conceived of in a somewhat comparable fashion as embodiments of specific ideas and attributes).

What were the religious beliefs of the major thinkers of Ancient Greece? How did these influence their philosophies? Did philosophers contribute to Hellenistic theology, and if so, how?

There were empires and kingdoms which conquered other places and regions. They took whatever they want from there and devastated the place . But the colonialism is different. They donot destroy the region they occupy, they exploit it in a systematic way. Who or which empire started this idea of not conquering but looting systematically?

I'm talking specifically about Itter Castle, the prison for VIP French prisoners-of-war from 1943 to 1945 in the Austrian Alps. Were these prisoners treated better than other POWs because of their advanced status, or were they treated worse? Where would they be staying in the castle (I can only imagine it didn't have prison cells installed)?

First I must preface, this is a serious question.
But - King Charles VII of France, in much of (not all! But much of) the portraits and paintings i see of him, he is wearing this crazy, big, zig-zag patterned brimmed hat that seems so out of place for the era compared to everything else i’ve seen. I also NEVER see anyone else mention it, so i must ask - was this style of hat common at the time, did it have a name, and is there any more information about it?

Watching current set pieces on movies and television set in the US/UK between 1900-1980 generally make many/most of their characters use profanity like current society - lots of it, including lots of the seven words that George Carlin said you couldn't say on TV in the 1960-70's. For example, many shows routinely have people in "polite society" routinely dropping F-bombs to each other with no one raising an eyebrow.

Very little of the material, either written or video, from those eras uses such language, but that was likely more due to censorship rather than an accurate reflection of how people actually spoke at the time.

So I wondering how prevalent profanity actually was in these times, especially in different social strata and "mixed company."