I'm interested in the history of science and WWII, in particular physics and the history leading up to the development of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Lise Meitner's role in the discovery of fission is often spammed around the internet, and usually told badly or mischaracterized. I'm familiar with the basic story from other books, but she had an impressive career and an interesting life in addition to this discovery. Is there a biography of her that is generally recommended?

In the popular conception Brittany is a "celtic nation" but if you go on the net and look up its culture you'd soon find out about half of it is shown as traditionally being Gallo-speaking, that is - a cousin language of French.

The big cities which served as ceremonial capitals are also located in this same eastern Gallo-speaking region, including Rennes and Nantes.

How celtic was actually the Duchy of Brittany?

To add further clarification, jungle warfare includes (but not limited to) the Vietnam War, and the invasion of Panama.

I've read the Richards translation of selections from the Arabic text, but it references only the 20th century Beirut copy. I can't read arabic so I am having a difficult time tracing its origins from the lost al-Fathir text, to the either the Beirut or Cairo copies. Al-Fathir himself fails to mention his sources, but I was hoping later historians would credit a manuscript. :(

I know that the janissary were supposed to be a more elite force so what type of unit was the backbone of the ottoman army? Is it possible to tell what was the ratio of mounted troops vs footmen in a field battle? How professional and how numerous was the ottoman army in comparison to european armies of the time such as polish-lithuanian or austrian? Were most soldiers slaves or only the janissaries?

Ive seen a scene from a polish movie Pan Wołodyjowski about the siege of kamenets podolsky and started to wonder how good (or bad) is this portrayal. I know that a lot of costumes are very theatrical and it feels weird to me that the entire army is wearing white color as well as bork hats.

https://youtu.be/IEndBltPlTk?si=fCVr3NpU9giNZqEq

The movies director Jerzy Hoffman did an excellent job on costume accuracy of his other movie the Deluge 1974 which looked like straight from the paintings but he had a lot more source material to go off of. Do we actually know what ottomans wore though? Ill be grateful for an answer to any of my questions:)

I'm a great big nerd and appreciator of classical antiquity, and I am also a projection mapper/creator of exceptionally elaborate yard art.

My good friend has recently opened an artist space, and he too is a huge projection mapping nerd.

He has shared that he would like me and the crew to participate in more weird projects and I've suggested a deconstruction/recreation of the "Mosaics of the Horses of Carthage."

Could any of you beautiful classicists/art historians point me towards resources where I could find higher definition images of the Mosaics themselves?

Or perhaps information regarding their layout/which panels are incomplete?

I'd be happy to attach links to give the general gist, but we have 16 FDM 3D printers and several Blender/graphic artists who normally do psychedelic/trippy/cartoon/animation stuff and I'd love to share my love of history with them and whoever else comes by.

If anyone has other suggestions for possible 4:3 or easily workable Mosaics I'm open minded and would love to hear about them.

Thanks, r/askhistorians community.

Hi, I'm new, just a layman that's been learning some about ANE religions and wanting to know more about the ANE in that subject (maybe I should've asked in another subreddit but this is one of the few I know). I see that sometimes the name of El or his titles are used by another deities as generic nouns in names or El as a generic word for a god, but I wondered if there's onomastic evidence or texts (especially extra biblical) in wich El is addressed by the names of other deities like Salim, Shahar, Gad and Baal as generic epithets? It seems that some deities were addressed as El (like Yahweh) or by some of it's epithets like father (like Baal), but are there also examples in names and texts about the other way around? (El is Baal/lord, El is Gad/luck, El is Shahar/dawn, etc.).

My grandma always told me how her sisters were taller and prettier than she was, and in general I thought that was just gene lottery. But today I realized her sisters were already teenagers when the war started, whereas gramma was born in 1940. So I was just wondering if food shortages while she was growing up might've played a part in this. Are there any statistics that can shed light on this? For reference, she was Romanian and grew up in North-Western Transylvania (the part that was occupied by Hungary during the war), but I'm guessing large swathes of Europe had similar issues, so any numbers you're aware of would be interesting to look at. Thanks for reading!

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the topic, but as far as I understand it, Catholic Monarchs derived at least part of their claim to rule over an area that they have been chosen by God to rule and protect the peasants living on their land and that this was also reinforced by the church to legitimize the class structure of Peasentry, Clergy and Nobles.

However wouldn't Rulers of Italian Republics contradict that image of "God's chosen" Monarchs being needed to protect the people?

Furthermore were there ever Royals who considered those Republics as potential threats to their hereditary rule? (Similar to how European empires feared that revolutionary ideals would spread to their people after the French revolution)

Do we have any data how muslim was the population of Egypt in, say, 995? Or population of Iran in 820?

I'm preparing for upcoming Passover with my family, and the menu has always been centered around eastern european-ish peasant food that I'm pretty sure wouldn't have been on the table for a Seder 2000+ years ago. I don't see Jesus eating borscht and brisket.

What would have been on that table?

Edit: I'm aware that the last supper was not, itself, a Seder, but my understanding is that it occurred during passover, and I'm hoping you fine Historians can provide some detail around what these groovy old Jews were eating at the time. Since the "Seder" hadn't really been invented yet, would it have still included bitter herbs and all that jazz?

This is in no way a defense of Nixon, I'm just genuinely unclear why this was a scandal he wanted to keep under wraps, when unlike the other ones he doesn't seem to have been at fault and it seems like it would have been evidence he was spied on (which he seemed to think happened a lot more than it really did)

Hello, just wondering because I simply love Greece and all the history and mythology of it, why are there no ancient greek temples on Crete ? All I see are ancient Minoan ruins and medieval structures, but no typical greek palaces or temples. Sorry If Im making a fool of myself but I believe ancient Greeks used to live there as well after the Minoans so why didnt they leave us something like the acropolis of Athens.

Thank you in advance.

I am already familiar with the processes for state-formation and stratification, the social and historical processes by which societies organize into informal and later coercive hierarchies. I am also familiar with complete class abolition, such as in the various anarchist experiments. However, are there examples in history where these have been partially dissolved? For example, of a stratum in a social or economic hierarchy being dissolved by the institutional power of a higher class, or by changing practical conditions which render certain classes no longer viable? Thank you.

What explains the mass appeal of the Militant Tendency and Trotskyism in Liverpool in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s? Did organised Trotskyism find anywhere near this success in any other cities in Europe?

I've heard that the German monarchists largely fell in line with the Nazis, but I was curious.

We seem to know a good deal about Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during the early part of antiquity, but what was happening in the rest of Europe and why does it seem like we know so little?

From doing some light research on the internet it seems like we know there were people living in places like what is now Germany/Austria (Hallstatt, Jastorf cultures) and that they did have trade connections to Greece, but hardly anything specific. Is it simply a matter of people outside Greece not writing anything down? If that's the case why wouldn't they be writing, if they had contact with people who did write?

Hi,

I have been trying to work out the sizes of some past protests, notably including the N30 protests in Seattle [November 30th, 1999].

If you have one big rally, the standard approach is to estimate the area of the rally, and its density, using the Jacobs Crowd Formula; if elevated or aerial photos exist, they can help.

If you have one big march, the standard approach is to wait beside the march, and count or sample the people passing by. Patrick Gillham got a count of about 35,000 people in the big labor march this way, but he might have missed some of the feeder or breakaway marches. Ron Judd estimated 36,000 to 44,000, extrapolating from rally size in the stadium.

In theory, you could also use the length and width of the march, and the pace, and the Jacobs Crowd formula, though you'd need lower densities for moving crowds. Has anyone tested appropriate densities, and appropriate march paces if you know the length in hours but not in blocks?

But what are good options if you have many small protests, or linked protests in adjacent blocks, or if you don't have some key data for bigger protests?

Is it possible to get better estimates out of individually-unreliable police and/or newspaper estimates?

At one point, I tried to use the Voices from the WTO collection as a sample of personal accounts, or use others I'd encountered in my research, and count how many people described being treated by protest medics (who subsequently reported treating 3,000 to 4,000 people), or described being arrested (police reported 603). But I don't think I have an unbiased sample.

The default narrative is that the Soviet Union was a top down dictatorship, which ignores the actual political structure of the nation.

I’ve found sources that say most debates and political issues were aired before the public, leading to an informed voter base - but I’ve also found sources saying that in the majority of elections, only one candidate ran.

I recently watched this video of Ryan McBeth saying that WWIII may have already started and is just in the beginnings stages, which is out of most peoples awareness
(This about WWII and not specific to his content). This started to get me thinking about this in relation to the early beginnings of WWII. It's not like some expert wakes up and is like "oh, guess what is happening now!??"

What era would you say WWII was going to happen, but was yet to be fully aware/acknowledged by the Allies?

I personally speculate that it was the beginnings of Germany mass producing and developing their Military up to the point before annexing Austria. Of course this is simply a novice guess and would love to hear input on they more experienced folk!

I've heard a lot about Mesopotamia's legacy in "the West," largely via the culture/literature/religions of Greece and Israel/Judea. But what about to Mesopotamia's east? Did they interact with/influence peoples and cultures in Central Asia, India, China, etc.?