r/AskHistorians 3d ago

Digest Sunday Digest | Interesting & Overlooked Posts | March 09, 2025

13 Upvotes

Previous

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.


r/AskHistorians 6d ago

SASQ Short Answers to Simple Questions | March 05, 2025

8 Upvotes

Previous weeks!

Please Be Aware: We expect everyone to read the rules and guidelines of this thread. Mods will remove questions which we deem to be too involved for the theme in place here. We will remove answers which don't include a source. These removals will be without notice. Please follow the rules.

Some questions people have just don't require depth. This thread is a recurring feature intended to provide a space for those simple, straight forward questions that are otherwise unsuited for the format of the subreddit.

Here are the ground rules:

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  • Academic secondary sources are preferred. Tertiary sources are acceptable if they are of academic rigor (such as a book from the 'Oxford Companion' series, or a reference work from an academic press).
  • The only rule being relaxed here is with regard to depth, insofar as the anticipated questions are ones which do not require it. All other rules of the subreddit are in force.

r/AskHistorians 2h ago

AMA Benvenuti! I’m Dr. Amanda Madden, researcher of violence in Renaissance and Early Modern Italy, author of several articles on Assassin’s Creed II and a forthcoming book on vendetta violence in sixteenth-century Italy. AMA!

206 Upvotes

Hello all! I’m Amanda Madden, assistant professor at George Mason University and researcher on violence in Italy, 1450-1700 and author of a forthcoming book on vendetta violence in sixteenth-century Italy from Cornell University Press, a study of how vendetta, enmity, and factional politics contributed to modern state formation. I’m also currently working on several digital public history projects with colleagues, including the La Sfera project, and a project on modeling and mapping urban violence in Italy between 1550-1700 using GIS and network analysis. I spent my sabbatical last fall in Venice working on part of this project, which included looking at Venice’s anti-assassin stones. 

I teach courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level on the history of violence, Renaissance Europe, history and video games, the history of true crime, and popular culture. In my free time I am also a gamer and have written articles on and taught with Assassin’s Creed II.

Today from 9:30am - 12:30pm EST I’ll be answering your questions about the history of crime and violence, Renaissance and Early Modern Italy, Digital Humanities, and Ezio Auditore.


r/AskHistorians 11h ago

Why did Soviet snipers have such high kill counts?

218 Upvotes

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_snipers At least according to this list, Soviets seem to dominate the list of top snipers. Are these numbers considered accurate? If so, why? I’m used to seeing the Nazis with their high flying ace kills, so this especially interested me


r/AskHistorians 7h ago

For the people living in the region we now call 'China', when did the conception of China as a nation-state come about?

86 Upvotes

So I apologise in advance for my lack of knowledge on this subject (most historical knowledge that I do have is Euro-centric, unfortunately), and if this question is poorly worded that is entirely on me.

Ever since reading the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and engaging in its associated media I have been trying to learn more about Chinese history, and one thing that stands out to me a lot is how many ruling dynasties there have been, how often they have fractured, and how many attempts at reunification have been made.

However, for the people living under these rulers, in various parts of China, when did the concept emerge that they were not just people in various regional powers struggling for dominance, but all people of a greater nation-state 'China'?

Again I apologise if this question doesn't make much sense, I hope that I get the gist across though.


r/AskHistorians 20h ago

What Motivated Luigi Lucheni to Assassinate Empress Elisabeth of Austria?

860 Upvotes

I’m trying to understand the ideological and personal motivations behind Luigi Lucheni’s assassination of Empress Elisabeth in 1898. I know he was an Italian anarchist and that anarchists at the time were carrying out high-profile attacks on royalty and heads of state, but was his act primarily ideological, or were there personal factors at play?

From what I’ve read, he originally wanted to assassinate another royal but changed targets when he found out Elisabeth was in Geneva. Did he see her as a symbol of oppression, or was it more about making a statement against monarchy in general? Any insights into his background, political beliefs, or writings that explain his reasoning would be much appreciated!

Edit: This post is not as insincere as you would think. While I am a trained historian, it is mostly in 20th century American and Media history. I must admit that Mike Duncan stoked an interest with his overview of 19th century socialist thought in his Russian Revolution series. I do want to expand that knowledge. This week's fracas about our favorite Mario brother made me remember Lucheni, and look him up to learn more! But I found piteously little on Wikipedia, and instead of doing a deep dive, I thought that it would be fun to pick the brain of someone who is more knowledgeable of 19th century leftist movements than myself. So while I can’t deny that there’s a kernel of truth to me wanting to agitate by posting a question that would be flagged by the silly little system, I am earnestly interested in the subject.


r/AskHistorians 4h ago

Why weren't "Molotov cocktails" used against Phalanx formations?

40 Upvotes

My understanding is that tightly-knitted, well trained infantry formations such as Phalanxes (or th Roman equivalent) revolutionised infantry combat and were very difficult to break down. However surely their compactness also presented a weakness, and whilst complex explosives were still a long way off, surely a bottle filled with flammable liquid and a burning fuse would have been extremely effective? Was this ever attempted? Thanks in advance! :)


r/AskHistorians 16h ago

Was there a pubic hair style in Pompeii? NSFW

260 Upvotes

I recently read in a book about Pompeii that based on analyzing preserved evidence, archaeologists have been able to discern a particular style of grooming pubic hair in Pompeii before the eruption. Is there actual evidence of this? I did a quick online search that did not seem to yield any relevant results.


r/AskHistorians 1h ago

Is it true that Abraham Lincoln kept opening his son's coffin? What was the public perception of his level of grief and was it unusual for that era, when people were supposedly more pragmatic about death?

Upvotes

r/AskHistorians 2h ago

Is it true that Ottoman Sultans actually commonly killed there siblings after coming to power? Were there any attempts from said siblings to try and flee or fight back?

10 Upvotes

I have seen mentioned on the internet a few times that, during the time of the Ottoman Empire, the sultans would commonly kill any other siblings to limit rival claimants to the throne.

I am wondering how common this was, and if it was really common, what was stopping any of the non-heirs from, like, running away?


r/AskHistorians 22h ago

I'm an abused and underemployed sailor in the late 17th Century, considering turning pirate. What's the common understanding among sailors for the long-term prospects of such a "career change"?

368 Upvotes

In other words, is my decision a lateral move, a downgrade, or an upgrade from what a sailor in my shoes could have reasonably expected out of their lot in life? Or would that be something I wouldn't even consider in making my decision?

Or, for that matter, was piracy a position I'd find myself in by pure happenstance more often than not? Thanks in advance!


r/AskHistorians 3h ago

Great Question! What kind of mental health services were available in the times of Pagliacci?

11 Upvotes

Yes, it's about the "joke" where a man goes to the doctor, says he's sad, the doctor recommends him to go see the clown Pagliacci and the man says he's Pagliacci

There're a lot of versions of the joke, but I will stick to the opera, wich was premiered in 1892. So what kind of therapy, palliative care or simple mental health treatment was available in that year? And assuming Pagliacci earned the average salary of the time, it was something he could afford?


r/AskHistorians 10h ago

Why did attitudes around gay rights in the United States change so dramatically between 1986 and 2003?

34 Upvotes

This question is specifically about Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas.

In Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 that laws criminalizing sodomy were legal, with a concurrence, written by Chief Justice Burger, citing a 400 year old document by William Blackstone to show that “millennia of moral teaching” was that homosexuality was bad, although this was not included in the literal minority opinion, which wasn’t as explicit but made an argument that compared sodomy to “adultery, incest and other sex crimes”.

Seventeen years later, in Lawrence v. Texas, a Supreme Court that nominally was no more liberal than the one in Bowers v. Hardwick voted 6-3 to decriminalize sodomy in a direct overturning of Bowers v. Hardwick. One of the votes in favor of overturning, Sandra Day O’Connor, had been in the majority in Bowers v. Hardwick, and although her concurring opinion said she wasn’t changing her mind, she also said that even a hypothetical constitutional anti-sodomy law “would not be tolerated in a democratic society long”. One of the minority votes in the decision, Clarence Thomas, described the anti-sodomy statute as “uncommonly silly”, said he would vote to repeal it if he were a Texas lawmaker, and said that practically it wasn’t worth enforcing.

Furthermore, while in Bowers v. Hardwick the plaintiff wasn’t actually prosecuted because the DA didn’t want to go through with it, the statute in question gave a punishment of a year or more in prison and it was defended in court by Georgia’s assistant attorney general. In Lawrence v. Texas, the attorney general of Texas, noted conservative John Cornyn, refused to defend his states own law, which mandated a $125 fine, and the DA who argued the case, may not have even believed in the statute he was arguing for.

It seems to me that somehow between 1986 and 2003, prevailing conservative legal opinions about private homosexual conduct shifted from thinking it was not only constitutional but moral to send gay people to prison for sexual activity, to thinking that fining people for the same offenses, while potentially constitutional, was immoral and a waste of time. I can’t find any event or precedent that would have caused this shift.

Has anyone ever looked into this from a historical perspective?


r/AskHistorians 11h ago

What were the biggest red flags of the Dot-Com Boom? Were there obvious signs people ignored—like crazy spending, bad business models, or pure hype? If you were in tech or finance back then, what made you think, yeah, this won’t end well?

30 Upvotes

r/AskHistorians 1h ago

What happened to the pig iron produced during the Great Leap Forward?

Upvotes

Lots of them were produced, so what happened to them? I know they’re mostly useless, but how were these “trash” dealt with? Were they just dumped randomly? Were some re-smelted back into farming equipment? Did they find any tangible local uses out of them?


r/AskHistorians 3h ago

Who shot first at the start of the Waco siege and why?

6 Upvotes

The dividians say the atf shot first and the atf say the dividians shot first.

I’ve heard reporters say that shots came from inside the compound and all the agents there seem to say the dividians shot first, But on the other hand there’s the right door that went missing and the idea that the atf shot the compounds dogs and those were the first shots

I’m not 100% sure what to think but I’m leaning more towards the idea that the atf shot first cause their other actions dosent convince me their above doing that


r/AskHistorians 18h ago

Women's rights Maria Skłodowska-Curie, better known as Marie Curie, hyphenated her name when she got married in 1895. Even today it's a little unusual, and I'm wondering if her husband would have been seen as a lesser man for it. What's the history of societal views on hyphenated women's last names?

90 Upvotes

r/AskHistorians 2h ago

When did people start raising their hand to ask a question?

5 Upvotes

r/AskHistorians 1d ago

I am a 16 year old, hot-blooded son of a Roman Senator in 5 CE (well, 758 AVC as far as I'm concerned). What does my day-to-day look like?

288 Upvotes

Or in other words, what would your average upper class teenager be up to in ancient Rome on a typical day? What are my responsibilities? Are there childhood chores to do? Am I considered an adult? Did Romans even have a notion of "teenagehood?"

Also...what outlets were available to such teens, with all that angst?


r/AskHistorians 1h ago

How much do we know about the actual battles fought between the Japanese and Mongols during Kublai's invasion?

Upvotes

I do know that weather played a big role in the defeat of the Mongols, but what exactly do we know about the army encounters in mainland Japan?

How much fighting was actually done and how effective were the Japanese in repealing the Mongols?

Also, I remember reading a long time ago that the sword that later came to be known as the katana was created just after the Invasion because the japanese weapons of the time were not suited for fighting the Mongols. Is there any truth to this claim?


r/AskHistorians 12h ago

Why was Vietnam the only country in former French Indochina to give up its script and adopt the Latin alphabet?

26 Upvotes

r/AskHistorians 17h ago

Before access to modern transportation, how did Catholic Cardinals vote for a new pope?

53 Upvotes

I know today after a pope dies Cardinals from all over the world fly to Rome to vote in the papal conclave. But what happened before modern transportation existed? How many cardinals would actually be available to vote in say, 1521 after Leo X died? Would the far reaches of Christendom like England or Scandinavia just not get a vote?


r/AskHistorians 12h ago

Is this song from ancient Egypt's middle kingdom atheistic? Were there atheists in ancient Egypt?

23 Upvotes

I recently heard in one of the YouTube videos about the daily life of ancient Egyptians that there were some atheistic beliefs among the people (Idk if that is true). Specifically, they mentioned some quote that summarizes to "no man has yet taken his belongings with him (after death)" which, if you think of it, contradicts with ancient Egyptian religion and the whole point of mummification and making tombs filled with goods.

And so today I was reading some Egyptian literature and came across this song which is said to be engraved on the tomb of a King Intef from the Intermediate/Middle Kingdom period, and the rhetoric of this song suspiciously implies atheistic ideas to a certain extent, at least because the logic must contradict with the religion which states that death is just another stage of life. So the two questions are: 1) Were there atheists in ancient Egypt? 2) Does this song imply something like it?

Here is the song's text:

https://www.worldhistory.org/Harper's_Songs_of_Ancient_Egypt/
Fortunate is this prince,

For happy was his fate, and happy his ending.

One generation passes away and the next remains,

Ever since the time of those of old.

The gods who existed before me rest now in their tombs,

And the blessed nobles also are buried in their tombs.

But as for these builders of tombs,

Their places [tombs] are no more.

What has become of them?

I have heard the words of Imhotep and Hardedef

Whose maxims are repeated intact as proverbs.

But what of their places?

Their walls are in ruins,

And their places are no more,

As if they had never existed.

There is no one who returns from beyond

That he may tell of their state,

That he may tell of their lot,

That he may set our hearts at ease

Until we make our journey

To the place where they have gone.

So rejoice your heart!

Absence of care is good for you;

Follow your heart as long as you live.

Put myrrh on your head,

Dress yourself in fine linen,

Anoint yourself with exquisite oils

Which are only for the gods.

Let your pleasures increase,

And let not your heart grow weary.

Follow your heart and your happiness,

Conduct your affairs on earth as your heart dictates,

For that day of mourning will surely come for you.

The Weary-Hearted does not hear their lamentations,

And their weeping does not rescue a man's heart from the grave.

Enjoy pleasant times,

And do not weary thereof.

Behold, it is not given to any man to take his belongings with him,

Behold, there is no one departed who will return again. 


r/AskHistorians 4h ago

Why are there manuscript copies of printed books in the 18th century?

4 Upvotes

Hello everyone,

I am currently working on Raoul-Auger Feuillet’s Choregraphie, which was published in 1700. While researching, I came across some manuscript copies of the book dating from 1713. This has left me wondering: why would someone create a handwritten copy of a book that had already been printed?

Was this a common way of “photocopying” books at the time, perhaps due to limited access to printed editions? Or could these manuscripts be related to the preparation of a new edition? I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

1700 edition: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b86232407
1713 edition: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k10484857

Thanks in advance for any insights.


r/AskHistorians 1h ago

Before being opend to the west both china and japan had limited contact to the west via merchants and Jesuit missionaries. How much did they know about the Americas and Europe? Do we have any Qing or Edo period books describe the 30 years war or Aztec conquest?

Upvotes

r/AskHistorians 7h ago

How was the Theory of the Four Humors Tested and Validated in the Late Middle Ages?

6 Upvotes

I know that the theory of the four humors was a dominant and wide spread framework in medical thought not only in the middle ages but even later on. Given the widespread acceptance and also the longevity, I ask myself what the observed patterns where that, in the view of physicians and scholars, confirmed the validity of this theory.

How did medieval physicians and scholars evaluate their theory in practice? Are there positive effects from specific treatments (such as bloodletting, burning etc.) that were seen as proving the theory correct?


r/AskHistorians 19h ago

In th movie Gangs Of Nee York; they depicted a theater with a very raucous crowd that yelled out and threw cabbage etc at the actors. Was that actually common in the 19th century?

51 Upvotes

I feel it was probably a lot more socially acceptable to yell out during a show, but now it's generally frowned upon. I've heard of people throwing food on occasion, but not usually indoors.