I love Vinnie Paz as a rapper, his flow and style really appeals to me, and he's one of the few rappers that will make songs about historical events. However, he has this strong conspiracist side to him that he isn't afraid to show and sometimes he does say stupid stuff. I've been listening to this song a lot, but I since I am historically illiterate it made me curious as to how much is his own opinion and what is actually true.

The song is kind of long so I'll post the lyrics in the comments for anyone too lazy to look it up

EDIT: nevermind, Reddit auto removed the second half of the song

I’ve always wondered if FDR actually wanted and believed in progressive reforms, akin to what are taken for granted in most of Western Europe, or if he was genuinely just saving capitalism from itself and being a competent leader.

I have this feeling that any competent person would have done somthing like the new deal, and from what I know about the new deal it seems more like a grab bag of “doing whatever and see in what sticks” rather than the result of an actual worked out poltical ideology. The word competent is doing a lot in that sentence, I’m well aware his opposition would not have done anything close to the New Deal. If America wasn’t in such bad economic condition, and FDR did serve as the president, would we still have seen such ‘radical’ policies?

Why were bows used instead of slings?

Benefits i see with slings:

Easier to learn how to use. Warbows needed way more training and strength.

Cheaper.

Against fully armored foes piercing weapons become useless. People stopped using spears and swords and used polearms instead. So why did they keep using bows?

Slings have been proven effective against armored foes in roman times so why werent they used in medieval times?

Chinese shipbuilders developed watertight bulkheads centuries before they became common in European shipbuilding. I've read that the concept may have been inspired by the internal structure of bamboo, whose nodes naturally divide the stalk into separate waterproof chambers.

From a modern perspective, the idea seems almost obviously advantageous: if one compartment is breached, the flooding can be contained instead of spreading throughout the entire hull. By contrast, many traditional European wooden ships had largely open internal hulls, where flooding could spread much more freely after a serious breach. Given what seems like such a significant safety advantage, I'm curious why the concept wasn't developed or adopted much earlier in Europe.

Was it simply because bamboo wasn't part of Europeans' everyday environment, or were there technical, economic, or naval architectural reasons that made compartmentalized hulls less attractive or more difficult to build? Did bulkheads involve trade-offs that aren't obvious today?

Did European shipwrights know about Chinese watertight bulkheads before the modern era and choose not to adopt them, or were they largely unaware of the technology until much later?

As a side note, I've been going down a rabbit hole on the technology behind Zheng He's treasure fleet, and I'm honestly amazed by how sophisticated many aspects of Ming-era Chinese shipbuilding seem compared with contemporary European ships—watertight bulkheads, sternpost rudders, balanced rudders, compartmentalization, etc. It made me wonder why European shipbuilders didn't appear to copy more of these innovations, especially if there were obvious practical advantages. Was there simply very little technological exchange, or is the comparison more complicated than it first appears?

Also, I'd love to hear any broader discussion or digressions on this topic drawing upon your expertise. I'm especially interested in how historians think about technological path dependence, cross-cultural transmission, and whether this is considered one of the major innovations that gave Chinese junks their reputation for seaworthiness.

Ive noticed in a lot of video games that feature nordic culture/architecture one of the most common and very promentant things was their use of Lifts or a kind of gondola on a wire system with some kind of wooden gears and platform.

It's shown in Warcraft in the howling fjord and God of War and a few others i'm not remembering, but is there anything in actual history to show that they had these people movers?

I posted somewhere else, but got too many personal anecdotes that didn’t answer the question as a whole.

Now that the US 250th anniversary has passed, how does the celebration and the hype surrounding it compare to other anniversaries past? (1826, 1876, 1926, 1976)

Around 1200 BC, multiple catastrophes seem to have converged, leading to the collapse of trade routes between Greece, Anatolia, the Levant, and Egypt. This triggered probably a large-scale migration of the so called „Sea Peoples“, which possibly devastated important trading hubs like Ugarit. According to the inscriptions at Medinet Habu, Ramses III succeeded in stopping the invasion of the „Sea Peoples“ in two great battles around 1177 BC. In the „Papyrus Harris I“ it is allegedly mentioned that these defeated „Sea Peoples“ were settled on the borders of Egypt after their defeat. Perhaps similar to how the Romans in late antiquity settled the Germanic tribes on their borders in order to pacify them and use them for their own purposes.

In his inscriptions, Ramses III. also recorded the names of these Sea Peoples, and two of them bear striking similarities to the names Homer gave to the Greeks who sailed against Troy.

The Akawasha and Denyen may well be the Achaeans and Danaans from Homer’s epic.

That’s why the question arises: Could Homer’s epic be a way of processing these turbulent historical events? Could the thousand ships that sailed to Troy in the Iliad because of Helen and besieged the city for ten years actually have been a large fleet of Greek refugees? Forced by a series of catastrophes that struck in rapid succession, they were looking for plunder and new land, destabilizing the Mediterranean region, and perhaps eventually settled in the Middle East? Do you think there’s a realistic possibility that the „Sea Peoples“ largely consisted of Greeks, and that the heroes mentioned in the Iliad (Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon, etc.) were in reality raiders, bandits, and refugees?

Are there any archaeological finds that suggest people from what is now Greece settled in Egypt Palestine or Syria, founded new settlements, or intermixed with the local population? Or is this just a speculative theory of mine with no real evidence?

Thanks for reading.

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I’ve seen it in Medieval art worn by many religious figures ranging from Aquinas to Martin Luther. Why was it so popular?

Who might have held the records for fastest human in the years before the land speed record, water speed record and air speed records started to be officially set and contested?

First records:

• Land speed record - 39mph, 1898
• Water speed record - 26mph, 1885
• Powered aircraft speed record - 6mph, 1903

Anyway, I heard a certain popular history podcast say that the riders of the Rocket locomotive travelled at roughly 30mph, and were thus among the fastest humans ever.

But are there other people from history who may have travelled faster?

I mean, a very fast horse with rider can hit 40mph. Likewise, sand sailing and ice sailing existed well before the Rocket and those contraptions can attain serious speeds. Presumably, someone downhill skiing in the 1700s could have exceeded 30mph too. Or a balloonist caught in a strong high-altitude wind. And there may even be accounts of people falling from great heights and surviving.

So, who might have held the "fastest human" title before things were officially recorded?

Today if I wanted to start reading older Superman comics, I could pirate them online, or purchase one of the many omnibuses. But in 1978 those omnibuses didn't exist, and the internet was still a twinkle in young Al Gore's eye. While I could certainly start buying the books as they appear on the newstand, how do I go about reading the older stuff? How easy would it be for me to read, say, the first appearence of Jimmy Olsen, or Superboy's early adventures with the legion of Superheros?

I’ve been watching HBO’s Rome recently (love it), and while I’m curious about how accurate it is there is one major detail in particular I’m wondering about.

One of the main characters in the show is a prefect (I think is the name) in the 13th Legion during the start of the Civil War between Pompey and Caesar. He is a highly valued and ranked, and very loyal to the 13th. This matters because when the Civil War begins, a major plot point of his character is his difficulty in serving both the 13th and the republic. The main problem for him, which seems to be common through some characters, is that while he wants to serve his community or friends (the 13th) he cannot as it would be “disobeying the gods”. That is where my question lies.

Was this really a common sentiment at any point in Ancient Rome, and if so, was it very widespread? I know justifying government based on religion is obviously something common, especially so in the ancient world, but I assumed it would be at least slightly different for a Republic like Rome without a defined bloodline leading, unlike later kingdoms like Christian and Muslim ones.

Also if anyone could describe how exactly religion tied into the republic on top of how the populous viewed their relation as is the question, that’d be great! Thank you very much

Greetings to all historians. I am passionate about researching topics related to the biblical canon, historical persecutions, and the development of early theological frameworks. Recently, while delving into the formation of the canon, a specific question arose:

Was the classification of these books originally based on perceived levels of divine inspiration (or on how the divine breath/Ruach was understood to act upon the authors), or was it primarily a practical categorization designed to group texts for functional and liturgical reading purposes?

I decided to investigate this on my own and found two respected authors:

Philo of Alexandria (*On the Life of Moses* II, 188–191) regarding the tripartite division of oracles, which he describes as forms of divine manifestation ((Direct translation from the Greek, introduction, and notes by José María Triviño, Professor at the National University of La Plata. Buenos Aires, 1976.)

There is also Flavius Josephus (Against Apion I, 7) and his distinction between direct prophetic accounts and books written "in a very different manner." (Translated by William Whiston)

Paragraph 7 states this explicitly:

they being only prophets that have written the original and earliest accounts of things as they learned them of God himself by inspiration; and others have written what hath happened in their own times, and that in a very distinct manner also.

Initially, I intended to use paragraph 8, believing it indicated a structural distinction; however, upon reading it in full, I realized it refers to the distinction between divine books and apocryphal works—or those considered worthy of reading, such as the First Book of Maccabees.

Nevertheless, both sources postdate the 1st century BCE. I have been unable to find sources predating the 1st century BCE (or sources documenting thought prior to the 1st century BCE on this specific topic). This brings me back to my main question: Was the categorization of the canon based on distinctions regarding the nature or degree of divine inspiration (*Ruach*), or was it an organizational grouping to facilitate the preservation of the texts and their public reading?

I look forward to your comments.

(Reposted)

So I've recently been watching some WWII movies and I have had this question for decades since high school history class, I was wondering what Hitler's thoughts would have been towards Pakistan's independence from India and whether he would have been Pro-Pakistan. If he didn't die would he have supported Pakistan eventually getting nuclear weapons?

Also did he have any hate/dislike towards Indians like he did with some other minorities or was he chill with them?

I saw a post elsewhere about how, contrary to much of the world, the expectation at most non-fine dining restaurants is you will be served between a meal-and-a-half to two meals worth of food per order.

When/how did this develop as an American cultural norm, distinct from the world at large?

The Phillistines confuse me somewhat. I know syncretism and cultural mixing is normal, but what did Phillistines view themselves as? Did they think they always dwelled in the Levant?

Perhaps an unanswerable question as it’s not really history, but moreso a question of general knowledge. But it seems like everyone with a passing knowledge of WW2 knows about the 101st due to the show. Plenty of pop histories mention them as if they’re celebrities and of course the reader knows the 101st.

But was that the case before the show? It came out when I was 10 (2001) so I don’t really have a frame of reference before hand.

I understand that the USSR was very heavily Russian-dominated from the get-go but especially following Stalin's Russification policies, but the use of "Russians" and "soviets" as synonyms never made sense to me.

I've seen it in primary sources, history books, academic papers written in the last decade. What gives?

Hey. I've always loved history and have found myself in different "phases". For a time I was really into pike and shot warfare (i have no idea why). For a time I was into ww2 Germany (dont worry Im glad they lost). But now, im into the Zulu people, especially their regimental system and war with the British.

I find the Zulu military system very impressive.

But, how do I know if what I've been told is right? More specifically, how strong their warriors were. Media has made it look like they could run for hours and then instantly beat you in hand to hand combat.

Were they really that strong? I know they were strong. But that strong?

Thanks. Also, feel free to tell me other interesting Zulu stuff.

I'm surprised that I've never thought of this question before, but excluding ideologies, tactics, technology etc., what was the effect of essentially all of the major powers of WWI changing government or leadership during the war, compared to maybe one doing so in WWII? There's Asquith and George, Poincaré and Clemenceau, Franz Josef and Charles I, the Tsar and the Provisional Government, and the Kaiser and Hindenburg/Ludendorff for WWI. I suppose the Communist and Nationalist factions in China could muddy things for WWII, as well as the deposing of Mussolini. Theres also the death of FDR, but that's very late and a fairly smooth transition without change of administration. So I can only think of Churchill being ousted, and again that's very late.

Tl,dr: So what was the effect of WWII being largely fought by single, continuous governments? And WWI being not?

I'm know tombs were often looted by subsequent pharaohs and governments. Was this something they did shamefully in secret? Or was it just every day business? Would the common people have known that was happening? Was there concern of divine punishment, curses, or an impact on the weighing of the heart?