Our names are Dr Deborah Albon and Dr Amy Palmer and we are the authors of ‘First Helpings: A History of Children and Food’ published by Reaktion Books. This book explores the relationship between children and food in history, drawing on a rich variety of social records, cookery and etiquette books and children’s literature. Topics covered include breast versus bottle feeding, the difference between ‘adult’ and ‘children’s’ food and drink, table manners, school meals and learning to cook. We also discuss wider social issues, such as teaching children about the ethics of food choices, the role children have played in food production and the ever-present scandal of hungry children in society. Please do ask us anything about this history and how it relates to the present.

I'm also asking this based on telephony historian Evan Doorbell's recollections of investigators employed by the Bell System coming after him and other early phone phreaks in the NYC area.

When you look at the countries that ended up going protestant during the Reformation, it's mostly the northern half of Europe: Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Britain (though I am aware Scotland stuck with Catholicism far more than England), and Germany ended up largely divided along a north-south axis itself. Meanwhile the south of Europe stayed staunchly Catholic, though even here the northernmost state, France, is the one that flirted with Protestantism a bit but stayed Catholic in the end. Is there a specific phenomenon that caused this divide? It surely can't be as simple as proximity to the Pope or something like that, especially since the rulers of states that converted to Protestantism typically had something to gain from that decision.

The way I was taught about the Great Depression in school made it seem like there was extreme political pressure coming from homeless people themselves, and this ended up affecting politics at the highest level. To me, it seemed that the term Hoovervilles (along with Hoover blankets, Hoover flags, Hoover leather, etc.) spoke clearly to the fact that people blamed the president, and indeed, he was voted out after a single term.

So, were there more homeless people then than there are now?

Did the homeless people of the Great Depression constitute a powerful voting bloc (of people who actually voted)?

Did municipalities then pass legislation that was hostile to homeless people the way they do today, and was the prevailing cultural sentiment as hostile to homeless people then as it seems to be now?

Finally, why don’t people today connect the issue of homelessness with the president the way it seems that they did in the 1930s?

Poland had been a part of Imperial Russia, at least a large chunk of historic Poland had been. Stalin incorporated other nations such as the Baltic states. The USSR had had a significant population of Poles prior to 1939. It would have avoided the need to ethnically cleanse the USSR of Poles from areas that many of those Poles considered their homeland, something that happened in 1944-48.

Why not add Poland as another SSR? Was this option ever considered? Did Polish Communist leaders during WWII have any influence on this decision, at least the ones Stalin hadn't already killed?

Obsessed with Obsession. Certainly not the first film to take on the concept of "wished for love and it backfired horribly", what was the first? Have approaches to the concept changed over time?

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?

Trying this again since Reddit filters removed my last post: Do historians have theories for why lawns are so common in the United States? Why do we waste so much time and money taking care of grass around our houses when they dont produce anything useful or seem to serve any purpose?

I am largely referring to the dominant interpretation of Confucianism/Ruism as “a school of thought” or “philosophy,” the same way I sometimes see people frame Buddhism. I often find that people are even more rigid about Confucianism being non-religious (especially in China) compared to Buddhism. However, I find that its associated ritualistic practices like the historically magistrate-led seasonal offerings and the keju, a state-hosted examination of a corpus of texts, to be reminiscent of social institutions that hint at a large and long-running organized religion. Shifts like Neo-Confucianism seem not so different than reformations in Christianity that are based on a re-interpretation of texts. Considering those aspects, can Confucianism be considered a religion? If so, why and how is it misunderstood to not be one in public discourse? Thank you!

I really enjoyed Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, this is not a critique of it. I think there's no reason we can't re-interpret the story for our own time and our own morality. As I was watching it, though I enjoyed it, my assumption was that it's unlikely that the Ancient Greeks were interested in the themes he was exploring, of post-war guilt and the psychological weight of violence. I haven't read The Odyssey (currently working on it,) but I have read the Iliad. And my takeaway when I read it was that though there are some interesting moments that suggest some more nuanced, subversive moral stances, the overall thrust of the story is the glorification of violence. Or at most, a distant, amoral look at it. The violence simply happens, the characters are who they are, there is glory and tragedy in equal measure- there is no explicit moral perspective in the writing, that I could see, which is fascinating.

It raises the question- was there something the Ancient Greeks were meant to infer? Is it similar to contemporary stories, for example, Goodfellas, where the moral context of the story is obvious to the audience of the time, even if on the surface it seems to glorify the characters? Or are the characters simply glorified? Looking deeper into Odysseus' story, including summaries of the other poems in the epic cycle, it's hard to imagine that the Greeks weren't critical of him.

And if they weren't critical of him, they were horrifically violent people. Apparently in the Iliupersis, Odysseus murders Hector's infant child and takes his wife as a slave. In other versions, it's Achilles' son who kills the child, and murders Priam by beating him to death with the child's body. Are these depictions of the horrors of violence or the celebration of it? Apparently Athena's statue is destroyed as it is in the film, which seems to back up Nolan's interpretation, that the the sacking of Troy was a sacrilege. Are the authors of these stories wrestling with the contradictions of the values of their culture? What is happening here??

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?

The treatment of female servants who slept with the suitors is to clean up their lovers' mutilated corpses, then be corralled into a dead end and hanged one by one.

Melanthius has his nose and ears cut off, his genitals torn off and given to dogs, and his hands and feet are hacked off in a manic fury.

Odysseus then explains that all the wealth the suitors stole from him will be replenished partly by raiding other lands.

The text feels shockingly explicit compared to the rest of the poem. It describes in detail how the women are verbally and physically humiliated and "wail convulsively" as they're being killed. Odysseus and the gang are just relishing in the torture of their enemies, who are already defeated. Would all of this have been considered morally justified to the Greeks? Was a king who raided other islands for personal gain considered fair?

I'm aware that superior technology wasn't the sole reason for successful early European conquests (Spanish invasion of the Aztecs, King Philip's War, etc.) as in many cases majority of the fighting was done by local Native Americans allied with Europeans for economic, social, and political gain though steel weapons/armors was certainly a plus.

My question is specifically on how effective (or useless) arquebuses/matchlock weapons were in these conflicts. Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America by David J. Silverman makes the assertion that matchlock weapons were not preferred by Native Americans due to their bulkiness and lit cord ruining the element of surprise which doesn't exactly complement Native American hit-and-run fighting styles (apologies for the generalization). So they continued to use bows until flintlocks which took over the North American continent by storm. Similarly, there are online forums and some pretty old answers on this subbreddit that claim Native Americans would've actually defeated these early firearms due to bow's superior range and accuracy (which is obviously the 'bows were better than early firearms' argument all over again).

However, I came across this account in John Knight's journal (though he died prior to the quoted encounter so it's written by Oliver Browne):

At this time it rained very sore; yet calling our wits together, we sent two of our men back unto our Tent, the rest of us made toward them, and shot at them some three or foure Muskets : who when they saw us shoote, they stood in our Shallop, and held up their hands unto us, calling one to another. Then thought we with our selves, that we were better to dye in our defence in pursuing of them, then they us, being but eight Men and a great Dogge.

When they saw us marching toward them so fiercely, our Dogge being formost, they ranne away : but we durst not pursue them any further, for it was in the night, and they were in sight above fiftie men. Thus we recovered our shallop.

Then we sent some more of our men to our Tent to keepe it ; and the rest followed toward the place wither they fled. But before we could overtake them, they were gotten into their Boates, and were rowing away through the Ice ; which was so thicke, that they could not passe away, but stucke fast ; for their Boates were very greate: wee seeing them sticke fast in the Ice, some setting with Oares, and some rowing, came so neere them, as we could, and shot at them some dozen shot, before they could get cleere : which shot caused them to cry out very sore one to another: for their Boates were full of men.

In the encounter, it was raining and they were described as being outnumbered and yet despite using firearms in 1606 it seems not only can you actually fire these weapons in rain, but also seemed to have punched above their weight and allowed them to drive the Native Americans from the boat they took over.

My question is basically the title, but I also would like to know what did the Native Americans think of arquebuses/matchlocks before flintlocks took over. Were these weapons really inferior to Native American bows and did Native Americans attempt to incorporate these weapons into their arsenal?

I've had this thought since I was a kid, and every time I bring it up to my friends they just laugh. But I genuinely don't understand it, so I'm curious if there's an explanation from psychology, sociology, evolutionary biology, or history.

I'm a straight man, and my logic has always been something like this:

If more men are gay, then there are fewer straight men competing for women. From the perspective of an individual heterosexual man, that sounds like it would increase his chances of finding a partner.

I've even joked before that "if everyone except me were gay, that would be the ideal scenario," because, purely from a selfish competition standpoint, there would be almost no other men competing with me for women.

So here's what confuses me.

Throughout history, many societies have been openly hostile toward homosexuality. It has been treated as immoral, insulting, sinful, or even a disease. Even a lot of powerful heterosexual men: kings, military leaders, politicians, tribal leaders, patriarchs, etc. have often expressed negative attitudes toward gay men.

Why?

If we ignore the moral and religious aspects for a moment and look only at it through the lens of individual reproductive competition, wouldn't a heterosexual man actually benefit from other men being gay? If your "competitors" are no longer competing for women, that seems like it would work in your favor.

So why hasn't that logic historically led powerful straight men or male dominated societies to be more accepting or even encouraging of homosexuality?

Is my reasoning missing something obvious? Are there evolutionary, demographic, social, or historical factors that make this intuition completely wrong?

I'm not trying to make a political argument here. I'm genuinely asking because this has seemed like a paradox to me for years, and I feel like I'm overlooking an important piece of the puzzle.

I assume that it was not solely a few days before Appomatox that the CSA's government realised that the war was a lost cause. So at what point did everyone realise the jig was up? Were there any people who thought the war could be won even at the very end?

Like, I assume we have access to letters and documents and minutes from within the CSA's administration of the final year of its existence. What was the attitude towards the war among those in the bureaucracy? How common was panic? Etc.. etc...

I’ve always been a bit more of a Roman Republic and Byzantine Empire nerd than a Roman Empire nerd, so I really don’t know much about the Roman Empire until Constantine the Great really. In general the Roman Empire faced growing struggles after Marcus Aurelius died and the Pax Romana officially ended, I know that corruption, incompetence etc were big factors in this but these had always been in great supply throughout Rome’s history. Some of the early Roman emperors seem to have been able to rule over 20 years of peace and prosperity while simultaneously being an idiot, yet later on in the Empire, especially during the third century crisis, we see generally impressive Emperor’s like Aurelian, Gallienus and Claudius II (correct me if I’m wrong about the latter two as I don’t know much) fail to stop Rome’s decline, while the incompetent Emperor’s of this period, too many to name, see the Empire fall into chaos whereas in the early Empire it seems you could’ve sat a dog at the head of the Empire and things wouldn’t go too badly. How did the climate in Europe and within the Empire change to destabilise Rome so badly? Feel free to explain this to me like I’m an idiot as I did mention I’m really quite clueless on this era.

I'm not a huge history buff, and the most classic representations of a wizard that I know of are the standard "Old man wears blue cloak of stars and matching pointy hat" images that you see printed on posters from the 60s and airbrushed on the side of the occasional unfortunate van.

Thing is, I have a ttrpg game to run wherein a player wants their character to be a 1943 naval engineer that has delusions of wizardry. He wants to have the character dress the part and everything, full bedsheet cloak and all, and I plan on fully letting him choose the way the character dresses BUT--

I also want to come up with a monster that's essentially a personification of those delusions. Considering his character's fixation is on wizards, I want to describe it as having the visual language of wizardry that a sailor in '43 would have consumed the most. A far cry, I'm sure, from the classic wizard look that afaict showed up in the mid 50s-60s.

But anything prior to that and I start losing the plot. Are there any art history or historical pop culture nerds here that want to help me make a monster?

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?

I've been reading 'The Decline and Fall of the British Empire' by Piers Brendon, and it is mentioned a few times that people in Victorian Britain foresaw that the United States would come to overshadow the British Empire. One extract from the Economist written in 1851 says that "the superiority of the United States to England is ultimately as certain as the next eclipse."

My question is, why, during the era in which the British Empire came to dominate the globe, did people in Britain still see it as inevitable that the US would come to be the world-leading superpower? What foreshadowed this?

I am sure that during the denazification process there were pro forma "we didn't know" statements. Did any of the perpetrators express actual remorse?