Recently went through the history of the 1971 Indo-Pak war. I knew from childhood that it was exaggerated. Still, the scale of nationalistic myth and propaganda kinda shocked me.

Do share if you know any historical event where the truth is very different from mainstream perception of that event.

When I’m hearing about the voyages, it seems Europeans were the ones going back and forth between continents. This is before the 1700s, I know by the 1700s white Americans had started to make voyages from the Americas to Europe and back.
Europeans sailed back and forth to the Americas. The Europeans would pick up the slaves in Africa to take to the Americas, and pick up the products in the Americas to take back to Europe. But the indigenous Americans and white Americans didn’t sound like they made a lot of voyages to Europe and back to the Americas.
Why didn’t West African nations make any voyages to the Americas and back? Some of them were involved in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and had general contact with Europe. So they would’ve been aware of the Americas existing and some idea of how to get there.
With being bound by natural geography, only Western European nations and Western African nations would have access to sail from the Old World to the New World. Only eastern coast nations in the Americas could make a voyage to Europe and back to the Americas.

Hey everyone

As you can see I’m looking for personalities that started their life “late” in life.

Because of many things that happened to me in life, I had to pause my life for many years and be there for my parents, siblings etc.

So I didn’t go to college/university after graduating high school. They needed me and many more things happened.

Hopefully, things are getting better and I can start my life now and start a new chapter.

However, I’m in my end 20s now and I feel like a failure sometimes. I don’t know what to do and if I’ll be able to achieve anything in life or have an impact.

I don’t wanna fall in a hole and give in to this negativity. So I was thinking: I can’t be the only one feeling like tht in all history

There must be more like me and maybe some of them achieved something

Maybe in a similar age

Maybe even older

Maybe all of this can help me make the right decision what to do with my life and have some sort of motivation.

So that’s what I’m looking for. Personalities all over human history that started their lives essentially “later” in life. For whatever reasons.

Apologies if this is the wrong sub, but I recently rewatched the Nicholas Winding Refn movie "Valhalla Rising" and the concept really struck my fancy (Ouch! My fancy!). Did some cursory Wikipedia-ing, but I'd love to hear some experts talk about it.

Thanks!

History is full of incredible stories that have never made it to the big screen.
It could be an extraordinary person or a forgotten event.
What deserves a movie, and why?

I’m just curious about others as I’ve been getting into medieval history, and reading up on people like Vlad the Impaler.

For him, while I fully grant he was an absolutely brutal (and most likely insane) man, he was also going up against a pretty dangerous enemy at the time in the Sultanate.

While I know his actions didn’t necessarily stop them, he definitely gave them pause on multiple occasions.

So I was wondering if there were other notable figures that are like this, where they’re reputation is something of brutality, possibly even commonly depicted as being evil, but could also be seen as something like a necessary evil given their circumstances, such as a dangerous enemy, or major events beyond their control.

This seems like an easily Google-able question but I couldn’t find the answer online. Portraits don’t seem to include any from what I could see, so I’m inclined to think not, but I couldn’t find any definitive answer.

So, did Isaac Newton wear jewelry? If so, what kind, and was it unusual for his community? I’m hoping for a ring in a museum or something like that.

I tried r/AskHistorians and they removed my post because it requires a short answer, then I tried in the weekly thread there but didn’t get a response. This seems like a really simple question but it is really difficult to get an answer.

In OTL, the Bolshevik regime ceded over most of eastern Europe by way of the Brest-Litovsk treaty. At the end of the war, the USSR could not stake a claim to these regions, so the result was the creation of new nation states in eastern Europe.

Obviously, that was not what Russia had in mind at the beginning of the war. They expected to end up getting more land at the end of the war. If the czarist or Kerensky led regime had not backed out of the war, they would be sitting at the table with the other victorious powers.

In that case, would Russia have insisted on getting more land, e.g. additional parts of Poland or Czechoslovakia? Would they have been willing to cede over land they had had at the beginning of the war? At the end of the day, what would the new map of eastern Europe have looked like?

I’m not sure whether this is more of a history or linguistic question, but I’m asking as someone writing historical fiction. I’ve come across WWII memorials and novels where British and/or American WWII soldiers refer to Germans as “Jerry” regardless of number, while other texts use “Jerrys” or “Jerries” when referring to multiple Germans. So, for example, “waiting for the Germans to come” might be written either as “waiting for Jerry to come” or “waiting for the Jerrys/Jerries to come”.

Was there actually a difference in wartime usage? Was “Jerry” used as a collective noun (like “the enemy”), while “Jerrys/Jerries” referred to individual German soldiers, or were both forms used interchangeably? And if both were used, was the difference regional (British vs. Commonwealth, for example), or simply a matter of individual speech?

TIA!

Edit: typos

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 conflict 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?

Of course.I know the story of subutai khan but I don't even know the names of the other three dogs of war. Can I at least get that. I really do like Mongol history well it does get really annoying when it goes from. This is the most well document thing we have period to mean there's some shit.

As the question suggests, I have seen a trend of American historians writing/ talking about American history (i.e american revolution, civil war) but nothing about european history and then you have a huge amount of european historians writing/ talking about european history (i.e spanish, medieval, roman, greek) but not american. I'm sure they exist which is why I'm here asking if anyone has any good suggestions. I'm also excluding WWI and WWII which I know is a wide subject for both place and this is one of the most written topic in the historical sphere. Any Mexican, Native american, latin america, middle east, african, or asian history talks/books are also welcomed!!! Just really trying to see if there are people writing/ talking about history outside of their scope.

PS: If this sounds too clunky I am more than open to try to explain myself further in the comments with any clarifications. Sorry in advance.

I'm working on writing a fantasy novel, and I'm trying to figure out what general style of clothing my fairy species would have. They are small, have limited magic and basically no metal, but access to a variety of textiles including silk, plant fibers, and a fantasy creature's hair that works like most animal fibers would. My biggest issues are the fact that they can't have anything that crosses over their backs, since their wings take up a rather large amount of room, and whatever they wear needs to be aerodynamic enough because they need to be able to fly in it. (Which may cross out ancient greek as a style, which is where I was originally looking for ideas.)

I have no clue if this subreddit can help me, but someone over on r/worldbuilding recommended I try over here to learn about some pre-bronze age clothing ideas. Please let me know if you have any ideas, or even just some lesser known fact about clothes making before machines. (I already know about weaving and sowing, I mean stuff we don't do in modern times.)

Also, any explanations as to how a society develops its clothing styles could also be helpful! I am not the biggest history nerd so I'm not sure how such things come about, or even just how we think they might have come about. Maybe if I understand how styles develop outside of just form follows function I'll be able to give my characters some clothing diversity.

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?

for me, World War II. I understand why it’s important and why so many people are interested in it, but after a while I find the topic a bit repetitive, especially compared with other periods of history.

Lately, I've been thinking about buying/borrowing some books about history in general, not the usual fiction or fantasy I read. But with how easy it is to misinform people this day and age (especially when ai is involved), I'm having trouble with deciding whether to get anything at all.

As a general example, what I mean would be a book that I saw pretty frequently marketed on the "popular" shelf in my area. It was something along the lines of "the history of people being high", as you can guess it was about drug usage throughout the ages and throughout different parts of the world. I thought that would be an interesting read, but I had my doubts whether or not the information within was credible. The cover, as well as the page layout (short blurbs of information, vague descriptions etc) kind of threw me off too.

Another time I encountered a book with an entirely artificially generated cover image, which to be honest made me completely lose interest. My first thought was "if they don't care enough to hire someone to do the cover, why should I trust them to hire someone to make sure the information inside is true?"

In short, how do you tell if you're reading some complete bs or not? I'd really like to read and learn more about the time periods and topics that interest me, but I would be really disappointed if I found out that most of the info turned out to be false or wildly inaccurate. I'm aware that some of the things I'm doing might just be "judging the book solely by its cover", but I'd prefer to put my money where it's worth the price

There was just a guy in Norway who seems to be responsible for burning down 100 houses. But there have been far worse consequences for fails in the past, so what are they?

Okay so I would like to explain my context so that you guys can better understand my question:

I am a tribal, Indian guy from the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. And here in India, the basis of the Indian "civilisation" are considered to have been formed by Vedic cultures and the ancient city states and then by Indian empires like the Mauryan empire, the Gupta empire and, many Hindu nationalists won't like it but, the Mughals with the "surface of our civilisation being painted" by British (our current Republic is based on the Westminster model).

My point being that 99% of the base of Indian civilisation is based on Indian cultures and empires native to the Indian subcontinent.

So why do Western countries like the UK and US consider the Roman Empire and ancient Greece, two civilizations that are not native to either of them geographically and whose culture and language would have been alien to the ancient people of UK and US living around the same time, as their "civilisational base" ? Why don't they consider their own ancient cultures as the base of their own civilisation ?

like that 1000 crew is just sailors not counting all the support staff that was onboard to support said crew

but like why did they need so many men to just operate some guns of various sizes, engines & mechanical support, etc?

like its seems a waste of good men to crowd so many onboard a single ship?

I was under the impression that the Nazis wanted to expand the Reich to include basically everywhere that a Germanic language was spoken in Europe, and "welcome" the people of these new additional territories as "kin" or "brothers", with these territories forming the core of a large pan Germanic empire, and the people there generally treated well due to being kin to Germans, however, the Wikipedia article for irredentism only talks about the Sudetenland for German irredentism. Am I misunderstanding the ideology of the Nazis or is that kind of expansion somehow different from irredentism?

My friend and I are co-writing a historical dark fantasy about undead pirates in 18th century Bahamas, set just after the decline of the Nassau pirate republic and pirate Golden Age but just before / during the start of American Revolutionary Wars (circa 1750). We want the action to be informed by real anxieties, struggles and philosophies of the time period.

Our protagonist is a young British colonial who has come to Nassau in its 1730s-70s boom. He will have been aboard a ship to get here, but is not a mariner necessarily. He's a tutor for the wealthier colonials in the region.

First of all, does this make sense? How would he get there? Why would he come:?

And second of all, how would he have been educated if he came from Great Britain as essentially a middle class servant? What should I read and research to understand his worldview?

I know relatively little about Japanese history, but I am curious about how Japan went from the country we associate today with stability and pacifism to the highly militarized and expansionist state of the 1930s and 1940s.

If Germany wouldn't've further divided Czechoslovakia after getting the Sudetenland, and instead focused a few months later on Danzig. How high would his chance have been?

Slavery was still legal in Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware during the war, and wasn't fully outlawed until the 13th amendment passed after the war. (the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to areas in rebellion to the US, so the border states were exempt). A draft was issued in 1863 for all abled bodied men 20-45. Surely this would have included men from slave owning families in the border states.

I’ve always been curious about how historians tell the difference between solid facts and reasonable guesses in ancient history.

When the records are sparse or clearly biased, how much of what we know comes from direct evidence versus educated guesswork? How do historians decide when an inference is strong enough to be considered the most likely explanation, and how often do new discoveries end up changing that picture?