I'm wondering if Lenin was more significant in bringing the October revolution or if the provisional government was more competent, could Lenin still had seized control? Meaning it would be more of a PG factor rather than Lenin being the most important.

By which I mean, a lone warrior who managed to kill multiple armed opponents, either in a single battle or on some sort of rampage.

And I added "pre-20th Century" because I know about Simo Hayha and Audie Murphy.

In imperial Japan, members of the royal family were obliged to enter military academy and serve as active duty officers. During WW2, several of them, at least one in every branch family were in active service and in commanding positions in the Japanese military.

The war responsibility of some of these royals have been debated. Prince Asaka who was in command of the Chinese expeditionary force for a while is sometimes blamed for the Nanjing massacre. Prince Takeda was a Kwantung army officer and he is said to have had knowledge of the Kwantung army's unethical human experiments/biological warfare program.

Since these royals were later degraded to commoners, and their existence wasn't strictly *necessary* for the continued survival of the Japanese imperial family, I do have to wonder why all these lesser royals were all supposedly given blanket immunity from war crimes prosecutions.

Meanwhile, I did read that royal officers were usually just figureheads supposed to sit back and watch their subordinates do all the work. That would significantly reduce command responsibility, though flimsy.

So... what's the truth, even? It is bizarre that not even one person ever seriously considered putting the lesser royals on trial. Heck, Prince Higashikuni even became prime minister for a while!

I am talking about the theory that Yahweh originally started as a minor storm warrior god.

He who causes to be (Yahweh) besides being a pretty metal name has nothing to do with storms. It's not like there was a myth about the world being created in a storm.

This suggests even in the beginning when Yahweh wasn't the only god or the only god worshipped, he was at least a creator god.

I'm currently reading The Creation of Anne Boleyn by Susan Bordo. I'm enjoying it, but I'm looking for more about her life, rather than mostly just the way her life has been twisted. I know that a lot of the work out there is very biased/inaccurate, both fiction and nonfiction, but not looking for something widely regarded as very inaccurate (like The Other Boleyn Girl). Any recommendations? Fiction (as accurate as possible) or nonfiction are both welcome! Thanks :)

It's on the tip of my tongue but I genuinely cannot remember anything other than theses two things. The reason I would like to know is because I really just want to do more research into him because that alone is hilarious.

Thank you all for your answers to my earlier question about "broken arrows"! I'm reading up on Cold War nuclear testing. I have a cynical bent of mind, and I'm always looking for the real motive behind war -- which is generally money.

The ancients went to war for profit: land, loot, slaves. I wondered what they would make of firebombing cities. That led me to wonder who might have profited from the use of nuclear weapons against Japan; and how the profit motive might have been involved in the subsequent testing of nuclear weapons by the US.

(Obviously the other nuclear powers also engaged in testing; I'm just far more familiar with the US program, at this stage.)

Is this a really stupid question? Probably!

But I was reading a book where it mentioned something about a lesbian relationship in 1920 having no legal consequences and that sent me down a massive rabbit hole about LGBT and the legality of it in 1920’s England.

But for some reason, I actually can’t find much regarding it and any reasons.

I can see from my research that gay relationships involving men were STRICTLY forbidden and illegal which I already knew and this just confirmed it but gay relationships involving WOMEN had no sort of illegality to it.

Why actually was this?
Why was gay relationships a prison-able offence but lesbian ones were not?
I’m so confused 😵‍💫

Please be nice… I’m not the best at history haha

So totally random but after a conversation with my sister earlier, I totally had forgotten about this… like 10 years ago, a distant relative found us doing one of those DNA lookup service things. To make a long story short, my great great great grandmother or something to that effect had her lineage traced back. The story we got was during the French Revolution, as the royal family was being ousted/slaughtered, one of the family houses was attacked. The entire household was slaughtered, with the exception of an infant baby girl. A Norwegian immigrant who was a “nurse maiden” for the house allegedly claimed that baby as her own, and the citizens allowed her to leave and take the baby with her. She fled back to Norway and raised the baby as her own.

We had no idea about any of this happening so hearing this crazy story from some random lady online was hard to believe. Eventually my mom met with this woman, and they spent quite some time discussing it. She had all the documents from the DNA lookup and the background for it. I don’t recall with DNA company it was but I remember it was a big and well-known name. She did not ask my mom for any money or anything, and didn’t want to intrude in our lives, she just found the story to be crazy, and when she saw there were other distant relative descendants she decided to reach out and share what she had found. My mom apparently was able to confirm her story somehow, but after this it was mostly forgotten about within our family, and that woman has since passed away.

Can anyone point me in a direction where I might be able to find the info about this happening? My sister and I had just discussed how cool it would be to know exactly which “house” and lineage she came from and all that. My mom didn’t get copies of the documents from the woman, and she doesn’t want to do her own DNA thing for privacy reasons, and my sister and I have both decided not to do so either, but my grandpa was traced back to her. His middle name is his grandfathers first name, and he was one of two sons birthed by that French royal baby-turned Norwegian.

Anyways, just thought I’d see if anyone knew where I might be able to look into this? Curiosity has peaked now after just typing this up haha.

Anyways, thanks for reading 🫡

I know that humanity in general has contributed to the development of many things, but which country and its people do we owe most of the world's inventions to?

what's the closest we've come to full world peace? not just every nation collectively fighting one group or unanimously deciding on one thing, but full world peace with no one fighting each other.

Sorry i might sound dumb but i remember doing a project in 6th grade we read a book called “someone named eva” we read it in the classroom and i remember thinking it was a good book and we did projects about them as kids. The thing i still to this day cannot comprehend is why was the hate so extreme to the point he killed so many of them ?? Also history class in hs back then they also mentioned jews were banished from diff countries nd it was never really explained?? So yea i just thought i would ask the historians here

Warring states broke out in both China and Japan, however in medieval western europe, fuedalism was a large part of it

Can anyone run through with me the history or clear up any potential misunderstandings that I have? Thanks!

The US is a relatively young country, but immigration itself obviously isn’t uniquely American. European states, empires, and societies across Asia also experienced large-scale migration, conquest, settlement, and population movement throughout their histories.

What makes the American case different?

Essentially: how exceptional is the American immigration story when compared with other countries, and when did Americans begin thinking of immigration as a defining feature of the nation? I would image that England, France, China also had periods of large immigration early on in their history yet don't embrace this as a cultural identify

So why is the US referred to so commonly as an immigrant nation much more as a bedrock than these other countries?

I am really interested in history, and while I have read lots of history in the past, I want to read way more than I previously have.

Here goes my problem: I reread a lot of sentences. I read lots of British authors, and their sentences seem very complex. Even then, I understand 95% pretty easily. Should I just no reread anything, and just keep going? Also, the British use lots of uncommon words, googling these slows me down as well.

Does anyone kind of skim? I want to absorb each book, and not skim, but I really want to increase the number of books I have read on the subjects I am interested in.

Could mail be sent between enemy nations? Allies? What about between combatants and neutrals, like Germany and Sweden? I know that there were mechanisms for facilitating mail from POWs via the Red Cross, but I'm more interested in the civilian side of things?

Hello! I was wondering if anyone knows where I can find specific information about Prussian uniforms in the 7 years war, specifically drummer uniforms or the uniforms of specific regiments? I’m having a hell of a time finding any good pictures of 7 years war era Prussian drummer uniforms… thanks so much!!! ^^

There is a Russian mathematician (I will not call him a historian, for reasons that will become clear soon) named Anatoly Fomenko who has essentially spent decades writing a series of books in which, from my understanding, he claims to "prove" via mathematics that pretty much all of recorded history has happened within the last 1,000 years. My understanding is that he basically claims that a lot of mythological and historical events that we think occurred at different times were actually the same event (the Trojan War and the Crusades are two events he claims were one and the same). I have not read his books, but based on what I have read about those books, he claims that what we view as history was largely made up by monks during the Renaissance, and that the proofs historians rely on for dating specific historical events are based on circular reasoning.

Of course, Fomkeno's work is highly ideological, and one of it's major goals seems to be to argue that Eastern European and Byzantine civilization was much more important to history than historians claim it was, and in fact this was a major reason his books became so popular in his country, even though in most of the world (including the U.S, where I live) they are obscure in general and brought up only to be rightly debunked. But, while his specific claims may be bogus, I feel like the question as to how confident we can be about specific historical events happening when they did is a legitimate one, especially in the case of events that wouldn't necessarily leave behind archaeological evidence. For instance, how can we have any sort of confidence as to when specific religious beliefs emerged, unless we find like a plaque somewhere that mentions the beliefs and can be dated? The same thing goes for books written throughout history, where it is easy to imagine a book written in say 800 CE, but backdated to 100 CE and attributed to an older author in order to lend it great credibility. Unless we were to find a manuscript that could be carbon-dated, how could we prove when the book was written?

I feel like this is an interesting question, although I understand that when you start doubting everything, history becomes almost impossible to work as a discipline, and at some level there has to be a leap of faith.

Whole story below. Respect the youngling enough to give it a read.

Common sense would say that they are duds at this point, but we are still actively removing perfectly functional explosives all around europe, so I don’t want to fully lean into that either. Any experts here?

In December 1941, 21 year old Viljo Suokas was recovering in a military hospital. He had just been appointed a Knight of the Mannerheim Cross.

Having already served in the Winter War, Suokas had earned a reputation as an exceptionally brave long range patrolman and had spent dozens of days deep behind enemy lines.

Two years later, on October 4, 1943, Suokas was mortally wounded behind enemy lines. His men carried their commander on a stretcher through enemy territory, trying to get him to safety.

On the way, Suokas lost consciousness several times.

The last time he regained consciousness, Suokas raised his eyes to his men and whispered:
"Boys, I cannot go on any longer. Take off your caps and say the Lord's Prayer for me."

The men did as he asked.

At eight in the morning, they buried their commander in a hollow beneath the roots of a fallen pine and mined the area around the grave. Then they set out back toward their own lines.

Suokas's grave was left far from his homeland. His remains were never found.

He was Knight No. 44.

Hi there !

If you could be a fly on the wall any time in history anywhere in the world what would you study and want to hear?
Please choose only two scenarios in any era.

Sorry if the question is too simple, but I wondered that everything we know about human history is known through a historian, writer, letters, etc, but these sources are all biased. What would someone working in the field of history want to observe first hand?

According to Herodotus, the Persian nobleman Otanes who helped overthrow former king Gaumata and install Darius argued for democracy in a debate over the constitution of Iran in 522 BC, the principle of equality before the law and the accountable government. He advocates a complete democracy, on the grounds that under a democratic system "offices of state are exercised by lot".

In that session, Otanes also talked about the disadvantages of monarchy. He notes that democratic rule does not share any of the malice of a tyranny.

Is it me or is that a Greek projection on another culture with a different set of values? Considering how unreliable Herodotus can be, I think thats likely.

But the idea of democracy among Iranian people doesnt seem completely baseless, the wikipedia page "democracy in classical Iran" mentions that the "Zoroaster's Gathas states that in order to bring peace, prosperity, stability, progress and happiness to the living world, people are to select only competent persons. Song 16 is particularly dedicated to "Vohû Khshathra Vairya," literally "Good Domain Worthy-of-Choice." It shows that an ideal government must be an elected one"

The page also says that in the most sacred prayer the Ahunavar, the lord and leader is to be chosen, which according to wikipedia "sets the basis for political and religious democracy as far back as four millennia ago".

and "Regional elected councils are well documented particularly in the Indo-Iranian societies."

Was democratic election of leaders practiced by early Persians, and did Otanes really argue for democratic rule?

Hi all, I've been compiling (for a creative writing project) a chronological timeline of events from the early 1900s (I'm currently over 110 events) that I had not really heard about before but upon researching them I feel they had massive real-world ripples. Most of my social circles don't care to discuss this stuff so my question is am I overstating the importance of this event?

The very first event on my list happened on January 1st 1901, in a half-finished mansion in Topeka, Kansas.

Charles Fox Parham ran the Bethel Bible School. Before leaving on a preaching trip he challenged his students to "comb the Book of Acts" to find the evidence of Holy Spirit baptism. When he returned they told him they found the answer it was "speaking in tongues". On New Year's night, a 30-year old student named Agnes Ozman became the first to do so. According to many religious historians this marks the birth of modern Pentecostalism.

After this the movement almost died immediately, Parham was seen as a local joke and the school closed within a year. Parham kept preaching and eventually opened a new school in Houston in 1905 where William Seymour (a holiness preacher) learned about the movement.

Because of segregation laws in Texas at the time Seymour was forced to listen to the sermons from a hall outside the room. Still he absorbed it all and took the teachings to LA. In LA the first church he preached in locked him out for trying to talk about "speaking in tongues". Seymour moved to preaching in a house and then that grew into the famous Azusa Street Revival. Today the movement has over 600 million followers.

In an ironic twist when Parham visited Azusa he grew offended by the racial mixing and condemned it; which I feel is likely one of the main reasons the movement survived and spread so incredibly fast.

Am I overstating the importance in Topeka as a starting line in this? Is there anything I am missing or that I got wrong in the event or its aftermath?

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Recently, my feed has descended into a conspiracy rabbit hole.

One peculiar thing I couldn’t ignore was the suggestion that there may have been “another side” to World War II—particularly claims about why Hitler persecuted Jews, with some posts mentioning pornography and others focusing on the nature of banks.

There are a lot of different claims and supposed explanations appearing on my feed, and I’m finding it difficult to separate legitimate historical arguments from conspiracy theories and misinformation.

Can anyone help me understand the historical perspective and explain where these claims come from?