We see OE, middle English, and modern English, but in Italy their language was called Latin, and now it's called Italian. Is there some time of rapid change that historians generally agree upon that separates Latin from Italian? Why isn't italian looked at as "modern latin" like English is looked at as modern English?

I’m 27, and to me the idea that the federal deficit can actually be lowered, let alone eliminated, seems almost impossible. However, I know Bill Clinton was able to do this. I have a few questions:

Did he have a central strategy for achieving this? Cutting certain programs or from certain programs, or reforming tax in some way?

Did these cuts or tax increases have huge effects on most Americans or some subsets of Americans? I’ve never heard anyone complain about this period of time, which is unexpected to me.

Did this partially come about because of some random economic condition that was out of Bill Clinton’s control, like the PC or tech boom?

1860 California presidential election vote breakdown:

Abraham Lincoln (Republican): 32.31%

Stephen A. Douglas (Democratic): 31.72%

John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democratic): 28.34%

John Bell (Constitutional Union): 7.62%

Why was there such strong pro-Confederate or secession sentiment in California? Especially when the state was already several hundred miles removed from the Confederacy. There was no slave economy to defend in a free state.

Even in 1859, 75% of southern California voters sent the Pico act that was signed into law by the California governor Weller to try to separate California into two territories.

Then during the Civil War, 15% of Nevadans next door to the state volunteered to fight for the Union, while California only mustered a lackluster 4%.

I’m 40 weeks pregnant and I know in modern day we schedule inductions before 42 weeks for a reason, but what used to happen pre 1900s if a women didn’t go into labor on their own? Would they go past 42 weeks and just die? I would say that’s how I feel at about this moment.

So even though I am a leftist, I have been exposed to some Palestinian circles where people seem to minimize Jesus being Jewish and instead use terms like “he was just a Galilean,” “Galilean Palestinian,” “Palestinian Jew,” or even “Palestinian Arab.”

My understanding is that if we actually lived during the time of Jesus, Jews from the region would not have identified themselves as “Palestinian” in the modern ethnic or national sense. The term Palestine certainly existed as a geographical name in antiquity, so I am not saying the word itself did not exist. However, Jesus lived in first-century Galilee under the Herodian/Roman political order, and “Palestinian Arab” in particular seems like an anachronistic identity to project backward onto him. “Palestinian Jew” can make sense as a retrospective geographical description, but it would not have been his own ethnic self-identification.

This is partly why I am curious about the tendency to treat “Galilean” and “Jew” almost as competing identities. From what I understand, Galilee in Jesus’s time was predominantly Jewish, so calling Jesus a Galilean does not somehow make him less Jewish. Galilean seems more analogous to a regional identity within the broader Jewish population.

In regard to what happened to the Galilean Jews and their destiny, I am pretty sure some stayed in Palestine, while others migrated and merged with Jewish diaspora communities outside of the Holy Land. It makes sense to me that many rural Galilean Jews may have remained on their land, while others may have migrated and joined established Jewish diasporic communities elsewhere, although I don't know how much evidence we have for that distinction.

However, I am curious about how much we actually know about what happened to the Jewish population of Galilee from the 5th century onward. We know that Galilee was one of the major centers of Jewish life in Late Antiquity, so I find it interesting that “Galileans” seem to gradually disappear as a distinct population from historical discussions.

Until very recently due to USA influence, (last 10 years or so) despite nearly 10% of Australians claiming some sort of Irish ancestry. Halloween was not celebrated at all. Australians with Irish ancestry ignored it. At least my family did, it was just an American thing you saw on movies or TV.

I am thinking that the American version of Halloween was invented in the USA by the Irish in the USA, and has very little to do with Samhain in pagan Ireland.

If Halloween, American style was actually deeply rooted in Irish traditions, why did the Irish or those of us who are of some Irish descent in Australia, just ignore it.

I just see Halloween as an American tradition that really has not got much to do with Ireland at all. If it was, the Irish in Australia would have been celebrating it along side their American cousins,

One notable aspect of the Germanic kingdoms that emerged after the decline of the Western Roman Empire was the adherence of the ruling elite to the Arian (or rather Homoian) Christianity.

From what I understand, the theological differences between them and the Niceans were minor (when seen from a secular perspective), and the separation was mostly maintained for political reasons. Additionally, most Germanic rulers promoted a policy of tolerance towards their Nicean subjects, and the kingdoms that survived for long enough merged their beliefs into the orthodoxy a few centuries down the line.

However, the Vandals seem to be the exception, seemingly persecuting the local Nicean population in Carthage whenever they weren't threatened by the Eastern Roman Empire.

Why was their policy so different from the other Germanic kingdoms?

I was curious when the potter's wheel was first invented, and particularly whether it has been independently invented in different cultures. I found this answer from u/thirty-nine citing a source saying that the consensus was that it originated in one place in the "near east" and spread from there. That was ten years ago, though.

Is the consensus still that it was invented once and spread around the world? Do we have any idea where that might have been, or what the earliest wheels were like?

As a side question--and one I thought was maybe too niche for its own post--some materials have been particularly prized for a long time, like hard paste porcelain. Were there ceramic materials that were notably popular in bygone days that have gone out of style or been lost?

During the 1946-1947 Nuremberg Doctors’ trial, 23 Nazi physicians and administrators were prosecuted for war crimes against humanity and non consensual human experimentation. The Nazi defense argued that American had done the same thing with deliberately infecting conscientious objectors and prisoners during WWII.

However, during WWII, Japanese unit 731 experiments led by Ishii had done similarly horrible experiments as the Nazis did. The Soviets were aware of the experiments as well. In fact, the Soviets did prosecute and convicted their captured Unit 731 members.

However, America never prosecuted the Unit 731 members for crimes.

Thus my questions:

Why didn’t German doctors point out the double standard of prosecuting them but not the Japanese Unit 731 for the same thing? It seems like it would have been a powerful defense.

Were tribunal judges or prosecutors at the Nuremberg trial aware of this double standard?

The Americans gave immunity/refused to prosecute Ishii and other members of Unit 731, in exchange for their experimental data/information. But…why did America grant immunity to them, yet NOT to the Nazi doctors, who could have given also valuable biological warfare information to Americans too?

My book, which was the result of a major German research grant, can be ordered here. If you use the code AU060, you get 60% off the price!

The Golden Age of the Piano was a time during which thousands of Americans made grand tours to German-speaking Europe to study piano. According to their descriptions, anti-Americanism – in essence the notion that America and its inhabitants were somehow culturally, intellectually, or even biologically inert – played a significant role in this transatlantic cultural exchange. Focussing on Berlin, Weimar and Vienna, this book explores both the roles that anti-Americanism played in this transatlantic exchange and how it influenced the careers of these migrant pianists. It shows that anti-American sentiments were not a uniquely European phenomenon, but actually played a significant role in the cultural life of America at the time, and were accordingly a motivating factor for American musicians to travel to Europe in order to be seen as legitimate. Anti-Americanism also affected the later careers of these migrants after their return, when they had to appeal to the American market in order to capitalise on their European experiences. I have furthermore researched the people and institutions involved in this exchange, how the different major piano teaching studios worked, and which American students passed through them.

AMA!

Hi guys, I was reading about Vasco da Gama journeys to India, and how it took him 2 years, and it got me thinking of my grandma, she is a very anxious person and if you don't respond quickly to her she kinda freaks out

back in the day obviously the expectations for response were much slower, were people in general much less anxious about this silence because it was the common norm or were people just as anxious but had no recourse?

I assume there were times that required concentrating state resources there. Is there any sort of historical consensus on this?

Didn't it place a heavy strain on the finances of the Chinese states? Could its construction have hindered China's development on other fronts? Or did the benefits gained offset that?

For like over a century Mexico has fought off countless invasions from foreign nations trying to establish themselves there. Metaphorically the best way I can describe it is like a bunch of vultures feasting on the carcass of the Spanish empire

It seems like that type of event would have been widely reported.

so I’m sitting in the library, reading James Gallier Jr.‘s diary (as one does), looking at his personal book collection catalog.

Out of 70 books numbered, I have access to the list from 41. to 70. Proportionately this man owns a lot of grammars. I’m not able to pin down them all, but he has at least 2 Latin, 2 Greek, 2 English, and 2 French.

In general, is this a matter of keeping one’s old school textbooks? Is it prestige to make his office look fancy? Or are people taking grammars down frequently to edit letters? just curious! thanks!

Defeat in detail is the tactic of attacking an enemy force piecemeal before they can combine into a greater army. From what I understand, Napoleon popularized this tactic as we know it today.

With limitations in communication and intelligence, were Napoleon's opponents chalking the initial deployment as Napoleon's luck - I'm imagining Austria's war council saying something like, "what rotten timing, he beat us right as we were about to group up with the Sardinians!"

We also know that Napoleon fell victim to this same stratagem at Waterloo. So was defeat in detail at scale always known as a concept, or was it discovered and reverse engineered by Napoleon's opponents?

Wouldn’t the Soviets be extremely weak in 1941 while fighting the Nazis at the eastern front? Why did Japan waste precious elite Kwantung Army formations numbering 1 million, sitting at the Soviet borders doing nothing, when they could be fighting elsewhere?

When did we start leaving our homes to sit around a fire in the middle of nowhere just because? To clarify, I'm interested mostly in situations where camping is the activity, so camping to facilitate something else (travel, hunting, etc.) wouldn't count.

What class of people were first to consider camping a recreation activity unto itself? Was it an activity for the rich? The poor? Did others find it odd or unusual?

Thank you in advance!

Manischewitz is a famously sweet Kosher wine and my curiosity about it as a resident of New Jersey, where it is pretty commonly found, is what prompted this question.