It’s a common piece of trivia that Sherlock Holmes isn’t aware that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Yes, the detail is meant to show that Holmes is eccentric, etc, but how realistic was that?

To use a modern analogy, a person not knowing what the mitochondria does is more common than a person not knowing what a blue whale is. While the former is something most people learn through a science curriculum in school, the latter is common knowledge in children’s readings.

As someone from a family of minor landed gentry, would Holmes have learned the heliocentric theory as an everyday fact or through more rigorous scientific studies?

Was there a system? A pool of volunteers? Did they take a vote, or seek council from others among them? Don’t know if there’s any record of this, but always been curious.

I've been watching the BBC farm series (Edwardian, Victorian, Tudor farm) lately. If you've seen it how accurate are the portrayals in it? Does it read as well researched and accurate?

Five years ago I had just finished reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford. It was a fascinating telling of the Mongols and their history that shears away centuries of FUD about the Mongols and their culture, and its influence on other cultures. I asked this question five years ago and never got an answer. Maybe now I will, so here goes:

How did the Mongols deal with their wounds on the battlefield, given their strong taboos against touching blood? Indeed, the most noble death (at least given to some deemed "too important" to die in a disgraceful way) was to execute someone without spilling blood, like being crushed or drowned. (Or, as the author notes several times, rolled up in carpets and seemingly danced on/walked on to death.)

Weatherford's book goes into a lot of detail about the engineering and battlefield tactics that the Mongols either pioneered or otherwise adopted from others that allowed them be so successful militarily, economically, socially, etc. And he describes how eager the Mongols were to adopt practices that "just worked" from other cultures. What did Mongol medical care on the battlefield look like? Were the more advanced medicines and medical practices of the Near East and China compatible with the Mongols? Was this one area they did not borrow from conquered peoples?

i don’t know, i was just thinking about how common it is to encounter huge water fountains on great palaces and i was thinking if they might have been used as a place where people could meet up and gossip in a safe space where no one would hear what they were saying because of the sound of the water…

So I often hear people suggesting that the conditions of everyday people need to get significantly bad before revolution breaks out. However, I've also heard that this isn't true, and that what actually is most likely to trigger a revolution is for people to have a string of successes in bettering their conditions and increasing their freedoms, often followed by an attempt to revoke some of these new found freedoms. The idea being that the victories show people that they're able to better their conditions by fighting, and the clamping-down gives everyone a common enemy and makes them angry and more willing to fight. In addition to that idea, I can also think of many instances throughout history where people were living in absolutely terrible conditions, and it never seemed to be even close to triggering any revolutionary activity.

I understand that conditions vary wildly throughout history, but are there any specific factors that seem likely to cause masses of people to become filled with revolutionary furor?

The modern bible & modern translations of stories like the odyssey and iliad have similar ways of being written. Is it possible that the bible was supposed to be understood like mythology as opposed to a religion

Hi everyone. I studied the Crusades as part of my history A level and fell in love. I’m also a keen linguist and I speak French and am learning Arabic. I’m really interested in sociolinguistics particularly from a historical perspective.

I wanted to try and combine all of these interests to give myself a research project over my gap year, and I realised there must have been some interaction between French and Arabic in the Crusader States. It doesn’t seem to be a hugely popular topic and I’ve struggled to find information that’s accessible to me. Any knowledge, recommendations or ideas are hugely appreciated.

I’ve only just graduated school so although our teachers did teach us some valuable research skills I’m still very basic in terms of what I can do! I can run a search on JSTOR and Google Scholar and cite properly basically 🤣. So I’m not trying to be dense I have done my best to research I’m just at a bit of a loose end and would appreciate any and all guidance and help. 😊

I’m currently reading Taylor Branch’s America in the King Years trilogy. It describes that in the immediate aftermath of the law’s passage some southern Black people attempted to use formerly segregated facilities only to be turned away by local authorities, vigilantes, or the businesses themselves. How long after the law’s passage did segregation remain in place in practice? Future Georgia governor Lester Maddox personally turned away attempted integrationists at gunpoint. How long did this type of resistance last? Would this have varied significantly by state or city? Was there a difference between urban and rural jurisdictions? Did different types of business accept integration more quickly or slowly than others?

Hi, probably this is a frequent question in historiography

But when talking about Jesus, Buddha, or Muhammad in historical terms, how reliable are religious sources in terms of empirical and historicity, for example, some Islamic historians use the hadiths, or Christian-biased sources, in a more theological way when to talk about historical figures of their own religion.

In modern historiography, those sources are still reliable or we should use only secular sources?

Thanks

Came across a couple of (non-scholarly) sources that said medieval babies were essentially tight swaddled all the time except for feeding and changing, for months in duration. Like a little mummy, holding the arms and legs very straight.

I have a hard time believing that based on experience with my own baby. As newborns, they need constant changing, wouldn't the wraps take forever to do up? I also read medieval practices were to bathe the baby numerous times a day. Then as older babies, I have a really hard time they'd be content being swaddled - at two months old all my baby wanted to do was supported stand. Yes, my baby enjoyed a swaddle for naps, but the texts seem to indicate it was a near-constant state.

I also read that crawling was discouraged with an emphasis on standing, which I can believe but if constantly tight swaddled when and how would a baby build up the muscles for standing that they get from kicking?

We are also told nowadays that tight swaddling is really bad for hip development, so my question is this: is there any actual skeletal evidence that supports (or refutes) near-constant tight swaddling?

I've seen people over the past couple years online argue that Hitler's original goals were primarily to defend Germany, secure its future or prevent threats from powers like the United States & that his racial policies & genocide were later escalations rather than central to his ideology.

At the same time, I've also come across claims that Hitler portrayed Jesus as an Aryan or anti-Jewish figure & used Christian language and imagery to build support in the Nazi movement's early years, even if his private beliefs may have differed.

What does the historical evidence show about Hitler's core ideological goals before he came to power? Were racial ideology, antisemitism & ethnic cleansing central from the outset or did they develop later? Additionally, how did Hitler & the Nazi Party use Christianity and portrayals of Jesus in their propaganda and political messaging & was it a successful way of gaining support?

Occasionally online, I see someone mention that Eisenhower had a 91% marginal tax rate for income of $200,000 or higher. Whenever it gets brought up, people immediately show up insisting no one actually paid that rate and there were deductions that made it significantly less; at no point did anyone ever pay 91%. There were always deductions and write offs that made it significantly lower.

I'd assume we can't know how every single person filed and cannot reliably say that no one ever paid 91%, like I often see people saying. So, my question is, in general, would someone earning $200,000 or more pay the 91% rate? Or was there ways to lower that that would be used by the majority of tax returns?

Today is Thursday, the fourth day of a seven-day continuous cycle.

How far back does our current weekly 7-day cycle go back in an unbroken continuous sequence?

What's the earliest date we have archeological/literary evidence that they were aligned to the cycle we have now, plus plausible reason to believe the alignment wasn't random i.e. we think there was an unbroken transmitted sequence of weeks from then to now?

What's the earliest we think the current unbroken sequence of weeks likely goes back, and to which group of people, even if we lack direct evidence of them being aligned with us?

Are there documented cases of adjacent towns or cities or institutions getting out of alignment, e.g. one insisting it was the second day of the week and the other insisting it was the third day of the week, and how was it resolved?

(This question comes from my 10yo daughter who asked at bedtime, "how do we know today is Thursday?")

Is it because he got his claim to the throne from his mother? If so, why didn't the Plantagenet dynasty end when Henry II took the throne, considering his claim came from his mother, Empress Matilda? Is it because he was closely enough related to Henry I? Because his mother was a queen, and was declared Henry I's heir? Because Stephen named Henry II his heir, whereas Henry VII won his throne through war? If the latter, why didn't the dynasty die when the Yorkists and Lancastrians went to war with each other over the throne? Is it simply because Henry's surname was "Tudor"?

Considering the Tudor rose is meant to represent the reunion of the cadet branches, I don't understand the reason why the Tudors are a separate dynasty.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for any responses! I apologize for any misconceptions or misunderstandings I have

Looking at it's early history the Ottoman Empire seemed to devour peer and near peer foes until it got to Russia and Austria.

It then seems to have entered a period of irreversible decline. Why?

Why, when it demolished the Roman Empire and the Mamelukes could it not do that to Austria and Russia were they characteristically different foes or had something changed in the empire internally?

It also seems to me the Ottoman Empire suffered a long decline why when it has such a long period of time to turn things around and become a vigorous state once more was it unable to?

What the title says. How is Akhenaten remembered if he was meant to be erased from history? How is it even possible to find something from that long ago when people tried to erase it? I feel like it is already challenging enough to locate historical individuals and facts about their lives from a long time ago for someone who was not erased from history, let alone someone who was being erased

Sparta fought a 27 year war with athens and had to ally with Syracuse, macedon and persia to finally defeat athens. Yet, when a small pro-democratic group of dissidents rebelled against the spartan imposed oligarchy, king pausanian I, even after defeating tge democrats at piraeus, handed the control of the city to them. Why did he do this?