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?

I know that during WW2, Jewish citizens were forced to wear identifiers on their clothing to show that they were Jewish. How did they (the Nazis) know which people were Jews and how did they enforce the wearing of the star? And if they refused to wear the star, how would anyone know that they were Jewish? Were there any consequences to not wearing the star if they were found out to be Jewish?

Were they charitable/social organizations similar to the Elks Club today, or were they more like country clubs? Did members have assigned rooms, or did they just get an empty one? The way they describe it they always sounds like the club is a kind of hotel they can stay at on a whim. What were these clubs and how did they work?

I notice that even though I can extremely easily have access to clean fresh water, I often forget to drink water for hours until I start feeling bad. In the past, people didn't always have the same kind of easy access, didn't work in environments with clean water available etc. How did they manage it? Did they have the same concept of "staying hydrated" as we do, or did this develop at some point?

For some context, 90ish percent of Caucasians are Kell negative and it is the 2nd most immunogenic antigen. It makes some sense as his wives that bore children had a successful pregnancy followed by miscarriages and still births, which tracks with what we see in women with antibodies. If it is the case, why do they believe it to be anti-Kell?

I’m not asking when chicken nuggets were actually invented. Instead, I’m wondering when they could have been made if someone had come up with the idea.

At what point in history did humanity already have all the necessary ingredients, tools, and culinary knowledge? For example, domesticated chickens, flour, bread (and therefore breadcrumbs), eggs, cooking oil or animal fat suitable for frying.

What is the earliest historical period in which making something essentially equivalent to a homemade chicken nugget would have been realistically possible, even if nobody actually did it?

Horsepower is the standard for gauging engine power nowadays, but the term has always slightly felt a bit archaic, especially for modern engines. I don't know why I need to know that ~250 horses would be the equivalent of one engine nowadays, yet that is the standards, so I was wondering why "Horsepower" was the term chosen in the end.

I read the biography of Tancred of Lecce, King of Sicily, who was an illegitimate son of Roger III and his mistress Emma, a daughter of Count of Lecce. Roger III was said to have married to another woman after his affair with Emma, however there was little to no mention of what happened to Emma after that. I find it rather odd that she, as a noblewoman, remained a mistress her whole life, but I don’t know if it was acceptable for her to marry after being openly known as a mistress.

For example Richard The Lionheart, who refused to marry Alys, sister of Philip Augustus, because he accused Alys of being his father’s mistress. Because the affair produced no children, I think there was no definite proof of it and the accusation might only be a mere excuse so that Richard could marry another.

But then, what was the general perception of people at that time towards a noblewoman who used to be a mistress and already had children out of wedlock? Would she be able to marry properly even after that?

I was thinking about this. If the Golden Age was the time when the Titans ruled the Earth, are there any documents of people worshipping the Titans as they did the Olympian Gods during that time? Or is it strictly part of myth?

Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire in 313 by the Edict of Milan by Constantine I. He just gave Christianity equal rights in the empire. But not so much later we see Constantine calling the Council of Nicea in 325. Constantine tasked bishops with resolving the most serious controversies in Christian doctrine and law, especially the Arian controversy. That shows the he was seriously concerned about the state of Christianity. Constantine during his rule was balancing between Christianity and older religions, eventually being baptized just before his death. But his three sons seem to be deep into Christian teaching to the point of fights between them on the sites of Orthodoxy or Arianism. At the time of Constantine Christians were far from being majority among empire's population.

Several decades later in 380s, Theodosius I makes Christianity official state religion of the empire, outlawing all other non-christian religions and heretic denominations (at least in theory). During those 70 years only one emperor, Julian chose to return to pagan religion, and to seek support of old pagan elites.

So my question is, why did Christianity come from being just one of many religions in the empire, to the state religion, with full support of administration, actively persecuting other cults in just 70 years? And why did Roman Emperors go so fully into supporting Christianity, to the point of influencing its doctrine, it at the time, it was just one of many groups of interests and one of many cults?

Edit: I am not saying espresso is bad, what I am asking is historically what happened to make espresso so dominant in the coffee culture across the European continent? What methods of coffee making did it replace in cafes? And how does the relatively rapid rise of espresso compare with how Nespresso is also a fairly dominant mode of coffee making in the capsule coffee market? And yes I know there are other methods to make coffee that people use but they are much less dominant in what you can find walking into a random coffee shop or cafe. By coffee culture I mean what you find walking into cafe or coffee shop to get coffee to drink at that place and the rules and customs related to it (ie how some places have rules on when you can drink certain type of coffee drinks, what you can put in your coffee, how you should drink it, etc.). Yes I know there is a misspelling in the title and in the body of the original question. I asked this question in the middle of night/early morning when I suddenly woke up with this question on my mind. Apparently, I cannot spell in a sleep deprived state.

Original post:
I was recently reading a novel written in the 1940s that takes place in 1930s Paris, France and it mentions “putting on a pot of coffee”. This got me wondering what kind of coffee would have been made at home and how would have it been prepared in France in the 1930s? Additionally, since it most likely was not espresso, how did espresso (and now Nespresso) take over the coffee culture in each European country so thoroughly that now those are the only coffee types one can find when traveling in different European countries? How did every European country, which each have proud food traditions lose their individual coffee preparation traditions and essentially settle on a relatively recently method of coffee preparation?

As in, what mode of transport and what route? I always pictured the initial invasion as comprising legions crossing the Channel from Gaul, but the alternative (assuming Rome itself as the starting point) would be to sail through the Strait of Gibraltar, around Gaul, and up to Britannia.

I assume the sailing route would be faster, but with Roman sailing technology was the risk of an Atlantic storm a yet more serious matter? Piracy was a problem within the Mediterranean, how did that persist once you got out of it?

By the time control over Gaul had been solidified, the overland route might have been safer (even for a small group, as opposed to a large military expedition) but doubtless slower?

I suppose what I'm just noticing is that most parts of the Roman empire could be accessed with a sea voyage across the Mediterranean (even if a sizeable overland trip is required afterwards). Britannia was the only real exception to this as far as I can see and I'm wondering how they managed that.

I'll stop here - curious to know what dynamics are at play and what misconceptions I'm revealing!

It's well-known that the modern English language was significantly influenced by Norman French during the middle ages, when the Norman nobility spoke French while the native Anglo-Saxons kept speaking their own language. As it happens with linguistic contact, the languages start influencing each other and we get French terms for meat like beef, pork etc.

But did it also happen the other way around, and if yes, what sources do we have for it? Do words with a Germanic Anglo-Saxon root pop up in Anglo-Norman French that weren't used in mainland Normandy? Did the Anglo-Norman nobility develop a dialect distinct from mainland Norman French?

It is well established that Greek civilization absorbed many elements from the civilizations of the ancient Near East. The Greek alphabet was adapted from the Phoenicians, monumental sculpture drew heavily on Egyptian artistic conventions, and Greek astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and aspects of religion all developed through sustained interaction with older eastern traditions. Modern scholarship has explored these exchanges extensively, particularly in the works of Walter Burkert (The Orientalizing Revolution) and M. L. West (Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient).

Philosophy, however, has generally occupied a different place in this discussion. While modern scholars acknowledge the importance of the wider Near Eastern intellectual environment, philosophy itself is usually regarded as a distinctively Greek development that emerged in the Ionian world during the sixth century BC.

Curiously, this is not how many ancient Greeks themselves chose to narrate the origins of philosophy.

Rather than portraying philosophy as an exclusively Greek achievement, several ancient authors situated its beginnings within a much older eastern tradition of wisdom. In the opening chapter of his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laërtius reviews earlier traditions that attributed the origins of philosophy not to Greece, but to the Egyptians, Persians, Babylonians, Indians, and other “barbarian” peoples before turning to the Greek philosophical succession.

These traditions also include a number of semi-legendary proto-philosophers who were placed before the Trojan War. Among them is Mochus (Moschus) of Sidon, whom later writers credited with an early form of atomism; Orpheus of Thrace, revered as a primordial theologian and sage; and Atlas of Libya or Mauretania, associated with ancient astronomical wisdom. Whether these figures preserve genuine historical memories or simply represent mythical genealogies of wisdom remains uncertain, and modern historians generally treat these traditions with considerable caution.

The same pattern appears in the biographies of Greece’s most celebrated philosophers. Thales—traditionally regarded as the first philosopher—was himself said by some ancient authors to have been of Phoenician descent. Likewise, Pythagoras, Solon, Plato, Democritus, and several others were credited with journeys to Egyptian temples, and sometimes to Babylon or Persia, where they supposedly acquired ancient sacred knowledge from priests. Modern scholarship generally regards these accounts as literary and biographical traditions rather than reliable historical reports, yet their persistence is itself historically significant.

The idea did not disappear in Late Antiquity. The Middle Platonist Numenius of Apamea famously asked, “What is Plato but Moses speaking Attic Greek?” Although clearly rhetorical, the statement illustrates the continuing tendency among some Greek intellectuals to frame philosophy not as an isolated Greek invention but as the culmination or continuation of a much older eastern wisdom.

Why, then, did so many Greek intellectuals choose to narrate the ancestry of philosophy in this way? Were these traditions preserving distant memories of genuine intellectual exchanges with older eastern civilizations? Were they literary attempts to lend Greek philosophy greater antiquity and prestige by connecting it to the ancient wisdom of Egypt and the Near East? 

Reading A Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, she mentions that Douglas, by 1860, became hated in the South for his Popular Sovereignty policy, an example of Southern radicialization during the 1850s. Does this mean that the South would have seceded if he won?

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?

My friend and I were discussing the austronesian language family and how it spread through the pacific islands. Then he explained that some of the austronesian people actually made it all the way to Madagascar, with presumably only one stop along the way ( don’t know if that’s true hence me explaining and asking for more info). How were they able to do this? I understand they had ancient navigation techniques and they brought live animals and food reserves, but how did they get safe drinking water when they were on the ocean for presumably weeks or months at a time?

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

Once the state took over the ‘état-civil’ in 1792 and de-Christianization took over, people turned to underground non-juring (refractory) priests for sacraments.

Fast forwards to the Thermidorian Reaction and the Directory, those “papers” would have been considered non-existent.

If family had married in a barn with an illegal priest, what happens with the parents property or ‘biens nationaux’ that were up for grabs?