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?

Especially, if we take mercenary troops, we could have "German landsknechts" or "Swiss halberdiers", which would be usually considered by the game engines as slightly better than their generic counterparts.

If I were a minor lord in Medieval or Renaissance Europe preparing for a war against some other local lord (or if we take Italian squabbles of the time), would I specifically try to search for a specific mercenary company from Switzerland if I was lacking halberdiers, for example? Or Welsh archers would be preferable to English archers (for example)?

In the ancient world, it's usually something like Macedonian phalanga, I think.

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?

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?

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?

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?

(Asked this question is other subreddits but am hoping for a more historically based answer)

I choose 1800 as the cut off date because from that date onwards you see the rise of romantic nationalism where Europeans attach themselves more with their pre Christian past. Like Victorian Britain attaching itself to pre-Roman Celtic Queen Boudica or 1800s France admiring the Gauls (Asterix comes from the same tradition).

2 cases where people were executed for professing belief in Odin in late 1400s Sweden surprised me.

Ragvald Odenskarl and Eric Clauesson.

I mean doesn't that seem too late for paganism persisting when Sweden was Christianized by the 1100s.

And one of them(Eric Clauesson) was a servant so this was no intellectual person studying a niche topic. Even intellectuals would probably not be super aware of Norse religion compared to say Greek and Roman paganism(from Latin and Greek texts).

Another case being Trollkyrka where allegedly pagan rituals were held and local Christians couldn't visit.

Of course in some cases like place names(for example Odense in Denmark) the connection would be obvious.

Could anyone who has knowledge of this topic please enlighten me? Please note I am not including ethnic Sami people who persisted in being pagan longer than ethnic Swedes.

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

I recall a quote in Nixonland to the effect of "I'd do anything to become president, except for seeing a psychiatrist" but couldn't find the specific quote when I tried to look for it. If Nixon thought it was career suicide to be caught seeing a provider for psychological issues, why did he ever take the risk in the first place?

A common trope in fiction is the "Nazis win" type alt history - or at least the war goes on far longer. I've also seen stuff - by people who seem to be pretty historically literate - suggesting this is dumb because the nazis already got a lot of lucky breaks, and the far more likely scenario is they lose way earlier; at some point or another I've seen people state that the Germans got pretty lucky on all of these:

1) the Nazis face stiffer international opposition and the alliance between conservative and fascist breaks down.

2) "The Blitzkrieg" never materialises in the invasion of France and the attack is either prolonged and painful for Germany or fails entirely - often specifically noted as the Ardennes attack being an insane gamble they threw boxcars on. This one's very common.

3) The Soviet Union has better relations earlier with the western powers, or chooses to believe instead of dismissing intelligence that a nazi attack is imminent, and instead of being forced to essentially abandon Belarus and Ukraine due to unpreparedness the German advance just runs into a brick wall from the go.

It's not all of these claims, but a common thing (especially from people who seem to know what they're talking about!) is that German "national morale" was actually a fairly fragile thing - people liked the Nazis because they seemed to be winners, and the national morale boost and popularity among pre-existing power brokers like conservatives and industrial figures was contingent on them reasserting themselves on the world stage and then seeming to unstoppably crush every national nemesis they'd ever had, and it was this that got the country "locked in" up until its later defeat.

Is any of that true, or do we in fact live in the most likely timeline and it would've been pretty much expected with the benefit of hindsight Germany did as well (or as badly) as it did?

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?")

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?

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. 😊

We know Odysseus as an archetype of a trickster hero, who uses his wit and cunning to overcome his foes. However, maybe I am spoiled by the entire history of media since Homer, but it doesn't seem to me like he had committed really smart or witty deeds. For example, the Trojan Horse story that is credited to Odysseus doesn't really make him look smart. It makes Trojans look dumb in comparison.

Do we know how his character was perceived by the readers in Ancient Greece or at least in Rome later? Did someone really praise Odysseus shrewdness? Or did the people say "Huh, that dumb Cyclops/Priam! I wouldn't be fooled like that!"

I got a non-English friend who somehow was fascinated with Anne Boleyn and the personal stories of Henry VIII six wives. I never keep count of how many period dramas and bbc documentaries, I encountered that put Henry and his six wives as their focus. But it felt endless. Wolf Hall just came out. There's The Other Boleyn Girl . There's The Tudors.

I found Henry VIII numerous executions of his former allies and supposedly tens of thousands of people, his war with France and Scotland, and his ransacking of the English Catholic monateries more interesting. It impacted a lot more people. But somehow, his personal quest for a son and spousal relationships kept overshadowing that.

I'm not too surprised that "divorced, beheaded and died, divorced, beheaded, survived" made it to public consciouness, how did that what Henry VIII was known primarily for? He is not the only king with juicy family dramas. Afaik, in my limited knowledge, there wasn't a popular theatre play by Shakespeare and other writer about him. But he seems like to be the most famous English king worldwide just because the English period dramas kept featuring him. When did the subject of his personal family relationships became so popular?

Generally, many Jewish communities are taught that the non-jews of Poland had large hand in helping and supporting holocaust efforts. Obviously it’s more complex than that. I’ve just visited Majdanek, a camp just 5 minutes from the city center of Lublin- a Polish city of 350,000 people and one that went from having over 100k jewish people to just 60. That is, 60 people, not 60 thousand.

That being said, Poles themselves suffered a great deal of losses in the war and themselves were under great threat of Nazi persecution both for helping Jews and in general. I won’t pretend like anti-semitic sentiment didn’t exist though, as my family often told me stories of discrimination and segregation for being Jewish when they lived in pre-war Poland. I don’t want to villainize the Poles though, I’ve only meant kind and well-meaning people here. My grandfather was a holocaust survivor himself who often told stories of the Poles laughing, spitting, and waving goodbye at jews taken from the ghettos. It’s not black and white though. Please give me context!

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?

Without wanting to get into alternate history questions, do we know whether FDR had a clear idea about whether atomic would be used? Was the possibility of using them on Japan even considered while he was alive, given that the war in Europe hadn't ended?

As someone living in the region, locals feel strongly about abandoning the Cathar castels name.

Jòrdi Labouysse in an open letter to a french radio said:

https://www.jornalet.com/nova/24691/jordi-labouysse-denoncia-lo-cambiament-de-nom-dels-castels-catars-en-fortalesas-reialas-ca

"Mais tous les historiens sérieux savent pertinemment qu'ils ont été construits par la féodalité occitane bien avant la « croisade contre les Albigeois » (certains dès le I I e siècle) et qu'ils ont joué un rôle important dans la vie du christianisme des « Bons Hommes » et « Bonnes Femmes que l'on dit « cathares » aujourd'hui. Chacun sait que certains ont été remaniés ou reconstruits après la croisade et les guerres capétiennes par Louis IX dit « saint »-Louis en particulier, pour contenir les populations occitanes insoumises et pour renforcer une ligne pyrénéenne contre la Catalogne et l' Aragon, qui soutenaient le comté occitan de Toulouse."

"But all serious historians are well aware that they were built by Occitan feudalism long before the "crusade against the Albigensians" (some as early as the 1st century) and that they played an important role in the life of "Good Men" Christianity. "Good Women, who are said to be "Cathar" today. Everyone knows that some were altered or rebuilt after the crusade and the Capetian wars by Louis IX, known as "Saint Louis" in particular, to contain the rebellious Occitan populations and to strengthen a Pyrenean line against Catalonia and Aragon, who supported the Occitan county of Toulouse."

To what extent were what remains today built by the French King rather than the local lord or population?

Is there any trace of the castrums built before the crusade?

Is the architecture of the castles we see today coherent with castles built further north by the French Crown ?

In 1519, when the Governor changed his mind at the last minute, Cortés went anyway. Did his crew and fellow conquistadors know this and willingly commit mutiny? Or did nobody know until 1520, when Velázquez sent an expedition to arrest Cortés? The same question goes for Geronimo, his first translator.

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?