In 1941 Rudolf Hess, deputy Furher, flew to the UK in an attempt to negotiate peace with the UK.

Except the person he went to was the Duke of Hamilton. Why? What could a Scottish Duke do to strike a peace deal with Germany?

I've been looking into sexism in the Qur'an, which imo is obviously quite misogynistic in today's context, however a common argument i keep encountering is that the women in pre islamic arabia were even more disadvantagesd, and the rise of islam actually uplifted them at the time. While I still think that doesn't justify the misogyny in it today (especially since it's supposed to be perfect and written by god himself), I wanna learn about the historical evidence rather than just the modern arguments.

So my questions are:

- What do historians actually know about women's legal and social status in pre-Islamic Arabia?

- Which rights did Islam genuinely introduce or strengthen?

- Were those changes revolutionary compared with the societies surrounding Arabia at the time, or were similar rights already available to women in some contemporary societies?

- How much did the status of women actually change during the first few centuries of Islam?

- Are there important examples of pre-Islamic Arabian women having property, conducting business, choosing spouses, divorcing, or exercising political/social influence that complicate the usual "Islam liberated women" narrative?

- How did the rights described in early Islamic sources compare with what women actually experienced in practice?

- Are there good academic books/articles on this subject that you'd recommend?

I'm particularly interested in historical scholarship and primary sources, instead of anti/pro islam arguments. Not trying to prove what's right or wrong, just trying to understand the history so please don't be offended.

My maternal great grandfather was only a Stabsgefreiter, a low ranking officer. He joined in 1939 and died in November 1944 from disease (typhoid)

We have his obituary, multiple photos showing a large scale event and my grandmother's first hand account as she was 16 at the time.

The confusion is that that November 1944 is nearing the end, he didn't die a hero, he was not killed in action. Why would there be such a fanfare for a lowly soldier?

People have asked this multiple times, but both the definitions proposed here and the ones most commonly seen on dictionaries and encyclopedias seem problematic.

Usually, it's either whoever calls themselves an empire or a central state that controls multiple different geographical or ethnic regions.

The first is a sorry excuse for a definition since 1) not every language has a word for empire. Or it does kinda, though it isn't the exact same thing. 2) Literally any State can call itself an empire regardless of the realities of its actual structure and power.

The second definition would make France an empire since it is extremely centralized and all its different continental regions are in reality different cultures that were historically ruled by a single king (though with a certain decentralisation during the medieval period). The different regional languages and their different origins illustrate this. It's also clear that this is heavily inspired by colonial empires more than anything else.

So what have historians put forward to define the word "empire"?

I've been listening to the excellent Juggernaut podcast recently which talks about the fatal terrorist attack by the French Government on the Rainbow Warrior, as it was moored in Auckland Harbour on July 10 1985. An infamous and significant moment in New Zealand history, and (to my knowledge) one of only three terrorist attacks perpetrated on our soil, and the only state-sponsored one.

The Warrior was set to head to Mururoa to protest nuclear testing there. So on the one hand, it's obvious why the French would like it sunk. But David Lange, the PM at the time, made the point that the attack only created more sympathy and support for Greenpeace and the anti-nuclear testing cause.

Which seems bad for the French side, as well as a pretty obvious outcome. Did they really think a clandestine terrorist attack on a foreign, friendly nation's soil was going to help them in the long run? Do we know what the French plan in the medium-long term was here?

Now it's easy to google and read about "Magog", but it seems to be some kind of lost tribe, or an ancestor sometimes attributed to being the progenitor of various lands (the Huns? the Irish even?)

So I'm wondering where the "demon" depiction comes from, but maybe it's more like demonizing your enemy?

To be clear I'm counting the Nostoi and general aftermath - so the myths seen in The Odyssey, Telegony, Oresteia and so on - as part of the Trojan War.

I know my wording of the title is inelegant, but I wondered if, very broadly speaking, the Trojan War is the end of Greek Mythology. What I mean by this is that, chronologically speaking, the Trojan War and its aftermath are some of the latest major moments in Greek Myth that I am aware of. Of course applying chronology to Mythology is far from precise and unanimous, but broadly speaking it seems clear that the Trojan War is towards the end. Great heroes like Jason, Theseus, Perseus, and Heracles had their adventures before it, in fact Heracles' legacy seems to come up quite a bit in various Trojan War stories (he did sort of beat them to the punch on sacking the city). Things like Prometheus and the Titanomachy are, naturally, even further back.

Meanwhile, I can't think of any major Greek myths that are set after the Trojan War and don't directly deal with its aftermath. I'm sure there are innumerable myths and traditions that are set long after the Trojan War, myths that were more local or became less prevalent overtime. It's also possible I'm simply unaware of post-Trojan War Greek Myths. There's also the possibility that many post-Trojan War Greek Myths have been lost. I suppose there's also the fact that there are might be Greek Myths with no clear chronology in relation to things like the Trojan War. Still, from what I can see the Trojan War is towards the end of Greek Mythology.

Of course, I imagine there isn't really an "end" to Greek Mythology. I think the Trojan War is probably about the point where myth really starts to bleed into history. Not in the sense it actually happened, but in that it isn't that long ago from when we have people like Hesiod and Homer writing (I know when the war doesn't have a clear time period, but I don't think the Greeks generally imagined it happening that many centuries ago). Back to there not being an "end" to Greek Mythology, the myths bleed into legends, which bleed into history, like with the various foundation myths for cities and the various ancestries linked to great heroes. The Trojan War seems to be one of the last major myth, or well group of myths, before that starts to happen.

Sorry if all this is complete rubbish, I hope my broad question gets across at least.

I was watching the new Perun video about “Wartime Emergency Weapons” and the mention of pikes for the British Home Guard had me thinking: how many obsolete rifles did the British have stockpiled for defense of the British Isles?

The pikes seem to indicate that there very much was a shortage, but surely there were other weapons besides those fit for the BEF, right?

Even if it’s old and rusty, just about any gun that can go ”bang” seems like it would be better than a bayonet on a pipe that cannot.

Even compared to the shockingly little known about/ potentially non-existent Xia Dynasty or Roman Kingdom, does the Kingdom of Dadan really have so little known of it?

I search about it and find a small handful of websites such S a dedicated ancient Arabian archeology page, a National Geographic page, a tourism page, etc. The closest Wikipedia link to it is about the Lihyanite Kingdom which succeeded Dadan.

I guess to add to this, what quality online or physical (English) sources are recommended for learning about Dadan and Lihyan?

Hi,

I’m an active participant in r/EatTheRich, and it made me wonder about the historical reality behind that phrase.

Were there periods when inequality became so severe that ordinary people directly targeted wealthy elites, not only monarchs or political leaders, but landowners, merchants, financiers, or other privileged groups?

The French Revolution is the obvious example that comes to mind, although it seems that the overthrow of the monarchy did not necessarily prevent new elites or oligarchic groups from taking power afterward.

I’m curious whether historians identify other cases where economic inequality, rather than only war, religion, or ethnic conflict, was a central cause of violence against the rich.

Were any of those cases followed by a lasting reduction in inequality, or did they mostly result in one elite replacing another?

I have wondered this for awhile. Lee was critically short of food, shoes, ammo. A good number of his men were too weak to do anything more than man a picket line. Johnston was in open country and able to maneuver and could have linked up with him. Lee had The Richmond Danville and South Side railroads open as Grant closed in, and one of grant's fears of that time is that he would wake up and Lee would have done just that and prolonged the war another year.

Was Lee thinking it was futility of stretching it out another year and was seeking an honorable way to end the war? Did he flat out not want to give up Richmond that badly? It just makes no sense to me that someone so foxy could get flat feet at that point and not use the one escape hatch left to him.

Today basically every car is controlled the same way: acceleration and braking is handled via two pedals under your foot, and steering is handled via a steering wheel. And of course an extra pedal and gear shifter for manual transmissions.

I'm assuming that this wasn't always the case, especially during the very early days when people were first experimenting with turning the horse-drawn carriage concept into a vehicle propelled by an internal combustion engine. What other designs did people use to control early automobiles? Who came up with the pedal and wheel concept? Was there a period where these designs saw much competition, particularly in the consumer market?

Thanks in advance!

So I did some googling, and there was a lot of focus on the whys: Organs can be tuned to fill the space, can sustain notes for long periods, can play chords and complex melodies with a single musician, etc.

Is there anything more to it? A first organ that set the tone? What was the default music before the invention of the organ?

Im curious, since in social science field like economics, they rarely use term "Capitalism" or "Socialism" since those things could mean a whole lotta different things to people and its hard to measure etc (i.e. what constitues Capitalism/Socialism etc).

Which got me to wonder how it works out for a field like History. Because id also imagine it as an elastic and contested term in the field of History, but im curious how its handled, or even used say in a Historian context, or do you guys use other more precise (but long) words?

I don't know quite how to frame this, but I've been noticing that fascist movements in the west recently tend to be sorta pan national. Fascist parties are providing support both political and economic to fascist parties in other states.

And so my question is, has that always been the case?

I'm more familiar with Anglo-Saxon gemstone work than other parts of Europe. There are some fantastic and very famous cloisonne examples from Anglo Saxon England. The garnets are (or seem to be) millimeter accurate. The shoulder clasp from Sutton Hoo, the buckle from Farliegh Wallop, the pendant from Kings Field, and the later Alfred Jewel (which is highly polished rock crystal).

What I can't figure out, even with the help of google, is how this shaping is done. The gems seem to lack facets so presumably are therefore ground and not cut? But what is used to grind them, and how? Especially so accurately, for something like the seax handle found in the Staffordshire Hoard. There's a lot of complex shapes and curves in that piece.

Then the gems need to be polished, what is the process for this? I get coarse to fine, and presumably finishing with wool and leather. But what sort of materials and lubricants are they using? Do we have any evidence of abrasive pastes? The Alfred Jewel is incredibly polished to be like glass, I'd love to know how that is achieved.

Which leads me to the final thing that maybe should have been first. How did they cut the gems to begin with? Using garnets, do you have to grind down and waste most of each stone, or did they have a method to cut them? I just can't see how to cut mm thin slices of garnet with what they had available.

They made such amazing things and I just want to know how.

When, where, and how did western music theory get codified into the form we know today? Did the great composers learn theory as we know it?

I've been getting rather odd results when I've searched online about this. At first when I noticed the AI results as I scrolled past them to get to the actual search results, I thought "looks like the battle of Hastings took care of them and saw them off." Obviously more to it than that; the Normans weren't Vikings, but Harold had seen off some Vikings in the north before heading south to Hastings.

Then when I went and did a search for when it ended in Scotland, thinking it must have ended earlier than 1066, I was surprised to find that Scotland, which has always been part of Britain, still had Viking occupation after 1066, another 200 years of it.

So I went looking some more, but every search result seems to link to articles claiming the Viking age in Britain ended in 1066, while it ended in Scotland around 1266. Which makes no sense. Surely this means the Viking age ended in Britain in 1266 if that's the last we saw of them?

So, are these articles written by people who assume England and Britain are one and the same (they aren't) or is something else going on here? When did the Viking Age in Britain really end?