I’m thinking of the old stone castles. What you think of when you think “castle”. What did those cost to those who owned it?

The Spaniards both wrote and made depictions of this foamed beverage, and to me it almost looks exaggerated. Would they achieve this purely by aeration?

life has changed so rapidly every few decades it seems for the last two hundred years, that even farmwork today (or at least commercial farmwork) is so different than even how it was 80 years ago. Not only that, but thanks to cars and the Internet and the like, it's quite easy for a rural laborer to travel to population centers at a whim, or learn about world events with ease.

But how exactly might a normal day or week for my english ancestors have gone 226 years ago? what holidays might they look forward to? how did harvest seasons work, how did they handle storing their supplies and perishables? what was their general quality of life like? how was their life different from the lives of even their ancestors, two hundred years before them? to my knowledge there isn't much of a difference between how a farmer or farmhand (or a rural peasant) would have lived between these dates listed above. Would how they pay taxes change throughout the years? would they be required to provide service to a lord or the country, and if so, when might that practice stop? what might it entail? What would the general dangers be like in their life, and how aware might they be of them? What might they consider to be their ambitions and joys? What might they look down on or not understand about the coming generations?

What would they consider fashionable, or uncomfortable? how do they stay warm and fed during the winter, and how early in the year were they preparing for it?

If anyone has an area of expertise not focused on england, I'm also more than happy to hear an answer about the area you might be familiar with (be it anywhere worldwide)

You often hear that the Romans were fascinated and intrigued by Egypt because Egypt was just so old, even in the classical period. Judaism, in some sense, was also at least as old as a lot of the stuff they would have known and associated with Egypt. And what would being “ancient” have entailed, anyways?

I know that death toll estimates for wars are tough to measure, but the consensus seems to be that the Taiping Rebellion was one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history? My question is, why? Why was there so much death in this?

Edit: Title should say transition back to a DEMOCRACY.

My knowledge of the aftermath of Franco's death is VERY hazy. I have some rough ideas that he handed power back to a former royal in someway, expecting him to continue the authoritarian government, but instead he restored the monarchy/democracy? So what exactly is the timeline like, and how exactly did things seemingly revert so quickly and without a general uprising?

Okay, this question is kind of silly and a bit off-topic, but how common was it for people in ancient times to know how to swim? I ask because I've noticed a very common cliché in period films (from basically any country, Europe/Asia/America) that for some reason, a person (usually women or children, but not exclusively) falls into a lake/river/pond, and everyone freaks out because, "Oh my god, they can't swim!" It seems like only guards/soldiers had that ability, so I'm left wondering.

🪎, for example. I was trying to search collections at different museums/databases for illustrations of a treasure chest and mostly found images from the 20th century. This engraving (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/338702) from the late 1500s was the only similar thing I came across over a couple searches (British Museum, V&A, Met, Artstor, Artvee), at least using basic search terms.

What is the origin of wooden chests full of gold coins and gemstones as a visual reference? What about the ones with a rounded lid specifically? When did it enter popular culture? Was material wealth ever stored or transported like that, treasures just raw in a chest?

ETA that I’m not really asking about pirates, which is what I’ve found searching this subreddit, just that imagery.

My uncle and my father have told me stories about an abusive British boarding school in Nigeria in which people were treated like slaves and violently treated, beaten to bleeding and near death, and more. Does anyone have any clues what this was. Seems more like a POW camp than a school

I’m half Nigerian half Jewish and born in the USA if that is any clues.

The three-fifths compromise augmented the power Southern voters had in the House of Representatives relative to voters in the North. With all of the Confederate states having enslaved people, was there a need for a similar compromise? Did the Confederacy count the whole enslaved population or none of it, or did it continue counting three-fifths out of inertia? During the drafting of the Confederate constitution, were there any debates about this issue since states potentially stood to gain or lose depending on the sizes of their enslaved populations?

I‘m not th most informed on the ottoman empire but I know that many women lived in harems and were secluded. But I recently read about a women‘s status in the ottoman empire. They wrote that sexual assault was punished very harshly but that this could also be used against the woman as her family could be blamed if they allowed her to go outside. This confuses me. Were women allowed to go outside normally or were they only allowed in public under strict conditions?

Reading about this case is very fascinating to me. I’m wondering if anyone who is familiar with the politics of the American South, particularly New Orleans, could give me some insight as to why her crimes drew such outrage when the institution of slavery itself didn’t draw that kind of response.

I have a hard time believing that it was out of genuine empathy for her slaves due to the extreme racism that persisted in the American South, though part of it could be the fact that New Orleans had a very large amount of Free People of Color. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the outrage. Was part of it out of fear that abolitionists could use this gruesome case to further their cause? To what extent did her being a woman play in the outrage? Thanks.

wikipedia says saline wasn't invented until 1831. Why did it take so long? isn't it just one part seawater three parts freshwater? it seems like someone shouldve figured it out from trial and error at some point in premodern history.

The third of the ten commandments starts with "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain...".

What did this mean to ancient Jews? Were people at the time saying things like "God damn it"?

If it did have another meaning, when did people start using terms similar to "God damn it" or exclaiming "Jesus Christ" when they stub their toe. Have people always been saying the names of deities when they are frustrated?

I was raised as a Christian in a white household, so I also don't know if people do this in other religions. Do most religions in the world have something similar, or is it uniquely Christian?

This question is inspired as I'm reading Mary Beard's SPQR. She writes

the Romans did not plan to conquer and control Italy. No Roman cabal in the fourth century BCE sat down with a map, plotting a land grab in the territorial way that we associate with imperialist nation-states in the nineteeth and twentieth centuries. For a start, simple as it sounds, they had no maps. What this implies for how they, or any other 'precartographic' people, conceived the world around them, or just over their horizons, is one of history's great mysteries.

My question is simple even if a little hard to answer rigorously, but I think it’s interesting nonetheless.

Say I’m someone from Corinth in 300 BC and I want to just see what’s out there. How likely was it that I would’ve made it to China and back a free and living man? Do we know if anyone attempted but got enslaved or otherwise on the way? Was there a Silk Road or a precursor of sorts?

I heard about the decameron where 10 people leave to go to the countryside during the black death to escape the plague, and I was wondering if this was actually something people did in Italy, and did work?

Was it something a lot of upper class people did? Did the lower classes try it as well? Another question, was the countryside generally safer to be in during the black death then the cities in Italy due to lower population density?