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I understand that a society progresses and so death is viewed less and less favorably, but how come there was no ‘cultural shock’ in the USA after WW2’s end despite having 10x the casualties. Was it because America was attacked first in WW2 whilst in Vietnam it was interfering in a foreign conflict that grew more unpopular?

Chinese empire was as big as Rome, and lasted several times longer. There were some rulers, who were tyrannical (Empress Cixi) but they respected the traditions way more, and didn't act half as crazy as several Roman emperors. The only crazy one I seem to remember was the first one actually Qin Shi Huang, who has been theorized to become to have been driven mad by mercury poisoning. Why didn't Chinese emperors go mad ?

Yes I'm showing my age, since I was far too young to remember, but how did Putin react to 9/11? And was there any indication that he knew about the attacks before they happened? Or at least had some clues that some thing big was going to happen before it happened?

Because when Catholicism had almost complete control of Christianity, they controlled the theological narrative and all protestant thought comes from Catholic thought. The first protestants originally grew up in an entirely Catholic world and other early forms of Christianity that did have different views had been obliviated. So all there was was Catholic thought which was just implicit within life and was something you would never even think to question. For example, trinitarianism is not mentioned as a doctrine anywhere in the Bible but it was adopted by Catholicism and subsequently by Protestants, and that's just one of probably many examples. So if practically all early forms of Christianity other than Catholicism were lost making Catholicism the only major survivor, and then protestantism was a tangent from Catholic thought, is it fair to say that, although Protestants like to interpret the book in their own ways, they are ultimately descended from Catholicism since they inherit much of the theology, other non Catholic forms of theology being lost to time?

I’ve been reading A Gentlemen In Moscow by Amor Towles lately, and during a scene in the middle of the book a character brings up the fact that, despite the fact that conditions for the working class were terrible during the Great Depression, there was no notable push for socialism or revolution against capitalism during that time. This observation was made by a Soviet communist, of course, so you can imagine what his explanation was, but I still find that question interesting. From what I’ve read, revolutions, from the American revolution to the French Revolution, the Soviet Revolution, etc. come about in times when the lower classes are left in terrible conditions and the excesses of the ruling class and failures of their rule become too obvious to ignore. That was certainly the case during the Great Depression, and at the time socialist rhetoric had definitely been disseminated throughout the world and America had yet to go to war with the USSR and the general idea of communism. So why was wasn’t there a major push in America towards socialism during the Great Depression? I’m very interesting in hearing some informed opinions on this and getting a better sense of the picture.

Edit: crossed out the American Revolution because it doesn’t quite fit the way I described revolutions like the others I mentioned. There’s a whole conversation to be had about that, but I don’t want to get bogged down on that in this thread.

After Constantine The Great moved the capital of the Empire from Rome to Constantinople, and started pushing Christianity to "mainstream religion", I was wondering how and why ultimately bishop of Rome became "the pope" and leader of Christianity (before the East-West schism) and not the bishop of Constantinople – new, true and more powerful capital of Empire. A lot of emperors after Constantine didn't even visit Rome during their rule (and then only a couple of times during their reign), so it seems weird to me that a bishop of far away ex-capital could accumulate more real-world and spiritual power than bishops in the capital of Empire, close to Christian emperors.

here's some of the list from these specifically caught my attention.
1572: Christian Gudson, executed for biting off her husband’s finger
27th April 1601: For hanging a picture of the king and queen from a nail on the gibbet (to keep it off the ground), Archibald Cornwall hanged, gibbetted, and burnt.
13th May 1572: Two men and a woman hanged for bringing leeks and salt into Edinburgh without permission

what would cause the law to decided to execute people for bringing leeks and salt?

During the first scene of first episode of netflix show 3 body problem it depicts an insane amount of mass anti-intellectualism at year 1966 where an university professor is brutalized and killed in front of a roaring crowd because he doesn't outright deny the existence of "Big Bang Theory". The reason he gets brutalized is because the big bang theory "leaves holes that can be filled with god". He never asserts big bang happened, he never asserts god exists.

I know universities were closed for a couple years and i know there were persecuted scientist in that era, but i also know they tested missiles, nuclear bombs and participated in space race in that same time period. So depiction of this amount of anti-intellectualism just didnt seem honest to me.

So my question is are there verifiable accounts of persecution in this level of insanity happening? What are some examples? Thanks in advance for your time.

Why wouldn’t a country as developed as China or any Asian country for that, sail across the pacific? Is it possible they did before European explorers?

People put a lot of time and effort into answering questions here, so I'm curious what they think about .

At present, the American president is probably one of the busiest people on the planet with intensive time management to fit in all the duties and commitments every day. Yes, in HW Brands' biography of Grant, there is this portion where Grant says that the President is only truly busy when Congress is in session and the rest of the year is kind of empty, barring emergencies of course. And so he would often leave the capital after Congressional sessions were over.

So my question is, approximately when, from Grant's presidency in the 1870s to American presidents becoming "leaders of the free world" in the 1950s, did the presidency transition into being a very busy job?

My own guess would be FDR's presidency when the New Deal vastly increased the duties of the executive. But I would like an expert opinion.

From what I remember, it seems most people, if not all, were surprised. But were there people who saw it coming? Did anyone predict it's arrival?

Basically what it says above. There are sources which indicate India knew the use of saltpetre as early as Kautilyan times (3-4th century BCE). Some Arab records indicate that they received knowledge on gunpowder manufacture from India, and Timur even attests to being attacked by 'crackers and rockets' when he invaded India. On the metallurgical side of things, India had advanced iron and steel works, including knowledge of techniques like crucible steel. They also had a deep artisanal culture with a demonstrable talent for fine work. Despite having all the ingredients, how come they never managed to get a handle on directed gunpowder weapons beyond rockets, when seemingly less advanced cultures managed to take the same inventive building blocks and quickly develop cannons and later handheld matchlocks and other weapons? Does it have something to do with the martial and/or imperialist leanings of cultures like Muslim Arabs and Europeans?

Is there any historical or personal reason as to why Hitler hated Eastern Europeans who were mainly slavs but was reluctant in causing casualties in England?

I'm wondering about situations where a man would be paying for a woman's housing and upkeep but he wasn't around most of the time. Specifically when she would have been paid enough through this that she wouldn't need another job to support herself. Would she have been allowed to participate in polite society and regular social functions? Or would her social status have meant she was excluded? Would she typically have done her own household chores? Or would she have been able to afford a servant?

I'd also love to know when this type of arrangement was the most common. I'm under the impression that this occurred mostly in the 19th century, but was this common before and after that time? I understand that in different forms this has occurred throughout much of history and has continued to the present day, but my understanding is that there was a point where this practice was a more normalized part of the social fabric.

Today:

Welcome to this week's instalment of ' Sunday Digest (formerly the Day of Reflection). Nobody can read all the questions and answers that are posted here, so in this thread we invite you to share anything you'd like to highlight from the last week - an interesting discussion, an informative answer, an insightful question that was overlooked, or anything else.

I'm sure most of you know about Mansa Musa, the 14th century ruler of the Mali Empire, and how he was really, really rich. A large part of that wealth was from gold and ivory extraction, valuable for obvious reasons, but he also made a killing off of the salt trade. Now I have never seen salt rings or necklaces, so I doubt that they were used for jewellery or other status symbols like the former two, and salt is not particularly rare to my knowledge either, and I can't see any way that sending caravans from Timbuktu to Cairo could possibly be easier than local salt production. Yet this has funded many huge historical merchant empires. What made this salt in such high demand and low supply that it produced some of the richest rulers of the pre-industrial era?

I've seen lots of people say that muskets were inaccurate, but sometimes I see people say that musketeers were just really bad at aiming. Were muskets really that inaccurate as people say?

In 1971 the southern Baptist convention passed a resolution to allow abortion after rape, incest, foetal deformation, or physical/mental harm to the mother.

At the time of Roe v Wade James Dobson said the bible is silent on the matter apart from to say it's possible to interpret it to say a foetus is not a human.

What happened?

From what I understand, some of the American soldiers in WW2 were fresh recruits. Jokingly described as never having left their parents farm and they only knew a life of farming and leisure. Then they got recruited/drafted, and for the first time, got to visit another country, for better or worse.

The question I have, as weird as this may be, is how these men reacted to being in a foreign country for the first time, specifically, the tropics? What were their experiences like? Were they in awe of the extremely lush vegetation? Did they climb up and eat and drink coconuts? Were they annoyed by the mosquitoes? The bugs? The deadly wildlife (snakes, spiders) etc? Do you think, save for the battles, their visit to the tropics would've left a positive impression on them?

I've always been curious of what the impressions of the soldiers on the countries their visiting must've been, and I wanted to know if there were diaries or excerpts of soldiers detailing their experiences in the tropics.

"Struggle" sounds much more pathetic than alternate translations such as "battle", "fight", "war", etc that various German speakers have told me are more accurate. Maybe there's a more accurate word that I haven't been told, too.

Was this someone related to publishing it intentionally making Hitler sound weak, or was it a significant error made by people supporting him?

There are many other phrases that include "kampf" where "struggle" sounds strange too - panzerkampfwagen (armored fighting vehicle, which includes tanks), kampfgruppe, kampfgeschwader, etc.

I'm curious about this from any geographical or cultural background that this could be answered by. Astronomers from across time and cultures had been studying, documenting, and trying to predict eclipses for centuries by this point--it's easy to find what they thought of this, which is why my question is about what the average person thought. The other thing is that when it comes down to it, eclipses (at least partial ones) aren't actually all that rare in a human lifetime. It's not like everyone in the town is gonna forget that this same exact thing happened 25 years ago.

We have this idea that our ancestors were superstitious to a fault, and I'm just curious what the average person might think, know, or have been told about this event.

Islam (at least the modern Sunni interpretation) has some very specific rules:

• No alcohol.

• No instrumental music.

• No revealing clothes.

• Avoid painting human figures, especially no painting of religious figures.

• No incorporating or participating in the traditions of other, "false" religions, especially not polytheistic religions (idol worshippers).

And yet the ruling elites of several Islamic Empires, including the three big Gunpowder Empires (the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals), openly ignored some or all of these rules.

All of them had rich artistic traditions that involved painting both human and religious figures, Mughal art for instance, often depicts religious figures alongside a Mughal Emperor, as in this painting of "Jahangir with Jesus" (). The Safavids commissioned a large number of minitatures depicting various scenes of Biblical, Quranic and historic origin, such as this painting of the Prophet Muhammad's ascension to heaven (). Some Mughal and Safavid art shows men and woman in revealing clothes, and verges on pornographic (_ Lady_Reclining_After_a_Bath,_Leaf_from_the_Read_Persian_Album_Herat_(Afghanistan),_1590s._By_Muhammad_Mu%E2%80%99min_MS_M.386.5r._Purchased_by_Pierpont_Morgan.jpg).

The Ottomans produced less art depicting human figures, but the members of the Osman Dynasty were painted in miniature (_ Magnificent#/media/File:Suleiman_the_Magnificent_receives_an_Ambassador-by_Matrakci_Nasuh.jpg).

Furthermore, instrumental music appears to have been common in these Empires, as depicted in various paintings. Persian poetry from the period is full of references to drinking wine, whilst Mughal Emperors openly drank alcohol, as evidenced by this wine cup belonging to Shah Jahan () .

The Mughals went so far as to actively incorporate Hindu traditions and commission paintings of Hindu religious scenes, like those from the Ramayana, which is a huge no-no in Islam. The Mughal Emperor Akbar's invention of a new, syncretic religion, Din-i Ilahi, is almost certainly heretical under Islamic law.

Yet several of these rulers, particularly the Ottoman Sultans, were considered Caliphs and leaders of Islam, so how were they getting away with this failure to follow Quranic law and the Hadiths? Modern Arab states, at least more than 30 years ago, were far more strict with Islamic law than the Islamic Gunpowder Empires. Iran today is far more strict and conservative than Safavid Persia.

What's going on here? Is this related to the Turkic origins of these Empires? Whilst this phenomenon produced some excellent art for us to enjoy, I am interested to know what justifications were being applied for this behavior at the time?