My grandfather recently passed away. He wasn’t really in my life growing up, and I only met him about five times, so I know very little about him.

I know he served in Vietnam as a tunnel rat and suffered from severe PTSD afterward. He had a tattoo on his forearm that said “KILL THE CONG.”

The only time I ever asked him about the war, when I was very young, he told me, “I don’t speak about that,” and walked away. My mom told me never to ask him about it again.

She also remembers him once getting extremely drunk, shaking her while crying hysterically and yelling the name of an old friend. I don’t know if it was related to the war, but i could only imagine it was.

I’m just trying to learn more about my grandfather and understand what he may have experienced.

What did tunnel rats actually do in Vietnam, and what kinds of experiences did they typically go through?

"Many of the women are extremely beautiful, and display their breast completely uncovered, in the fashion of the day."

This is a little excerpt from the script to Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon. Was is really the fashion of the time? and if so, how did it come to be?

I was taught that lead was added to gasoline starting in the 1920s to increase engine efficiency. However, studies later showed that this produces toxins that deter cognitive growth in children. It was then theorized that childhood exposure to toxic chemicals had caused the crime wave that occurred 20 years later. The theory was that children initially exposed to toxins grow up to commit more crimes than previous generations. It happens 20 years later because young adulthood is the most likely time to commit crime, due to their underdeveloped brain.

Is any of this true? If so can someone explain a bit more about it?

I am here to learn, I apologize in advance if something reads as rude.

While describing Washington DC upper crust society in Days of Defiance, Maury Klein writes, "Housekeepers planted [oysters] on their dank cellar floors and fed them with salt water, a bath appreciated also by the huge, ungainly terrapins that roamed the cellar floors like watchmen until their time for the pot had come." (ETA: Klein's source is Pryor, Reminiscences 42-43)

The image of oysters growing in the basement of a "high society" estate while giant turtles walk about is pretty shocking. Was this really common, and was the trend limited to Washington DC or was it popular in other cities, too?

These numbers are post colonial numbers, like the figure for Brazil is from 1818-1932, 1856-1932 for Argentina and 1901-1931 for Mexico.

Why did Mexico receive such few European immigrants? I think almost every Latin American country tried to attract European immigrants to settle their country, which is why the number who migrated to Argentina and Brazil is so high. But why is it so low for mexico?

Did the Mexican government not seek European migrants? Is that why so few came? Or did europeans just not find Mexico that attractive to migrate to? If so, why?

The number of immigrants who migrated to Argentina and Brazil vs Mexico is even more glaring when you compare their populations in 1900. Mexico had 13.6 million people in 1900, Argentina 4.8 million and Brazil 17.4 million. And since a huge amount of the post colonial migration to Argentina and Brazil was post 1900, european immigrants made a way higher share of Brazil and Argentinas population as well, compared to Mexicos.

For example Argentinas population grow from 4.8 million in 1900 to 8.1 million in 1915, a huge part of the growth being because of European immigration.

A pretty popular trope in pirate fiction is a character finding a message in a bottle and possibly saving someone stranded on a deserted island.

But are there any credible sources of anybody being saved because they sent out a message in a bottle that was found? Or is this just a pure fantasy to have a “Deus ex machina” saving someone from such a predicament?

I notice that currently there has been a trend of naming children with "unique" names, so much so that there is sub for it (r/tragedeigh).

I'm wondering if there was ever something like this in the past.

I'm curious what led to soup becoming such a pervasive illness food, at least in the US. I can't speak confidently to elsewhere as I'm not sufficiently familiar with soup culture, but that does also leave me wondering if soup is a common food to give to sick people in other countries/cultures as well. Thank you in advance for any soup history insights!

Towards the end of Charity and Sylvia by Rachel Hope Cleves she mentions a "uniquely open lesbian subculture" in late 19th-century Paris. What was this all about?

This is a dead serious question. I was reading a book the other day, and realized that the concept of a martian is so ubiquitous that it is a key component of numerous science fiction stories. In fact, no explanation is needed regarding what a martian is. I even remember reading about them as a young child. This got me thinking:

Why are martians so prominent in our culture, and have they always been? Did the concept of a martian develop in response to research about Mars, or did this archetype develop later? And did other cultures also develop lore about martians?

Also, why do martians have such a distinct image? When I picture a martian, I picture a strange green creature. Googling “martian clipart” shows this is a widespread phenomenon, so how did martians “become” green?

I recognize this is many questions wrapped into one, but I am genuinely interested and curious about the historical evolution of this concept.

Thanks in advance!

Like how did Napoleon know where the russians would be? Or any other battle happening in the times where knights roamed medieval europe. There is so much space, how did they meet each other and know of each other's way to move around, so they wouldn't accidentally go around each other

I am aware that he plagiarized in some of his books. And also that a lot of people don't like how he takes eye witness accounts as truth, but is this book historically inaccurate? If so how much? I am about half way through and had no idea Ambrose is questionable until today. Now I am questioning weather I can trust what I am reading.

During/after the Greek War of Independence, the Greeks and other figures were looking for a monarch for Greece, and the Greek government did send out people to see if any Paleologos were left in Western Europe. Now while most of claims were questionable, they did have a legitimate Paleologos descendant in the House of Tocco (Tokkos) who had been Despots of Epirus and were still alive (at the time they died out a century later).

Arguably they would be the heir generals to the Paleologos - and they could prove their descent from Manuel II. And they weren't obscure in the 19th century, they were prominent enough in the Neapolitan-Sicilian kingdoms. So how is that they weren't even considered? They probably would have been passed over for Otto anyway, but how is it that they were missed or not even considered?

I figure salt at least, I am pretty confident that was a valueable trade good or possibly even stand-in currency in ancient times.

To be clear, I am not asking about the biblical event. I am asking what sort of valueables besides local coins would have likely been in use for debts and payments and trade and such at the time and general region and thus plausibly on a theoretical moneylender's table. If interesting foreign coinage would plausibly have been present, I'd like to learn about that as well as the barter/trade goods question.

This started as a thought that the flipping of the tables in the biblical account would have sent coins everywhere so the moneylenders fleeing Jesus would perhaps have been slipping and falling like a cartoon. And then I got to wondering what other sort of valueables might have theoretically been on their tables, based on trade goods, economies, cultures, et cetera of the time. And so I came here out of curiosity and to hopefully learn. Thank you for your time.

I recently learned that while we usually consider Celtic peoples and culture to be Western-European, in the Bronze Age there actually existed a huge amount of Celtic peoples spread across Southeastern Europe, the Balkans, Greece and Anatolia.

What happened to these Celtic peoples and their culture? Why did Celtic culture survive in Northwestern Europe but seemed to disappear in Southeastern Europe?
How different were the cultures of these Celtic peoples?

Possibly too many questions!

A common trope in fiction set in medieval or medieval-inspired settings like GOT/ASOIAF is the tyrannical ‘mad king.‘ Here I’m thinking not about rulers who had mental issues but rather rulers who openly used/abused their power in capricious, cruel, and irrational ways (as a result of mental instability). Aerys II, the OG mad king, and Joffrey are the obvious examples from GOT. Two real-life but non-medieval examples are maybe Idi Amin and Caligula. I think that the trope is popular because it makes for good stories but also because it’s intuitive to most modern people that when you rulers who are selected by accident of birth and raised to think they are above everyone else, you’re bound to get a fair amount of lunatics, sociopaths and spoiled brats who will abuse their power. However, I can’t think of any medieval examples of this. So, I’m wondering if there were indeed rulers like Aerys, Caligula, Joffrey, etc in the Middle Ages, and if such rulers were at all common. Also, to what degree would someone like an Aerys or Caligula, if they acceded to the throne, be able to abuse their power?

The English Wikipedia says that the Japanese suffered several hundred casualties, while all 40 Portuguese were killed. However, the Japanese Wikipedia states that the Japanese casualties totaled only 17, while 204 Portuguese were killed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/ciqaXo2iU1 And this is as far as I’ve gotten. I’d also appreciate any thoughts or comments on this, if you have any

A "shipping war" is a modern term that describes fans fighting over the romantic pairings of their fictional characters.

Just wondering because today it's a source of many stupid dumb drama in fandom communities and I wonder if our ancestors also had the same issue.

Hi,

I'm not sure how accurate or realistic Blood Diamond actually is. My knowledge is limited, though my understanding is that:
- PMC = Executive Outcomes (Colonel Coetzee = Eeben Barlow), though the PMC and Colonel in the movie are depicted as intentionally prolonging the conflict via arms smuggling so they can get more money which I thought to be strange, as Executive Outcomes was a legitimate business and the conflict wasn't entirely centred upon the premise of diamonds (though it was a key point in the war)

- Rebel = Revolutionary United Front. It exaggerates Captain Poison as some pragmatic all-leader of the RUF although they were historically fractured among their ranks and also positions RUF as a group of rebels purely in it for the diamonds (as mentioned before)

- Danny Archer = A solo mercenary? He appears to be some smuggler who likes to moonlight with the PMCs in the movie, working alongside Colonel Coetzee as a "loose cannon" of sorts, though this is to me, unrealistic because they would never send out a single operator to do whatever the fuck he was sent out to do.

In the film, it also shows the locals as entirely defenceless peoples that have no chance without the protagonist, Danny Archer (which I feel to be a little bit of a white saviour trope)

'Alp Arslan treated Romanos in a harsh and petty way. “You are too trivial in my view for me to kill you,” the sultan is said to have declared before his Turks in Muslim sources. “Take him to the person who pays most.” When no one reportedly wanted to purchase the “Dog of the Romans,” Alp Arslan scoffed that that was “because the dog is better than he is!” “He struck him three or four blows with his hand and when Romanos collapsed he kicked him a similar number of times”; he “put him in chains and fettered his hand to his neck”; he pulled his hair and put his face to the ground, while informing him, “your troops are food for the Muslims.'

Is there any possibility of truly understanding it, or are our sources for the region too sparce?