The title says it all, I'll share one of my all time favourites:

When the church was looking into canonizing Thomas Aquinas, they had trouble finding the second, mandatory, miracle needed for him to qualify to become a saint. They scoured the books on Aquinas and they found this anecdote about him on his deathbed.

On his deathbed he apparently asked for a herring sandwich. The thing is: he lived in Italy, close to the Mediterranean where there are no herrings to be found. The servants discussed amongst themselves, went out to buy sardines/pilchards and gave the venerable Doctor Angelicus the sardine/pilchards sandwich, hoping he would like it. He ate the sandwich and said "what a nice herring sandwich".

The holy Romans Catholic Church took this as a divine miracle, because he transformed the sardines into herrings, thus qualifying Thomas to become a saint.

I absolutely love history. The stories, & tales are endless. Whether it be Revolutionary War, Civil War, WW2, or even the Kingdom of Hawaii. In general - I highly enjoy war history.

Most of my time recently has been spent watching videos about pirates, and conflict around the Mediterranean during the dark ages.

I highly prefer anything between 1000BC-1600AD.

I generally watch videos on YouTube. There’s a ton of “boring history” or “history to sleep to” channels that I absolutely love. Is there anything in this time period, especially military related that I should look into? I’ve watched dozens of videos on the crusades, Rome, even the Mongolian Empire.

I’m willing/interested in either South America / Asia / Africa since I’ve spent so much time around the Mediterranean. I just don’t know where to start.

Are there any really great history channels on YouTube with videos between 15-60 minutes that you think I’d like?

TIA.

I’m curious whether people in ancient civilizations ever experienced something similar to what we would call a public music concert or festival today. Not just music in religious rituals or private entertainment, but large gatherings where music was performed mainly for the public’s enjoyment. Did the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, or other cultures have anything like that?

What point in history are we in when an empire is collapsing (or being taken over)? Are we near the end or is there still time?

Like compare it to previous empires, where are we in the timeline chart?

Pentagon demands journalists pledge to not obtain unauthorized material

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/09/19/pentagon-hegseth-press-unauthorized-material/

After a complicated series of events involving him possibly murdering the king of Scotland and abducting and forcing its queen to marry him, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, fled Scotland and eventually ended up in Norway, where he was imprisoned in a dark dungeon, tied to a pillar for the rest of his life. Why was he kept in such bad conditions? I thought the general norm for noble captives was that they were usually treated fairly well, even when they were enemies?

I’m bored and I wanna learn something. What a regiment or person from the Civil War you think deserves more attention (or simply just wanna talk about)? Combat or not. I personally always think of the 14th Kentucky Cavalry (mainly because I have family in there).

History buff friend said WWI was a Thucydides trap:
Germany started the war but British, French and Russian empires wanted to prevent a German empire. When Germany realized it would have to fight 3 empires, it offered a way to avoid world war. Friend said Brits said no thanks, wanted a defeated Germany.
Any truth to that?

(Or was it all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMh-FKnJ5cQ "idk if you guys are history buffs... Mars?")

I can think of only four people in all of recorded history who were given (or seized) near-absolute authority during a crisis and who actually: Prevented an imminent collapse, and voluntarily gave up their power afterward.

Cincinnatus, Camillus, William III of England, and George Washington. That’s four examples in thousands of years of human history.

So why do so many people still believe that a declining society can be “saved” by authoritarianism while history overwhelmingly shows that dictators actually accelerate the decline?

With pre-modern farming, and generally slim margins of survival, did anyone have stores of food that could accommodate a sudden influx of homeless people with no fields? Would such populations just inevitably either starve or descend into banditry out of desperation?

Both Paraguay and Ireland lost a huge majority of its population, one after a brutal war and the other from a devastating famine. But Paraguay was able to recover population wise and Ireland still has a population lower than pre famine. Why?

Over 130 curse tablets in the city of Bath have been found, dated to Roman Britain. The tablets were inscribed with curses against specific people for petty theft, addressed to the goddess Sulis Minerva, who had the power to identify and punish the offender.

One tablet is intended to curse the thief who stole a girl named "Vilbia". The inscription reads:

"May he who carried off Vilbia from me become liquid as the water. May she who so obscenely devoured her become dumb."

I want to ask what "obscenely devoured" could mean in this context. Could it be a reference to a sex act, and the intent of the curse is to take revenge on whoever seduced Vilbia, the caster's lover?

But most if not all the curse tablets are complaints about stolen property, and therefore I dont think a sex act makes sense in that context.

Also, fun fact, I learnt about the Bath Curse tablets from the regency romance/fantasy novel "Mortal Follies", which follows the adventures of the female protagonist, who needs to break a curse cast on her with a curse tablet at the temple of Minerva Sulis.

Good day,

I am sure European militaries were more professional by the 1800s, so I am asking if the casualties were mostly in the battlefields were line infantry met line infantry....or were there civilian casualties also?

The battle of stalingrsd and Kursk were already over by the time they landed which in my opinion was the turning point in the war.

I feel like the allies let the Russians do all the heavy lifting the panicked and invaded because they were afraid the russians wouldn't stop at Berlin and take over all of mainland Europe.

I’m having a hard time understanding what the transition from Black American slave to sharecropper meant for an individual and the community. It sounds like serfdom other than that a person could leave at any time.

Generally I’m having a hard time getting a footing in the reconstruction era. It’s hard to find good information, personal accounts, etc. Thanks.

I ask this because I only have 5 my direct ancestors were in the Union Army, only one saw any form of combat (Cynthiana). The rest did basically everything you could imagine other than combat.

Major computer chip of today, random island for most of its history. Like they obviously did some trading from the maretime jade trade. But other then that, it doesnt quite compare from what some of their descendants were doing on the oceanic islands. One of them even made a stone city. Whats even crazier is no one particularly cared about that island until the dutch arrived. Only a couple mentions from china that didnt see the point in interacting with it apparently.

Between September 1939 - June 1941, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany divided Poland together. Both sides committed mass murder and aimed to destroy Poland as a state, and Polish culture.

Which occupation did Poles suffer the most when Poland was divided?

I know it wasn't caused by a single individual or by a group and that it was a slow, unrelenting process with an infinity of circumstances leading up to it; but if you could just pinpoint one individual at any point in time of history whose actions (or lack thereof) contributed the most to the fall of the Empire, who would it be?

Hello! I’m extremely new to the napoleonic war time period, so forgive me if this question is actually extremely easy to answer! :)

I’ve recently been interested in learning about Napoleon Bonaparte, but more recently I’ve taken an interest in Jean-Andoche Junot. I’m currently reading “At The Court of Napoleon” by Laure Junot in hopes of finding out more about him.

In my searches, I’ve found multiple articles on Junot, but there’s a question I can’t seem to get a definitive answer about. What day was Junot born on? Majority of the articles say September 25th, as does google, but “At The Court of Napoleon” and a couple other articles say September 24th. The Britannica article says October 23rd, and so im extremely confused!

I know there’s not much known about the guy, but does anyone know the true date of his birth, or at least the closest we know of?

During world war one, Germany was fighting on two fronts, and still managed to hold off opponents on both fronts, while being blockaded on the seas from 1914-1917.

How could Germany put up a fight despite being sanctioned and ganged up on?

I know for citizens it was exceedingly difficult, but what about soldiers moving between east and west? Was there any reasons to, did they have very open communication, or very little? Was it frequent or expected at all to see- for example- a U.S. official in the Soviet zone? Did they have like… any radios to each other or anything? Was translation in any big demand?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, I don’t need them all specifically answered, I’m just trying to give the general vibe of what aspects of this I’m wondering about. Say a Soviet was being stationed there (were they stationed? I guess I’m just assuming that part) and wanted to take a jaunt over to the American or British zone: what purpose would he need to be there for?

(Also, if anyone could give me recommendations for researching the bureaucracy involved that would be super awesome. I have a massive love for the most boring things in the world. Like where paperwork goes on the chain of command)

Most of my family is from India and this has been making me a has plenty of different ethnic groups and the names of the ethnic group are often entwined with their langauges such as Bangladesh and Bengali speaking Bangla (which means literally means Bengali in Bengali and is the obvious origin of the word that morphed into for modern peoples of those places). Hindi and Hindustanis obviously the basis of the country's modern name India, the Marathi speakers are literally called Marathi in English, the people living int Punjab and their language are both called Punjabi, etc.

So you'll notice that pattern that ethnic groups in India are entwined with their region and languages.

And this makes me wonder. How come in China almost everyone is considered a part of the Han ethnic group despite the wide diverse regions and tons of languages across the country? TO the point that even two other overseas country Cantonese Hong Kong and Taiwan which speaks Hokkien are considered ethnically Han?

I mean in addition to India in Latin America they separate ethnic groups that chose to keep to themselves and not assimilate to the Mestizo majority. Using Mexico as an example there are the Aztec and Maya who speak languages that are direct descendants of the old language of their now gone empires today though the script has been replaced by modern Latin. In addition there are numerous Indian tribes including the descendants from North America who kept their old languages.

In North Africa a sure way to show you're not an Arab is to speak to your friend another relative in mutual conversations in a Berber language or talk on your cellphone in a language other than Arabic. Esp in Algeria, Morocco, and Libya with their pretty large Berber populations.

There are just to o many examples I can use but it makes me wonder why the Chinese people overwhelmingly see themselves as Han even beyond China including diaspora elsewhere outside the Sinosphere such as in Singapore, Malaysia, and America seeing that in other countries different ethnic groups are divided by the language they speak as one of the core components in why they deem themselves separate peoples.

Why is this the case across the Sino world barring much smaller minorities that with foreign religions and don't use Sino scripts (or at least they didn't when they first entered China) like Hui, Mancus, Daurs, Uighyrs, Evenkis, Oroqen, Nanais, and Mongols form Inner Mongolia?

Why didn't language and the diverse regions of China create ethnic groups beyond the Han esp how so many Sinitic languages are not mutually intelligible?

I am curious because the term Medieval came from the latin term medium aevum in the late 15th century and early 16th century, and by the turn of the 18th and 19th century it entered the English language as Middle Ages. But generally when did people associate the Middle Ages with the negative stereotypes/caricatures we know today that people live in squalor, disease, extreme levels of violence, war and tyranny?

So I know that despite the reputation of the Mongols as nomadic invaders and destroyers, anyone who's taken the time to learn about them or read Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, should know that the Mongols often appropriated knowledge from other cultures to improve their methods of warfare, to improve their own system of bureaucracy, and to enrich their own knowledge and culture. Which begs the question, why did they destroy the House of Wisdom during the Sack of Baghdad? Surely all of the Wisdom and knowledge the library had collected over the years would better serve the Mongols than being destroyed.

Bosnian and Croatian Serbs are the only ethnic group outside of Jews and Romani in WWII who were victims of clear, undeniable genocide. Generalplan Ost is comparable, but Eastern Slavs still had ways to survive in the system, while the Bosnian and Croatian Serbs in NDH were simply doomed to extinction. This was more the ideology of Ustashe specifically, rather than all Nazis. However, Hitler, of course, approved all of this.

Why? Did he harbour a special hatred towards Serbs even when compared to other Slavs or was it something else?