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Posted by /u/Thundertushy

What was life as a diabetic like in Rome in 2nd Century AD?

Aretaeus of Cappadocia described life with diabetes as short, disgusting and painful. What would life as a 2nd Century AD person with diabetes have been like? Let's assume that the person is wealthy enough (i.e. prosperous merchant or landowner) to have a physician on staff to s…

Posted by /u/ArgentineBeauty

A Chinese village where people once earned under $100 a year in 2005 transformed its traditional Clothes Drying Festival into a tourism success, with villagers now earning from five income sources and 285 households sharing $900,000 in tou…

Posted by /u/lewisiarediviva

How Ubiquitous Was the Carrying of Fire?

I ran across a factoid some years ago that ran something like: “Up until the modern era, most people were never more than 1000 feet from a fire their whole lives” Without getting too into the weeds on specifics like distance, do we think this is broadly true? Does anyone recogni…

Posted by /u/Wooden_Airport6331

I am an American conscript in Vietnam. I refuse to continue. What happens to me?

In this hypothetical, there is a moral and/or psychological reason that I won’t continue, like PTSD, perhaps witnessing or participating in civilian casualties. Perhaps I believe that my death is already inevitable. I feel that have nothing to lose by deserting. Could I be execu…

Posted by /u/OfficialAli1776

Why are Egyptian ruins so well preserved compared to Greco-Roman ones, despite being older?

Obviously a major exception being a Pantheon, but I went to Greece and Rome and the ruins were, well, ruins. The Athenian Acropolis was in really sorry shape, the Parthenon is barely being held together as just an exoskeleton of its former self (I know about the Venetians blowin…

Posted by /u/AdSpecialist6598

New Dad Turns Library Trips with Daughter into Weekly Meetup with Dozens of Local Fathers

Posted by /u/kill4588

If I'm an average shepherd girl living in the Mongolian steppe during the peak days of golden horde, what is the chance for me to have a cat?

It's pretty known for the nomads to have dogs, but how about cats?

Posted by /u/Sweaty-Koala-80

Married, 32Fbattling endstage kidney failure & mental breakdownMy life is falling apart and I'm terrifiedPlease pray for a miracle for me

am a 32year-old married woman, and I feel like my entire life is falling apart Disease has completely ravaged my body am fighting advanced kidney failure, and my condition has reached a dangerously severe stage. Everything is getting worse by the day. This illness hasn't just de…

Posted by /u/Serious-Musician4235

According to Martin van Creveld (Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939–1945), Max Hastings (Overlord, Their Wehrmacht Was Better Than Our Army) and Trevor N Dupuy, the German army was vastly superior to the Allies on a tac…

So, this is quite interesting. I don't think any other army in history has garnered as much of a 'following' among analysts and historians as the German army of WW2 (Heer). Decentralized command structure (Auftragstaktik) is often named as one of its main advantages, as is its s…

Posted by /u/OnlyInSilence

Is there any actual historical evidence anywhere of the Allies in WW2 letting allied civilians or servicemen die in order to protect the fact they had cracked enigma?

A trope that pops up in fiction occasionally is the notion that the allies let the Germans blow up certain Atlantic convoys/cities in ww2, lest the Third Reich get suspicious about how the their attacks were always being predicted. Off the top of my head, an episode of the TV sh…

Posted by /u/hypermiler2205

Saying “Jesus loves you” to nonbelievers does more harm than good

It’s best to not say it at all to them To them it means nothing and it makes you look like a religious lunatic in their eyes I’m just saying it doesn’t have the effect you think it does, instead of making someone feel what you feel towards god it just annoys them and lowers the…