The Feed

Posted by /u/ExternalBoysenberry

When I was a kid, adults treated "knowing what to do if you're on fire" as an essential life skill to practice and review. What is the history behind "stop, drop, and roll"? Why did this very specific emergency get so much emphasis?

Responses to more common hazards weren't addressed to nearly the same degree, if at all. Off the top of my head: pressure and elevation to control bleeding; Heimlich maneuver if choking; don't swim out to a drowning person, throw them something instead; lightning position; don't…

Posted by /u/NobleCypress

Winston Churchill regularly enjoyed Johnnie Walker Red blended scotch whiskey. Today, it is considered a bottom shelf scotch. If he had a glass today, would he recognize it and other scotches/whiskies from his time, or would they be unreco…

Posted by /u/Formal_Percentage_50

Did Roman soldiers really build a fort at the end of each day's march?

A 12-20 mile march in the infantry is exhausting. The idea of completing that and then immediately building a fort sounds super human. Did the legions do this every time, or was it more of an official doctrine that was not necessarily followed every campaign?

Posted by /u/ExternalBoysenberry

German kids are routed at age ~10 into one of 3 schools: the "lowest" leads to vocational training, the middle lets you apply to technical college, and only the third gives you the option of university. When did this system take shape? Has…

Before anyone jumps in to correct the premise (sorry, character limits in the title don't permit much nuance). I know there is variation between federal states and also that your placement at age 10 does not solely, formally, irrevocably seal your educational and professional fa…

Posted by /u/screwyoushadowban

Vampire media loves the idea of the aristocratic or at least very wealthy 18th & 19th century socialite bloodsucker thriving in Europe, usually France or Britain. How feasible was it actually to manage business or estates & sustain an elev…

Wouldn't upper crust people ask why Baron von Fangmouth never shows up to the gentlemen's social club for afternoon cards or why no one ever sees him about town despite the fact that his pallid and very unhealthy looking doorman always says he's unavailable when visitors come by…

Posted by /u/Nebulaer

Are there ancient mental illnesses that didn't survive?

What if the mental illnesses we have today are just the ones that managed to survive natural selection? Were there mental illnesses in ancient humans that didn't survive until today?

Posted by /u/NWCtim_

Did novels originally published chapter by chapter in periodicals (such as The Count of Monte Cristo) get affected by 'fan feedback' in the same way that modern TV shows often do?

Posted by /u/mlky30

Anyone know the actual truth behind Louis XIV's hot chocolate baby?

Hi, so i just heard about how King Louis XIV’s wife(Maria Theresa of Spain) gave birth to a dark skinned baby in 1664 and then the court literally blamed it on her drinking too much hot chocolate(did she tell the king that she ate too much chocolate?) I know the baby allegedly d…

Posted by /u/TMSAuthor

If Wikipedia’s to be believed, towels were a 17th-century invention. How did people traditionally dry themselves after bathing?

I know bathing was popular in older cultures, such as Rome. Did bathers just slowly air-dry themselves?

Posted by /u/No_Key8587

Why did men tend to seem a bit... closer... in the olden days? When did it change?

So... people are always discovering letters written by famous people to male compatriots and going like "Oh my God, Lincon/Washington were gay!", whereas I kind of doubt they were gay (at least in the way we think about it). But it seemed like letters and stuff were written in a…

Posted by /u/nationalgeographic

I’m Tom Hiddleston. Join me and the crew from ‘Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston' live on the red carpet at the series premiere on July 16th and ask us anything!

https://preview.redd.it/baz1088ym7dh1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=57bbbba6e20c0aecf5b32ab740fa09e7876ce23e I’m Tom Hiddleston and I am taking a journey back in time in my new series ‘Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston’ on National Geographic. The ancient world h…

Posted by /u/Umpuuu

Al Capone used coin-operated laundromats to pretend that his ill-gotten money was in fact well-gotten. Did he obtain his ill-gotten money in coins? Or did he show up at the bank with stacks of 100$ bills and said "yeah, this is what I got…

Posted by /u/monsteradeliciosa11

I am an Irish woman who has been taken to Iceland by vikings. Do I speak the same language as my captors?

In short my question is, how different were the cultures and languages of northern regions of Ireland and Scotland vs Scandinavia between 870 and 930? Would a dane be able to converse with someone from North Ireland and be understood? or where the languages completely seperate?…

Posted by /u/ExternalBoysenberry

For millennia, the chestnut defined Appalachian and eastern N. American forests. In less than 50 years, blight destroyed ~4 billion trees, removing it from the canopy across much of its range. What was it like to live through this ecologic…

How did it transform what it "meant" to live in proximity to these forests? I'm curious about both Native American and non-native perspectives and also the nature of ecological memory in the aftermath of this transformation. Did people believe grandpa's tall tales about the incr…

Posted by /u/rroowwannn

Did victory gardens have any effect whatsoever on the food supply?

Every month in gardening subs someone posts wanting advice on growing their own food to reduce grocery bills, and everyone responds with pessimism, saying it's not practical for a beginner to grow a substantial amount of food on the average suburban lot, and that it's not a chea…

Posted by /u/Link245

"If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding." What were English boarding school meals like that someone wouldn't want to eat their food?

A line from Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2 has a school teacher saying "If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?" What were meals like in an English boarding school like such that students had…

Posted by /u/optiplex9000

What made Goldeneye 007 for the N64 such an iconic and memorable game? Did it do things that other games did not do before?

Posted by /u/NobleCypress

In “Death by Lightning” there are numerous scenes which show that any person could walk up to the White House and (under President Garfield) request an audience with the President and possibly actually get one. Was there some point where t…

Posted by /u/Old_Temperature_5667

Is there a survivorship bias affecting the understanding of the lethality of "tarring and feathering," in Colonial America?

Help me settle a debate about the potential lethality of "tarring and feathering" in Colonial America. Because the science doesn't seem to match the records. I'm discussing (read: getting into an argument regarding) the "tarring and feathering" scene in the miniseries "John Adam…

Posted by /u/sheffieldasslingdoux

Skeletal remains of medieval warhorses suggest they were pony sized, around 14-15hh. Given that a knight in armour and his tack could easily weigh more than 200 lbs, would these horses have been overburdened by modern standards, or were th…

For modern equestrians, there is a strong and lively debate on just how much a horse can safely carry on their back. As a general rule of thumb, equestrians nowadays tend to follow something called the 20% rule. Old cavalry manuals, posited that a horse can safely carry around 1…

Posted by /u/SarahAGilbert

Rules Roundtable XXI.V: Plagiarism, Integrity, and Generative AI

Back in 2020, u/Georgy_K_Zhukov published a series of what we call “Rules Roundtables.” These are a series of posts that don’t just restate the rules, but explain *why* they’re in place (because we know we have a lot of them, and we know they’re confusing for the uninitiated). W…

Posted by /u/StarlightDown

Why did the Soviet Union never host or win the FIFA World Cup (or even reach the Final), despite hosting and dominating in the Olympics, despite its massive population and sports resources wealth, and despite football being by far the most…

The Soviet Union never hosted or won the FIFA World Cup (or even reached the Final) in the USSR’s 70-year history (which coincided entirely with the existence of FIFA), despite hosting and dominating in the Olympics (including in Olympic football), despite having a far larger po…