r/AskHistory

I’ve only just realised that America changed maritime laws in the 1980’s to be different to everyone else.
The rest of the world always required ships entering a harbour to keep the red marker on the left and the green on the right. In the 1970’s a huge shipping accident occured and there was an attempt to standardise the system but America wouldn’t agree. To this day they abide by the complete opposite with green on the left entering a harbour.

Meanwhile most of the world uses metric measurements but America had to be different and uses imperial.

What other weird alterations did America make to the established world order in its history?

I recently went down a rabbit hole about Gregory Scarpa and his relationship with the FBI.

Scarpa was a major figure in the Colombo crime family while also working as an FBI informant for years. What surprised me was learning that the FBI brought him to Mississippi for special assignments connected to KKK violence during the Civil Rights era.

So you basically have federal law enforcement relying on someone involved in serious organized crime to help obtain information in a completely different world.

I originally learned about Scarpa because Mark Wahlberg is playing him in By Any Means but the real history ended up being much more interesting to me.

Was using someone like Scarpa unusual for the FBI at the time? Or are there other examples of major criminals being used for investigations that had nothing to do with their own criminal organizations?

A venetian ambassador to the Ottoman empire supposedly stated that the concubines in the sultan's harem were only allowed cucumbers in sliced form because of the "mischief" they might get up to with a whole one.

Is there any truth to this? Were there any efforts to prevent royal concubines from getting into lesbian relationships, and if so, why? The purpose of a harem was secluding the women who could produce heirs from men in order to secure the line of succession, making sure the man's heirs really are his. Lesbianism isnt going to get anyone pregnant.

While there is a basis for homophobia in Islam, what Ive learned is that premodern people, Christian or Muslim were generally far less regressive than someone might assume, especially the ruling classes.

Hi, I would really like to know how workers in the past lived working 12 to 16 hours a day, 6 days a week.

Was this even truly something that the majority of the population in industrial societies did have to do?

How did they have any time to eat, clean themself, have sex?

If I think of a person working 16 hours a day in a factory, I imagine their day going something like this:

4:30 am: Wake up get dressed

5 am: clock into work

5 am to 9 pm: work (with half hour break until 9:30 pm)

9:30 pm: coming home, getting undressed and going to sleep

9:30 pm to 4:30 pm: sleeping (7 hours of sleep, not enough)

No time for food, chores or any other activity.

The only time for that would be on Sundays. Although I also read that sometimes people worked 7 days a week.

I've also read that women and children worked the same hours, so they didn't have the time either.

How did people even find the time to get a partner?

I just don't see how that would work for longer than a year. If a society would work like that, i believe it would collapse but clearly it didn't.

Edit: I need to clarify my question.

1. I understand that there are still a lot of people who work similar hours. But they have modern amenities. They have cars where they sleep in, have fast-food places where they can eat and maybe even have a shower at their workplace. Still horrible conditions, but I can understand how someone can survive like that. BUT I don't know how that would work without these amenities.

2. Working 96 hours is not the norm anymore. All of the people in the comments who said they worked these hours, said it destroyed them. Thankfully most people work shorter hours nowadays. What I want to know is, how that would function if an entire people group works these hours. Did industrial workers just not eat, or have children? Was the replacement rate in cities just held up by people who did other kind of work? Like peasants?

3. I first want to know how society as a whole functioned and then specifically how a day of an industrial worker working 96 hours would look like.

Buddy of mine partakes in a WW2 reenactment group here in Europe and I’ve heard of reenactments of the civil war etc. Over in Asia they do reenactments too and there is some medieval reenactments but I ask

How far back does reenactments go?

Not just a few rich people wanting to reenact for party (like I expect some royals might have done) but genuine reenactments like we have today ?

On the surface it seems like every emperor would like for his son, nephew, cousin etc to succeed himself as emperor. Even in the ancient roman times when an emperor chose a successor that was not his son, he usually raised him. So when and why was it established in the holy roman empire that the next emperor would be elected? I find this really fascinating.

I was reading about history from a sociological perspective.

It seems, from what I observe, that hierarchies will inevitably exist and emerge, and that such hierarchies tend to be rigid and immutable without a severe revolution or war to change it. There's always an elite at the top that has all the privileges and powers whereas an underclass exists to be trodden upon and for the rest of society to rest upon.

It was only somewhere between the late 19th century and early 20th century that such hierarchies were challenged and even dismantled thanks to changes in social values, human rights, and democracy. It's hard to take things for granted knowing these are only provided because of universal value frameworks and sacrifices by people to make it happen.

Yet I was wondering if there was a real-life example of elite groups who came from social groups of low status, as in pariahs, slaves, people who were routinely persecuted and killed, and generally anyone part of the underclass in history?

I am interested in understanding how historians evaluate individual historical impact across different domains (religious, scientific, geopolitical, technological), when thinking about individuals who dramatically altered the trajectory of human history, a few contrasting names come to mind like Fritz Haber Synthesized ammonia, which revolutionized modern agriculture through synthetic fertilizers, sustaining billions of lives, but also developed chemical weapons used in industrial warfare or religiously Jesus the Foundational figure of Christianity who profoundly shaping global ethics, law, culture, empires, and geopolitical history over two whole millenia or even mostly negative impact like hitler and the death of 13 Million people

Given how drastically different these spheres of influence are, some altering human population growth and scientific capability, the other redefining moral, cultural, and political system, who do you think had the largest overall net impact on the world as a result of their actions?

I’ve always heard that, by the time the temperance movement and organizations spearheaded by women like the WCTU, the majority of adult men were heavy drinkers and would of course become abusive to their wives. But what caused this uptick in drinking activity exactly?

Medieval Europe had warrior figures like Richard I and Götz von Berlichingen; China had warriors and tacticians such as Lü Bu and Cao Cao; and Japan is known for warriors and military commanders like Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Oda Nobunaga.

With that in mind, I would like to ask: who are the specific historical figures—warriors or generals who vied for supremacy—that correspond to these types of leaders in regions such as Persia, Arabia, and Egypt (the Middle East and North Africa), or in Hindu-majority areas like India, during the medieval to early modern periods (specifically the 5th through 16th centuries)?

Obviously, the U.S. lost the Vietnam way. I knew someone who fought in it who was convinced that the U.S. "won" the war somehow...Never understood that. My question is more about what did the U.S. get out of that war? Did it at least deter other countries from attempting communism because they knew the U.S. would fight them?

I understand people who ditched him wanted power but i haven't heard of many other other people having such a massive amount of power being betrayed like that. Clearly it must be a folly on his end too. Like being too naive or lacking diplomatic skills? How could he not see Brutus was going to betray him?

The French painter Paul Delaroche was purported to have said, upon seeing his first daguerreotype photograph, "From today, painting is dead!". Similarly, some current artists fear being rendered obsolete by AI image generators.

The painting obviously persisted, and continues to live alongside photography as a fairly common form of artistic expression. It's uncertain at the moment how AI will affect art in the long run, but I imagine it will persist in some way.

What I am asking is, has any art form been made almost entirely obsolete by a technical advancement? People obviously continue to pursue practically outmoded techniques as a form of leisure (such as knitting), but some are so impractical that they have completely died out (painting on the wall of a cave with pigment made of animal blood is essentially pointless now that paper exists).

Are there any more examples of art forms that are almost completely lost?

Hello ! I'm curious as to why Hannibal, an obviously excellent tactician and who commanded reasonable influence in Carthage (atleast enough to stall for Vermina's arrival), wouldn't take small skirmishes or consciously avoid direct confrontation with Scipio until Vermina arrived? Thanks!

On every social media I see a lot of americans being proud of working 50+ hours per week, taking little PTO and attacking anyone who encourages "quiet quitting", "doing the bare minimum" or who proposes a 4 day work week, minimum PTO/holidays, etc.

From what I have read online this comes from the "protestant work ethic" culture but what I don't really understand is how did protestantism gain any popularity by proposing such a thing? less holidays, more work, etc.

Wouldn't the commoner in 16th-17th century prefer catholicism to have more free time? Or they actually prefer catholicism but didn't matter because of the kings and nobility?

Hi, I was wondering why is it the Europeans who went to the American continent and not the other side around ?

I was thinking because of the North and South American continent layout (North-South+surrounded by the ocean) but I’m not sure.

Is it fair to say Anglo-saxons (17the and 18th century) were the most racist people to ever exist ?

I say this because it seems like slavery and apartheid (not genocide of natives) was based on skin color alone and nothing else, all other historical slavery was not purely based on skin colour. Slaves could be of all colors and ethnicities, in Ottoman, Roman and Arab times no ?

P.S. I’m only trying to understand history, every modern constitution gives me the freedom of speech and right to learn and speak about history (A wise man once said to me - “if a country doesn’t want to speak about something, it shouldn’t have done it in the first place”).

My grandma’s death anniversary was a few days ago so i was thinking about her, but I was also reminded of her stories about WW2. Im not sure if these stories are true or not.

I was probably 9 or 10 when i first heard her stories. My step grandpa survived the bataan death march and Grandma told me that the Japanese soldiers used long metal wires and used it to pierce through my grandpa’s (and other POW’s) hands so they can all be “attached” together. This was done because according to her, a lot of soldiers managed to escape before reaching the prisoner camp.

She also told me a story about japanese soldiers killing pregnant women, cutting the belly and removing the fetus, then one soldier would toss the fetus to the air while another soldier is holding a sword pointing up, impaling the fetus in the process.

I don’t have a Christian background and would love to learn more about the origins of Christianity, obviously not from biblical sources. What do we actually know about Jesus Christ and what happened to him? What factual evidence is there for the origins of Christianity?

Hello!

I'm doing a bunch of reading for an alternate history story I plan to write, and the more I dig into things, the more I see possibilities falling into place. Here's what I've found on my own:

• In 1600, an English navigator named William Adams washed ashore in Japan on a dying Dutch ship. Instead of executing him, the Shogun made him a samurai, and Adams taught the Japanese how to build ships that could venture further out into the sea.
• In 1635, following more than 100 years of civil war and fearing expansion of European Christianity, possibly due to William Adams actually warning them of Spanish missionaries' ulterior motives for coming to Japan, the Tokugawa shogunate enacted Sakoku, allowing virtually no one to enter or leave for 220 years, until they were forced to open their borders by the Perry Expedition.

What I'm planning to write involves Japan sending trade ships north along continental Asia and eventually finding Alaska before they continue to trade down the west coast of North America. Obviously, they didn't know it was over there, but I just want to know if I'm overlooking something big.

Thanks!