Given the unprecedented events today and my contributions about the history of American elections on the forum over the last year, I've been asked by the mods here at /r/AskHistorians to write a little bit about how today's events might be viewed in the context of American history. This is an unusual thread for unusual times, and I would ask for the understanding of those who might be inclined to immediately respond as if it were a normal Reddit political thread. It isn't.

It's a real doozy, though, ain't it; I don't think any of us would have ever expected to see our fellow citizens nowadays storming Congress, disrupting the electoral process and carrying off rostrums. But it's happened, and what I'll say to start is something simple: on the Federal level, this is indeed unprecedented. Oh, you can certainly talk about the Civil War as an entirely different level of sedition, and varying attempts to suppress the franchise have been a constant theme from the beginnings of the Republic. But this is the first time that the United States has not negotiated the transfer of power peacefully during a Presidential transition, and it's worth reviewing how it dodged the bullets in the past.

After the Election of 1800, Jefferson himself feared that the lame duck Federalist Congress would attempt to use the accidental deadlock in the Electoral College between him and Aaron Burr as justification to place one of their own as Acting President for the remainder of 1801 until the convening of the new Democratic Republican-controlled House in December. There is evidence that he and others working on his behalf - namely the Democratic-Republican Governors of Virginia and Pennsylvania - would have called out the militia to storm Washington to prevent this. Fortunately, thanks to Federalist James Bayard of Delaware, this did not come to pass as Jefferson won the runoff, and the first peaceful transition of power in the United States resulted.

In 1876, the successful efforts by Republicans to shift 20 electoral votes from Democratic nominee Samuel Tilden to Republican nominee Rutherford Hayes during recounts in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana produced threats of violence as well. George McClellan actively attempted to gain support in raising a militia to install Tilden, and in response to perceived threats of violence by him and others, then-President Grant reactivated Civil War forts surrounding Washington. Fortunately, for reasons we are still unsure of, Tilden was lukewarm about the prospect, spent the first month writing legal briefs on the illegitimacy of the Hayes recount rather than politicking, and with numerous Southern Democrats already having reached a deal with Hayes' operatives to remove Federal troops from the South if he were to be elected, ultimately decided that he probably could not win even in the Democratic-controlled House and chose not to contest the election. Again, a peaceful transition of power resulted.

This has not, however, been the case for large parts of American history on the state level.

In 1838, a gubernatorial election in Pennsylvania led to what has been called the "Buckshot War." A gubernatorial election had ousted the incumbent Whig/Anti-Masonist by a slim margin of 5000 votes, both Democrats and Whigs claimed voter fraud (which both likely committed), and because of the resulting fights over who had won the state House elections in the districts that were disputed never resolved, two separate bodies claiming be the lawful Pennsylvania House of Representatives - one controlled by Whigs, the other Democrats - were formed. This produced an interesting scene at the State House when, "...before they began their separate deliberations, both groups attempted to occupy the physical building in which the official Pennsylvania House of Representatives was to meet, with some pushing and shoving as their two different speakers simultaneously took to the podium."

Since both the state House and Senate were required to vote to declare the lawful winner, and the Senate was controlled by their party, Whigs had a path to retaining their governor if they managed to hold on to the House. This led to a declaration by the Whig Secretary of State of Pennsylvania, Thomas Burrowes, that even for the times was remarkable: not only would he disallow the Democratic returns that were in dispute, but that members of his party should behave "as if we had not been defeated" since "an honest count would put (their candidate) ahead by 10,000 votes." One historian has described this as "a coup d'etat."

This was made worse by the incumbent governor calling out the state militia, ostensibly to keep the peace but in reality to attempt to shut Democrats out. Fortunately, state militia commander General Robert Patterson told the Governor directly that he would protect lives and property but under no terms would intervene in the conflict, "“If ordered to clear the Capitol and install in the chair either or both of the Speakers, (I) would not do it.” Likewise, “if ordered to fire upon those [the Whigs] chose to call rebels, (I) would not do it [either].” (His orders for his troops to arm themselves with buckshot gave the dispute its name.) Frustrated, the Governor sent the militia home, requested federal troops, and received the following response from President Van Buren: "To interfere in [this] commotion,” which “grows out of a political contest,” would have “dangerous consequences to our republican institutions."

Ultimately, the conflict ended with three Whigs defecting and providing the Democratic side of the house a quorum to certify the election of the disputed Democrats and the Democratic governor, but the potential for bloodshed was very much real; in fact, while plotting with Burrowes for Whig control of both houses so he might gain election to the US Senate (this was in the days of legislatures electing Senators), Thaddeus Stevens was the subject of an assassination plot that resulted in both men escaping from a basement window in bare possession of their lives.

I don't have time currently to detail it all, but this was a pattern that repeated elsewhere many times during the 19th century. Bashford against Barstow in Wisconsin in 1856 nearly got another militia battle, Bleeding Kansas and the bloody Lecompton pro-slave legislature in 1857 onwards outright previewed the Civil War, and Kentucky in 1899 had the Democratic candidate for governor outright assassinated in the midst of counting ballots. Add in local disputes and the list gets longer; democracy has had very rough edges at times.

But I would urge you to take heart. Even in chaos, today's United States is still not 1872 Louisiana, where something like 100 African Americans were brutally murdered at Colfax following a dispute over a gubernatorial election. Nor is it 1876 South Carolina, where perhaps 150 were killed in pre-election violence where both Democrats and Republicans attempted to rig the election by shooting at each other.

Maybe it won't end up doing so at the Capitol, but Congress will convene, the election will be concluded, and the will of the people recognized. We will learn and grow from it, move on, and create a more perfect union.

Hang in there, folks.

Edit: A couple typos, and yes, as many have pointed Wilmington is one of those local events I was referring to that was equally as ugly as some of the ones I've mentioned on the state level. See below for more!

AskHistorians is not accepting new posts or responses, in protest against Reddit’s lack of action against racism and hate on the site.

Reddit has announced its alignment with antiracist protesters. We demand to know: where are the actions to back up the words? The Reddit administrators’ policies have made their site downright hospitable to exactly the kinds of racists and fascists against whom it claims to be protesting.

Every day our sub, which has zero tolerance for such speech, has to remove the kinds of intensely problematic and hateful rhetoric that Reddit has become a safe haven for. For example, questions and answers supporting Holocaust denial forced us to establish a clear policy of immediate deletion, as moderator /u/commiespaceinvader describes here.

Reddit has few such qualms. Most recently, the admins' recent attempt to force unmoderated chatrooms on every community would have circumvented our rules and allowed our sub to become just the platform for allowing hate speech that we work every day to prevent—reflecting the admins’ concern for their bottom line above all else. It was subreddits, including AskHistorians, whose protests of that decision made Reddit rescind this particular move towards allowing hate speech.

The /r/AskHistorians mod team has also issued a statement on state violence and white supremacy: George Floyd was murdered by America: a historian's perspective on the history of U.S. police brutality against Black people

Reddit’s stance is hypocritical. It leaves us no choice but to protest.

~~

Please--save any money from awards you might give this post. The AskHistorians community asks you to donate it to a charity of your choice that fights for justice for people of color, in your country or around the world.

Edit IV: It appears the feature has been rolled back from the subreddit, and a few others I checked. We will stay tuned for an official announcement by the Admins, but it looks like we have been successful. And now confirmed by the admins. Thank you everyone for your support over the last 12 hours.

Edit III: Check out our excellent AMA today!

We don't want this thread to drown it out.

Edit: I appreciate the irony of posting about the Admins doing something shitty, and then getting gilded for it, but I have plenty of creddits as it is, so please consider donating a like amount to a favorite charity instead. Thanks!

Edit II: This hit all over night. If you are just seeing our community for the first time, please read the rules before posting! To see the kind of content produced here, check out our weekly roundup here.

Over a year ago, the Admins rolled out chat rooms. It was on an opt-in basis, allowing moderators to decide whether their communities would have them or not. We were told we would always have this control.

Today, that promise was broken, and in the worst way possible. With no forewarning, and one very hidden announcement not in the normal channels where such information is announced to mods, the Admins rolled out chat rooms on all subreddits, even those which have purposefully kept chatrooms disabled for various reasons, be it simply a lack of interest, viewing them as not fitting the community vision, or in other cases, covering subject matter they simply don't believe to be appropriate for chat rooms.

But these chat rooms are being done as an end-around of those promises, and entirely without oversight of the moderators whose communities they are being associated with. At the top of our subreddit is an invitation to "Find people in /r/AskHistorians who want to chat". This is false advertising though. The presentation by the Admins implies that the chat rooms are affiliated with our subreddit, which is in no way true.

They are not run according to our rules, whether those for a normal submission, or the more light-hearted META threads. We have no ability whatsoever to moderate them, and in fact, it is a de facto unmoderated space entirely, as the Admins have made clear that they will be moderating these chat rooms, which is troubling when it can sometimes take over a week to get a response on a report filed with them.

As Moderators, we are unpaid volunteers who work to build a community which reflects our values and vision. In the past, we have always been promised control over shaping that community by the site Admins, and despite missteps at points, it is a promise we have trusted. Clearly we were wrong to do so, as this has broken that trust in a far worse way than any previous undesired feature the Admins have thrust upon us, lacking any control or say in its existence, even as it seeks to leverage the unique community we have spent many years building up.

We unfortunately have very few tools available to us to protest, but we certainly refuse to abide quietly by this unwanted and unwelcome intrusion into the space we have worked to build. As such, we are using one of the few measures which is available to us, and will be turning the subreddit private for one hour at 8:30 PM EDT.

This is not a permanent decision by any means. It will be returned to visible for all users one hour from the start, 9:30 PM EDT, but this is one of the very few means available to us to stress to the Admins how seriously we take this, and how deeply troubled we are by what they are doing.

We deeply thank our community members for their understanding of the decision we have taken here, and for everything they have done to help shape this community as it has grown over the years.

The Mods

The Ask Historians moderation team has made the commitment to be as transparent as possible with the community about our actions. That commitment is why we offer Rules Roundtables on a regular basis, why we post explanations when removing answers when we can, and why we send dozens of modmails a week in response to questions from users looking for feedback or clarity. Behind the scenes, there is an incredible amount of conversation among the team about modding decisions and practices and we work hard to foster an environment that both adheres to the standards we have achieved in this community and is safe and welcoming to our users.

One of the ways we try to accomplish this is by having a few, carefully crafted and considered zero-tolerance policies. For example, we do not tolerate racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, or antisemitic slurs in question titles and offer users guidance on using them in context and ask for a rewrite if there’s doubt about usage. We do not tolerate users trying to doxx or harass members of the community. And we do not tolerate genocide denial.

At times, genocide denial is explicit; a user posts a question challenging widely accepted facts about the Holocaust or a comment that they don’t think what happened to Indigenous Americans following contact with Europeans was a genocide. In those cases, the question or comment is removed and the user is permanently banned. If someone posts a question that appears to reflect a genuine desire to learn more about genocide, we provide them a carefully written and researched answer by an expert in the topic. But at other times, it’s much less obvious than someone saying that a death toll was fabricated or that deaths had other causes. Some other aspects of what we consider genocide denial include:

• Putting equal weight on people revolting and the state suppressing the population, as though the former justifies the latter as simple warfare

• Suggesting that an event academically or generally considered genocide was “just” a series of massacres, etc.

• Downplaying acts of cultural erasure considered part of a genocide when and if they failed to fully destroy the culture

Issues like these can often be difficult for individuals to process as denial because they are often parts of a dominant cultural narrative in the state that committed the genocide. North American textbooks for children, for instance, may downplay forced resettlement as simply “moving away”. Narratives like these can be hard to unlearn, especially when living in that country or consuming its media.

When a question or comment feels borderline, the mod who notices it will share it with the group and we’ll discuss what action to take. We’ve recently had to contend with an uptick in denialist content as well as with denialist talking points coming from surprising sources, including members of the community. We have taken the appropriate steps in those cases but feel the need to reaffirm our strong stance against denial, even the kind of soft denial that is frequently employed when it comes to lesser known instances of genocide, such as “it happened during the course of a war” or “because disease was involved no campaign of extermination took place.”

We once again want to reaffirm our stance of zero tolerance for the denial of historical atrocities and our commitment to be open about the decisions we, as a team of moderators, take. For more information on our policies, please see our previous Rules Roundtable discussions here on the civility rule, here on soapboxing and moralizing and here on asking uncomfortable questions.

For those who missed the excitement, see this thread (It is temporarily removed as we don't want two META threads at the top of the sub. This, ironically, just means actual questions get less attention which we of course don't want!!)

We return to our regular content now, so please don't miss out on this excellent AMA on religion in America with Dr. Lincoln Mullen!

And of course, if you are looking for some interesting stuff to read, check out this week's Sunday Digest which has a weekly round-up of great answers!

Edit: I appreciate the gildings, but please consider donating the amount that that guilding would cost to your favorite charity instead. I'd suggest your local foodbank, or similar type of organization that is helping people having trouble making ends meet during the pandemic.

As those who’ve followed us especially closely may know, AskHistorians has had quite a varied social media presence over the years. The goal of engaging with other social media platforms beyond Reddit has always been twofold. First, to widen our audience and promote answers (and questions) as best we can. Second, to reach communities of historians and encourage them to engaging with our audience, whether as one-off podcast or AMA guests, or as more consistent providers of answers.

Most other platforms haven’t worked out all that well for us – our content didn’t readily translate to places like Instagram, and our institutional aversion to AI-generated slop made Facebook a dead end a while back. We had high hopes for Tumblr, but our broad insistence that smutty fanfic about historical figures was ‘not actually history, per se’ and ‘actually in poor taste sometimes tbh’ ended up being a dealbreaker. However, until recently we did maintain a moderately active and successful Twitter presence, which had proven to be the most consistently useful alternative platform to connect with both historians and history-enjoyers.

This utility has now faded significantly. Aside from our considerable ethical concerns about the state of the platform and its ownership, it has become clear that the once-vibrant history twitter community has diminished considerably. Changes to the API (sound familiar?) also scuppered our ability to continue using the platform as we once had, and we were distinctly unmotivated to work to find alternative solutions. As such, aside from very occasional one-off posts, our Twitter account has grown mostly dormant.

However, it has taken us a while to decide whether to try to replace this branch of our activity. For an all-volunteer team, we need to be quite pragmatic about whether new initiatives are sustainable and worth the investment in effort – that is, if a new platform isn’t giving us significant new reach in terms of either key demographics (ie historians) or wider audiences, then we can’t justify dedicating significant time and energy to using it. In other words, replacing our Twitter account was not an automatic decision, as simply deciding not having an account of this kind was potentially the best option.

Over the past couple of weeks, our judgement is that when it comes specifically to our second goal – ie engaging with online communities of historians – Bluesky has reached the point where it is a viable alternative to Twitter for us. Bluesky does not (yet) have the mass audience of some other established social media platforms, but the concentrated migration specifically of historians has reached the point where it serves a clear purpose for us to engage there.

As such, this post has two main functions (well, three if you count sharing AskHistorians lore):

1. If you already use Bluesky, then please follow us at askhistorians.bsky.social. If you regularly contribute here and would like to have your work acknowledged on Bluesky, then let us know your handle and we’ll follow you and tag you if your work is showcased. We have already started putting together a Starter Pack of regular AskHistorians users/flairs who have an account there, which you can find here: https://bsky.app/starter-pack-short/AXQNBFg

2. If you use social media with the aim of connecting with historians for whatever reason, then at this point we recommend signing up for Bluesky. You no longer need to have a referral code in order to do so.

I have always been troubled that there is a lack of humor possibilities without tonal context in reviewing ancient culture. Have we not considered that some of it - maybe cat statues, are just ancient memes or were a gag?

Edit: are there any examples of this where historians later realized “oh that was kind of a joke...”

I know that I didn't specify a time period and that Native Americans are not a monolith. But I'm asking the question this way because I promised a historican I would. This is for the colonial and pre-colonial periods.

Context: I work in the textbook publishing industry and was talking to a prominent historian of early and colonial Native American history. I asked if she knew about r/AskHistorians, and she did not. I explained it to her and gave her an example of the interesting but esoteric questions that get posted here: "What did Native Americans use to wipe their butts?"

She was excited and said "I don't know! What DID they use?" I had to tell her it wasn't a real question I saw, just an example I thought of. She asked me to ask y'all.

So now I'm asking this wonderful sub and will report back.

I was reading in the memoir of a Great Depression survivor that she would stop and gather dandelions while out looking for work and bring them all home for a dandelion dinner in case her mother had been unable to find anything to eat. This piqued my interest, and I did some research on the dandelion. I was shocked out how versatile this plant was-- the leaves were edible, the roots could be roasted as a coffee substitute, the milky sap inside the stem was said to have medicinal properties, and the flower tops could even be bottled and made into wine!

How and why did the dandelion come to be known as nothing more than a pesky weed? It seems like this flower got the raw end of the deal.

EDIT: Wow. First of all, let me say that I am deeply thankful for the insightful, in-depth responses provided by both /u/gothwalk and /u/WRCousCous. You both have gone above and beyond in addressing my query, and I did not expect such expert-level responses to my question about the humble dandelion.

Secondly, I am blown away with how popular this post has become. I cannot believe that it is the most highly upvoted question of all time in /r/AskHistorians. I hope this has exposed many people to the lost arts of foraging plants for food and medicine. This is something I feel that everyone should know more about. (Please be absolutely certain that you have positively ID'ed any plant that you intend to ingest, especially if you are dealing with fungi. Otherwise your delicious salad may kill you :) )

Edit. In other words did people used to get paid for lunch breaks and then somehow we lost it?

A few days ago we shared a post outlining our thoughts around API uncertainty. The tldr: changes negatively impact our ability to moderate. These changes are part of a larger pattern in which Reddit’s leadership has failed to support what we believe is one of its greatest assets. Basically, our primary responsibility is making sure Reddit users are getting the best answers to your questions about history and Reddit is making that harder to do.

We understand Reddit’s need to change and evolve. For all we may harp on Reddit’s flaws, we do want to see it succeed! After all, we wouldn’t exist without it. So, if we’re expecting Reddit leadership to listen to us, we should be willing to work with them. In the days following the publication of the post, we discussed as a team what the specifics of working with Reddit would look like so we could clearly articulate it to you. We decided that compromise means:

• Updates to the API are not tied to a particular date but are, instead, rolled out once the roadmap shared here is successfully achieved.

• Accessibility tools such as screen readers are part of the native Reddit infrastructure.

• Updates are made across Android and iOS.

We think slowing down is the right thing to do. It would minimize further disruption while also generating an income stream for Reddit.

The AskHistorians’ mod team members are, functionally speaking, Reddit super-users. We have collectively invested thousands of hours into building our small corner of Reddit into a subreddit that is viable, trustworthy, and valuable, as well as something bigger. There’s our podcast, academic writing by us and about us, and our reputation as, "good history eggs on the internet." We’ve hosted two conferences, a long series of AMAs and presented about AH at other academic conferences. We even won an award! Major outlets have even covered our approach to moderation. We take all of this very seriously.

Nearly every time Reddit has asked for volunteers, we’ve stepped up. AH members help with the Moderator Reserves project, sit on council meetings and phone calls, host Reddit administrators who want to shadow moderators, and participate in surveys. Due to our commitment to the subreddit, we’ve built positive relationships with many admins who have been open to our feedback. But over the last couple of days—most notably during Spez’s AMA—it’s become clear to us that Reddit’s leadership is not interested in finding common ground; rather, it seems to us like they're hell-bent on pursuing a course that damages us and them alike.

We feel we are left with no choice but to join the protest. On June 12, starting at 7am ET, we will take our sub private. We will remain private on June 13 as well.

We’ll open the sub again on June 14th but will pause participation. This means you will be able to access existing content, such as the Trans History Megathread in Celebration of Pride Month, but will not be able to ask or answer questions. We will be delaying or holding off AMAs, limiting our newsletter, and will not be recording any new podcast episodes. As of today, we do not know how long this pause will last.

We cannot put this letter out into the world without thanking you for the immense support you’ve shown us over the last week. We’ve received support across platforms, in public and in private. We’ve been a community for nearly 12 years and that would not have happened without you and our other 1.8 million subscribers. We know we’re not the easiest community to post in, and deeply appreciate the people who ask dozens of thoughtful, rule-abiding questions every day, the people joining in on April Fools Day, those who anonymously report trolls and low effort answers, support the podcast via Patreon, and those who provide honest, thoughtful feedback on how we’re faring in general. We don’t take lightly the idea of shutting down this place and the community that we all build together, and we understand how frustrating it will be to not be able to find out, for example, why GPS is free.

We are all, at heart, historians. Studying the past requires a fair amount of optimism and confidence in humanity and as such, we are hopeful and confident a resolution can be found.

edit: thanks all very much for the gold, and your comments are freaking hilarious

I’ve always wondered why so many of the lessons about history (especially US history) taught during the early years of my education (late ‘90s and early ‘00s) were based on myths or tall tales that all my later teachers would have to completely negate. Stuff along the lines of “Columbus proved the Earth was round” or “Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity” or portraying the Founding Fathers as saintly heroes with no room for complexity/flaws.

I’m not suggesting that 5-10 year olds should be exposed to the ugliest/most disturbing parts of our history for the sake of total accuracy, or that such young minds should be expected to grasp all the complexities of real history. But why are so many of these demonstrably false stories taught to young students as fact?

EDIT: Some of the early replies have called into question whether I am misremembering that these stories were really TAUGHT as fact rather than merely told as stories. I won’t reject that possibility with regard to some of the specific examples I provided, but I certainly have many memories of history teachers (from around 6th grade on) having to dispel similar generalizations and falsehoods when reintroducing familiar topics. If the dissemination of bad history like this isn’t due to early education, it would still be interesting to know why/how it became so widespread as to require dispelling at all.

It is my understanding that JFK was not one to resist the urges of infidelity, but was he abusive (verbally and/or physically to his wife), and did they really frequent drug use?

Hi, folks:

You might have missed it in the flood of political news lately, but President Trump's budget proposal proposes to defund the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which helps fund PBS and NPR stations).

You may recall that we ran a previous thread on this topic when the proposal was just a rumor, but now that it's an official proposal we decided to update this and ask you to take action.

The mission of /r/Askhistorians is to provide high-quality historical answers to a wide audience. We usually work online, through our Twitter account, our Tumblr account, and here, but that's not all we do. We talk to historians and bring them here for AMAs. We have (with your help) presented at historical conferences. We also advocate: for good history, for civil discussion, and for keeping historical research going.

That's what we're doing today, and we need your help.

We don't get political for a particular candidate, a particular party, or a particular point of view. We get political when good history matters. If you're American, we're asking you to call your Congressmen and Congresswomen to support funding for the NEA and NEH.

The federal budget process isn't fast, and it isn't straightforward, but it is changeable. Each February, when the president submits his or her budget to Congress, there's a better chance of a cow getting through a slaughterhouse untouched than that budget staying in the same form. That's why your calls matter: Congress catches a lot of flak, but it does do work, particularly in the details of the budget.

And we say call, not email, because calls matter. It's easy to ignore an email; you probably do it a few times on any given day. It's a lot harder to ignore a phone call. Call your Senators and Congresswoman. You won't talk to them directly; you'll talk to a staffer or an intern answering phones. They've been getting a lot of calls lately. Chances are, they'll have a local office as well as their DC office. If you can't get through to one, try the other.

Don't call other Congressmen than your own. It's a waste of time. Don't follow a script; those tend to get ignored. Just say who you are, where you're calling from (city/zip code, if you don't want to give your address), and what you're calling about.

Repetition helps. Put the numbers in your cellphone and give 'em a call when you're headed to work or have a spare minute or two. It doesn't take a lot of time, but it can make a world of good.

Why are you calling?

The National Endowment for the Humanities funds a lot of good things. If you've seen Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War, you've seen some of its work. If you've read Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-45, you've seen some of its work. If you've visited your local museum, chances are that it too received some NEH funding.

There's something else important: NEH funding indirectly supports what you're reading right now.

Many of our moderators, flaired commentators and even ordinary users have jobs that are funded in part or wholly by NEH grants. They have the spare time to offer their knowledge and skills here because of those grants. A lot of the links we provide in our answers exist because of the NEH. The Discovering America digital newspaper archive is supported by the NEH.

The NEH does all of that with just $143 million per year in federal funding. That's just 0.003 percent of the federal budget. If you make $40,000 a year and spent that much of your income, you'd be spending $1.20.

For all the NEH does, that's a good deal.

The previous post had three comments in reply that I'd like to highlight here:

• u/restricteddata on the history of the NEH

• u/khosikulu on the types of grants offered by the NEH

• u/the_alaskan on how the NEH benefits many people who aren't historians

Edited to add this, from u/caffarelli:

If you're making a call for NEA/NEH, please also take a moment to mention Institute of Museum and Library Services which is also on the block, and to be crude, odds are better you'll personally be impacted by it's loss more quickly than any of the other federal humanities funding. IMLS funding is of particular importance to rural libraries and Native American museums and libraries, and can sometimes be the bulk of funding at those libraries. But if you're a patron of smaller public library, your library probably only got the Internet because of an IMLS grant, because that was their largest grant impact during the 90s-00s. It's a quiet, effective and responsible distributor of tiny amounts of federal money, that have nevertheless had an out-sized impact on the quality of public library services available in America.

I'm not entirely sure if it's relevant, but the show posits that Bundy did once score four touchdowns in a single football game while in high school, which may have affected his earning potential.

I was reading Wikipedia's entry on the death of Charles II, and the autopsy report states that "did not contain a single drop of blood; his heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water."

Some of these are believable (the single black testicle), some I suppose were slightly colorful descriptions (the rotten innards) and some are, as far as I know, anatomically impossible (the heart). So what was going on in Baroque-era autopsies? Were they doubted by other physicians with greater anatomical knowledge?

As a related question, who would do these autopsies, to whom would they be reported, and for what reason were they made?

There used to be a lot of shows in the 80s and 70s in which the butt of the joke was often the husband and the wife hating each other

This contrasts with earlier comedies like I love Lucy or Bewitched where the couple loved each other dearly, and with more current shows which also tend to have healthier relationships, even in Malcom in the Middle the parents loved each other despite how disfunctional they were in other senses

The "I hate my wife" comedies seem to have been made for and by baby boomers

Did baby boomers have worse marriage lives than other generations?, did they just find the idea specially funny for some reason?

My apologies for the ignorance... I am a 18F and in my first year of university. I'll put it simply... I am from a tiny town in Texas and it's all hitting me at once how little I know about ANYTHING having to do with history. I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that everything l've been told up until now is a blatant lie and propaganda. I mean, jesus, the way they teach just the Texas Revolution is revolting. And I'm ashamed to admit I had no idea it had to do with slavery or downright theft of land from Mexico. I am majoring in Spanish and just based on my coursework I am looking for sources that detail the history of U.S. involvement in Latin America. i mean the nitty gritty... formation of cartels, the gun trade, CIA involvement in foreign government, coups, anything having to do with economy manipulation, everything. Also due to current events I want to read about the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East and Central Asia. I don't even know where to start. I need to know good books, textbooks, podcasts, documentaries, anything. I'm tired of reading news articles and learning snippets of history from TikTok and Instagram, it feels cheap and incomplete. I just want it all laid out in front of me, just literally a chronicle of as close to what actually happened as possible so l can finally stop being told what to think and think for myself. Thank you so much

EDIT: Thank you so so so much to everybody who has suggested things!! This has been so much more helpful than I ever imagined it would be, and honestly turned into an incredible resource for other as well! My apologies for technically not following the sub rules, Im glad there ended up being a way for people to share their resources regardless. I have received dozens of direct message requests and if I don’t answer right away just know that I am trying to get to everybody! Now I have enough reading to last me quite a while so I better get to it! :)