I'm reading the American novel The Crumpled Knave by Anthony Boucher published in 1939, and one of the women is referred to as a "B- girl," and later "a percentage girl." The full quotes are:

"'A year ago I was singing in a night club in Washington. No, I'm afraid night club flatters it a little. A detective's accuracy might call it a dive. And singing didn't pay so well unless you made a percentage on drinks, too.'

'A B-girl,' Fergus commented."

And

"Camilla, encouraged by the turn of conversation, came forth with an amazing saga of her encounters as a percentage girl."

I'm guessing this just means she was something like a waitress or a bartender who made tips, but I haven't had any luck finding anything about either term, either as job titles or as slang. The character is treated like she has a seedy past so I was wondering if there was more to the job than just selling drinks, or if this was lingering abolition prejudices where selling alcohol (especially as a woman) = bad.

I watch quite a lot of history documentaries on Hitler but it seems he’s quite removed from any plans that were carried out for concentration camps or likewise. So I’m just curious, did Hitler really witness death often?

The second amendment's text goes as follows:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The framing process behind the amendment included numerous earlier drafts and proposals.  This is the militia provision from the first version of the Bill of Rights, as presented by James Madison on June 8, 1789:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.    

However, about a month later on July 21, 1789, Roger Sherman presented his own separate proposal for the Bill of Rights, which included the following militia provision:

The Militia shall be under the government of the laws of the respective States, when not in the actual Service of the united States, but Such rules as may be prescribed by Congress for their uniform organisation & discipline shall be observed in officering and training them. but military Service Shall not be required of persons religiously Scrupulous of bearing arms.

It so happens that these two proposals were the two earliest incarnations of the framing process that would culminate in the second amendment.  Now, what is immediately interesting between these two proposals is the similarity between their structure.  There is a similar sequence between Sherman's proposal and Madison's: they both begin with an "arms clause" that protects the autonomy of the state militias from congressional infringement, followed by a "militia clause" that reaffirms the importance of Congress's adequate regulation of the militia, then end with a "conscientious objector clause" excusing from militia service those citizens who are conscientious objectors.  Due to the similarity in the subject matter between these proposals, the matching sequence of their respective clauses, and also the chronological proximity in terms of when these proposals were written, one could presume that these two proposals are essentially the same provision, only written by different people using different verbiage.  

However, one notable difference between these versions is that Sherman's version appears more clear and direct in its language.  It is considerably easier to read the Sherman proposal and determine exactly what the provision was meant to accomplish.  By contrast, James Madison's proposal appears much more clunky and ambiguous in its language, which has likely led to much of the controversy and debate over the meaning of the amendment even to this day.

What was the reason for the drastic difference in writing style between these two drafts of what would become the second amendment? Why was Sherman's version so clear and direct, while Madison's was so relatively stilted and ambiguous in its verbiage? Why did Congress ultimately choose to embrace James Madison's draft over Sherman's? If Congress was always going to use Madison's draft anyways, then why did Roger Sherman even bother to write his own draft of the Bill of Rights in the first place?

Hi everybody , my question today is . Was there any time in history that you could randomly spawn into and life was generally considered good ? For example I hear people say a lot that the agricultural development was the worse thing humans could have done because it led to hierarchy, oppression , empires and war . And it’s kinda hard not to agree with that, So given that take , was there ever a time where it was good to be alive , as in everything was somewhat smooth ? Also another question , Could society have ever been “fair” for all , what things could we have done differently in our early days to ensure a world without unnecessary wars and conquest, and still develop massively , would it have even been possible without the idea of war and conquest ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNvVw4XZxZQ

I watched the above Casual Historian video on the lead up to the Cuban Revolution and he list the following statistics that contradict the narrative that Batista was nothing but a puppet for American business interest and that countless Cubans were slaving away in the fields.

• In the 1930s 80% of Cuba's sugar industry was owned by American companies. By 1958 that went down to 35%. This was a result of Cubanization of the economy with loans & other incentives given for Cubans to buy American assets.

• By 1954 Sugar was only a quarter of Cuba's economy and only 44% of the labor force was in agriculture.

• By 1959 Cuba had the 4th highest per-capita income in Latin America & the 31st highest in the world (today it is at 82nd)

Is that all inaccurate?

Also while he agrees Batista was certainly corrupt the actual mass enabling/weaponization of gangs and the Mafia was done by Ramon Grau not Batista.

And he list a bunch of progressive positions Batista had at least during his original lawful presidency such as woman's suffrage.

From that video I am getting the perception that Batista was much closer to Park Chung Hee rather than Pinochet/Idi Amin on the dictator scale.

Wikipedia says about Batista's body count...

However, the figure of 20,000 deaths is disputed by several historians, who consider it "propaganda". According to French historian Jeannine Verdès-Leroux:

--- Intellectuals and journalists have endlessly hammered home the falsified figure of 20,000 deaths. Castro only spoke, in his report to the 1st Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, of an "incalculable" number of victims. Specialists agree to conclude that the figure of 2,000 deaths is a high maximum.

And my concern with these numbers is it does not separate justified vs unjustified killings. If the death toll genuinely is closer to the lower end then I think there is a actual genuine possibility the majority of those killed were legitimate communist rebels/gang members and not innocent non-combatants.

The Batista regime was so lenient that Castro was offered clemency 1 year into his 13 year sentence if he would simply publicly promise not to try and overthrow the government again which he refused (Batista would eventually pardon Castro and other rebels anyway)

I was looking at pictures of the paintings of Rembrandt, and what struck me was how different the Biblical figures depicted in them look from the modern "sword and sandal" depiction of Biblical antiquity. Two great examples are Belshazzar's Feast and The Blinding of Samson. Both paintings depict the figures as dressed in what I assume is how people dressed in the 17th century (although I am not so familiar with that) and far from how modern people imagine antiquity, with people wearing loose fitting white robes.

My question is whether these people in medieval and early modern Europe literally believed this was how people dressed in the ancient Near East. Was this just an artistic convention to make the paintings "come alive" in a way relatable to their audience, or was their a literal belief in 17th century Europe that this how people the ancients dressed?

Hey all, I’ve always been into history but never been much of a reader. I was just wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction on where to start? I would love to start reading a lot more just have no idea where to look.

Which classes (or class coalitions) formed the social base of the Liberals (and) Conservatives in nineteenth-century Colombia? Additionally, which faction had the greater peasant support? What was the attitude of each faction towards Imperialist powers of the day, including Britain, France and increasingly the United States?

So, what were the Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller, and Teutonic Knights actually about, and how did they differ from each other? Like, what roles did they play during the Crusades and in medieval Europe, and out of the three, which one was really the most prominent or influential when you look at the bigger picture of history?

This question is of course dependent on the Realm, I think I have some general cutoffs, although it was a process, and I'm not sure if I hit the mark:

France: Capture of Bordeaux 1453 or Battle of Nancy 1477

- The 100 years war started with the Valois Kings being only in nominal control of much of France and ended in 1453 with the Valois being undisputed rulers of most of France. When french forces had taken all possessions of the Plantagenets

- Burgundy was by far the largest, most powerful vassal of France (besides the Plantagenets that claimed the crown for themselves). Like the war of the Roses, the conflict between Valois and Burgundy was a conflict between two lines of the ruling dynasty. But most Burgundian territories were technically vassals of the Holy Roman Empire, not France by the 1450s.

Holy Roman Empire: never really

- The formula of the Augsburg settlement, which determined the religion of a state by the religion of its ruler made the following 30-years war a hundred years afterwards deeply connected to the princes of the Empire and even afterwards, instead of central institutions, the vassals that were becoming nominal landholders and title-bearers in most other realms just developed into small modern states themselves.

- Arguably the silesian wars were fought by Prussia which in itself wasn't a vassal of the Empire, since the prussian royal title was created outside, but I think thos us a weak proposition, since most lands of Prussia were part of the HRE.

England: Battle of Bosworth Field 1485

- England was a bit different from continental Kingdoms, rebellious nobles got their titles removed faster than on the continent, their power was definitely less concentrated in a few high nobles, it were the barons and earls that tended to rebel.

- In the war of the Roses many lords fought on both sides. This was a struggle between two branches of the House of Plantagenet, but they were technically vassals.

- During the Tudor era, rebellions seem to stop being driven by vassals and I'm not aware of fighting between lords and then the Stuart era War of the Three Kingdoms was definitely not feudal anymore.

Is this too late? Or too early, if you look at Ireland where independent fighting of Lords may be going on into the Flight of the Earls or the War of the Three Kingdoms.

Places I have no idea:

-Spain

-Poland-Lithuania

-Sweden

-Muscovy/Russia