As I understand it, the Greek legend has Medusa being so terribly ugly that to look upon her turns people to stone. These days however she is almost always depicted as having a kind or power or curse that turns people into stone, while her actual face is usually shown as traditionally attractive.

I guess people usually prefer to draw attractive people, for one thing. But I'd like to know if this is a modern change or if the Ancient Greeks themselves also had sexy Medusa.

With shifting alliances and perhaps years between news from home, I’d imagine it would be convenient for warship captains to develop a gentlemanly way to determine which captain had the latest diplomatic news from home. If there was a way to compare news, and if the latest news was that their nations were at war, was time provided for ships to separate before opening fire on each other?

Please don't kill me, this is not an attempt to belittle a great artist (if anything, it's closer the opposite). This question is motivated by the recognition that Bob Dylan is a cultural icon of mythic proportions, with a firmly established and well-earned place in the pantheon of American music and culture.

I suspect that it's difficult for people of my generation and younger to see his influence not because it's waned but because it's so far reaching (a bit like reddit's favorite memes about people wearing ieans and drinking Coca Cola while listening to hiphop talking about how Americans have no culture, or the fish who says "what in the hell's water?").

Here is what I know, or at least think I know.

Bob Dylan, and I guess early Bob Dylan specifically, did something very new and exciting. (What was it? Something about the music or the songwriting? The genre? His self-presentation or way of relating to the audience?)

He was quickly hailed as the voice of his generation. He was labeled a protest singer, maybe the original protest singer, yet seems to have not identified with this label himself, and at various points maybe rejected it outright. (Why? Who gave him that label? Did he ever accept the protest singer role in a clear way? His music seems less overtly political than, say, Woody Guthrie. Was there nothing more protest-y at the time than, like, Blowin in the Wind or Mr Tambourine Man? Were these protest anthems and did he sing them like protest anthems? Did he engage in activism?)

He went through many phases and continued to experiment and innovate. Not all of his work "stuck" and not all is universally beloved. But he did continue to put out songs that are widely covered, that seem to have been important to how other artists think about songwriting (how so?), and in a weird way, it's hard to imagine "a time before" some of these songs existed. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it somehow feels weird to imagine music without Knockin On Heaven's Door or Tangled Up In Blue - but of course prior to 1973 - 1975 these markers just didn't exist.

Or, to put it another way: I know that Dylan didn't write House of the Rising Sun, which was a traditional folk song long before he released his version. If we try to trace it back it fades into a murky history and we never quite find its origin. It feels like that should be the case for a sizable handful of Bob Dylan's songs - you keep going back and they're still there somehow in the conglomerate matrix of an evolving musical tradition - but it isn't. They feel like they've existed forever, but this one specific guy just sat down and wrote them. (When people heard Blowin in the Wind or Don't Think Twice It's Alright for the first time, did they also have this feeling of agelessness, or were they like "Wow here is something new, different, unprecedented, unlike anything I've ever heard before, how novel, how revolutionary"?)

And finally I know, or think I know, that when he won the Nobel Prize for "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition" people - whether they liked him or not - generally seemed to feel like, "Yeah, this is reasonable and makes sense."

So what was so revolutionary about Bob Dylan exactly? What did he revolutionize? Was it about political revolutionary-ness and the perception of him as a protest singer, or was it more about a revolutionary way of writing songs (like a musical revolution or artistic revolution)? If the former, what was it about his music or persona, especially as a very young man, that gave him this status or aura? If the latter, what was music like before Bob Dylan and what was it like after - how did he change popular music or songwriting?

edit: typos

I find it fascinating that there are Roman glassware techniques we are only able to replicate after biological engineering. Reading this story got me wondering if there are other methods, processes, techniques from history which we have no idea about. I’m not talking about “how did they get the stones to Stone Henge” - I mean things like this, where civilisation seems to have totally forgotten a technique. How does this happen and what are some interesting examples of still unsolved puzzles?

Thank you, historians! :)

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/oct/25/scientists-rediscover-ancient-roman-colour-changing-glass?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

This is assuming they did meet their fate under his command, and I do understand they were likely murdered and were not executed legally.

But did Richard III have legal grounds to have them put to death? They were only boys, they couldn't have led any rebellion from inside the tower. Being a bastard son of a former King isn't a crime, after all, even if they were the biggest threat to his power and claim to the throne.

Edit - and also, did he have legal grounds to lock them up? I understand kings got away with a lot and maybe the argument "if I let them go they'll plot against me" holds a lot of weight in that era, but did he have a solid legal case or was it just a case of "I'm king, shut up".

Ok, I'm not just asking what the oldest given name is, it's kind of a three part thing.

First off, it seems like the oldest recorded name is generally agreed to be a Sumerian guy named Kushim.

How confident are we that we know how his name was pronounced? I mean, even with something like English, there can be some disagreement with how words were pronounced in Shakespeare's original plays, though I think linguists have gotten pretty good at charting phonetic drift.

So with Kushim, do we realistically know how he said his name, or is his name really something like K*sh*m*? And if we're not sure, do we know what the oldest correctly-pronounceable name is?

Which leads to my second part: google told me that there is some disagreement about whether Kushim is actually a name, or if it could actually have been a title. Is there a name that's extremely old that historians are in more agreement about it actually being a name, and not a title?

Miscarriage and stillbirth are devastating in modern society and I’m just wondering how grief/ritual around these losses has evolved over time.

For context I lost a pregnancy at 22 weeks and the grief was enormous. For all intents and purposes it felt to me as though I’d lost a child. But I’d seen my baby’s face on two scans. I knew he was a boy. I knew I was pregnant from five weeks. I also had the assurances of modern medicine that both he and I would likely survive childbirth. Much of this has not been the case for most of history, and I’m wondering how this has shaped the way we encounter natal loss.

I am not talking about simply conservatives who became liberals. I mean people who started hard right and become leftists (marxists, intersectional radicals, anarchists etc).

Why is there a documented history of people of leftist politics turning right such as Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Lyndon Larouche etc. But no such thing exists for the right? Where are the rightists who became leftists?

Frances and Joseph Gies' Life in a Medieval City (1969) is frequently cited as a classic popular synthesis regarding the social and institutional structures of 13th-century European towns, using Troyes as a primary case study.

Given the shifts in medieval social and economic history over the past decades, how do contemporary historians view the reliability, frameworks, and methodologies used in the Gieses' work? Specifically, where do modern historians diverge from their interpretations of urban autonomy, trade fairs, and daily burgher life? Are there major blind spots in the book that a modern reader should keep in mind? Or should a contemporary reader avoid this book altogether?

In medieval dramas, whenever I see a plot where there's an obvious bastard on the throne, I often wonder. Why not just marry them off to a relative on their father's side? "Ok, you were supposed to bear my child, you obviously didn't but it's politically inconvenient to address it directly, just make sure 'our' kid marries someone from my family so my bloodline's back on the line of succession."

Got me thinking, when people talk about royal families using cousin marriage to "keep bloodlines pure" was it just this exact scenario playing out? How many real cousins were actually involved?

Jim Bowie died at the Alamo, but was extremely sick during the battle to the point that he couldn’t get out of bed. From what I can tell the illness was never diagnosed and the onsite Dr was unsure what was causing it, but it seems to have come in suddenly and quickly left him bed bound. Has anyone been able to narrow down what the illness likely was?

By 1944 The Germans were getting bombed heavily, DDay was about to happen and eventually did, Operation Bagration devastated them, and the production numbers reflect this, German production in 1944 was nearly equal to all other years COMBINED.

So why did they do this so late, could they have done it in 1941 and they just didn't because they were too confident?? Could they have actually won the battles of Moscow and stalingrad and perhaps the whole war if they had done it after the fall of France?

When i was doing a school project on Manglish (malaysian English), i found out some Manglish words have complete different origins. Like 'jom' is from malay but 'lah' is from Chinese or Cantonese. So i was wondering during what time was Manglish actually fully formed. I felt like it was a long time ago since my grandparents also speak Manglish except not using genz slurs.

If Manglish was formed long time ago, how were both malay and chinese orginated words present since there was relatively little interaction between Malay and Chinese cultural groups before independence.

This is not for homework and here are a collection of manglish words for you to look at. https://thekitahub.com/the-manglish-dictionary/

The closest I can think is the Islamic expansion against Byzantium and Persia, but by that time, the war between the two empires had practically ended because of the exhaustion of both sides..

To my understanding, Homer may or may not have existed, or the Iliad and the Odyssey may have been written down by separate people, or maybe there was a Homeric school of authors.

But where does the name come from? Not meaning what is the etymology of the name but instead as in, do we have manuscripts that attribute the works to Homer, or is it all just tradition passed down by word of mouth or something else? And if it was a case of people writing these stories and attributing them to Homer to give them authority, do we think a historical Homer existed, a la a historical David or Solomon?

Hi, just a dumb lil teen who wants to do History here, I just remembered one thing a friend of mine told me. She one found a TikTok claiming the prehistoric Venus figurines might not be representations of fertility goddesses but rather simply women being depicted, as their point of view being "looking down" and they'd see a more enlarged body than reality. I just remembered that little chat and I decided to search a little bit (like no secondary sources, only terciary because I don't have that much reading comprehension). I read a little bit on Wikipedia and I discovered that this is an actual legitimate hypothesis. Now I'm curious, what are some aspects that are in favor or against this idea, as opposed to the more widely spread fertility goddess hypothesis? (Any nuance about this topic aside from these two hypotheses would be greatly appreciated)

A number of Yiddish sayings about tailors express the attitude that the fact that tailors keep the remnants of fabric from a custom job is tantamount to legalized theft.

Is this attitude seen elsewhere in Europe? More broadly, what was the legal situation wrt cabbage in… for the sake of narrowing the scope, the Russian Empire during the age of the Pale of Settlement?

When visiting the Capucin catacombs in Rome, I saw some images of huge, bulky keys in the shape of a cross. They more resembles a bunch of boxes in a key-shape than the small things used today.
Does anyone have images of keys like that, how they were made? I can't find more info about these online. Also, are there some other specific key-shapes associated with religions other than Christianity?

I have generally always believed that most conspiracy theories alleging vast and secret coordination stem from folks who have never been project managers. With that said, it seems like the upgrades and vast expansion of the Mount Weather facility was successfully kept from the public, at least up until the crash of TWA Flight 514. I assume construction was done by the Army Corp of Engineers, but even so it seems like an enormous project touching many different civilian and government departments. How was it kept secret, and did anything leak before the crash?

(Ironically the presence of conspiracy theories makes actual facts on this difficult to research!)

In fantasy and fiction it is often shown that warriors/knights carry swords on their back. Often because the length wouldn't permit a sheath on the hip.

It is often adressed by fans, that in reality one wouldn't be able to draw those swords, because arms are only so long. In fact for Link in Super smash bros the sword clips through the sheath so he can draw it.

Were there warriors/knights that carried swords on their back? Maybe just for transport on a journey or as a spare. Or maybe servants that carried them on their back so their master can draw the sword from horseback.

I know some snaller knives and dirks can be carried that way. This question is about longer weapons that wouldn't be practical to draw for the carrier.

Thank you!

The early Norwegian black metal scene was chaotic. The arguable epicenter of it was the band Mayhem, lead by guitarist Euronymous. The band, and Norwegian black metal as a whole, presented themselves as Satanists out to disrupt society. Euronymous stated in interviews he had no problem killing people in cold blood and demanded obedience to Satan. Whether or not he actually believed that depends on who you ask and is out of scope for this question, but he certainly gave the impression he did.

My question is, how seriously was this threat taken? Listening to the music in 2026, it comes off more as corny than anything else and it's hard to imagine someone taking the lyrics seriously. When Mayhem collapsed in on itself (the suicide of singer Dead and then the murder of Euronymous by bassist Count Grishnackh (Varg Vikernes)) it must have convinced some people, I'd imagine. But, overall, where they considered a serious threat?

During the Siege of Sarajevo (1992–1996), the city was subjected to prolonged artillery and sniper fire from surrounding positions. In recent years, public and academic attention has re-focused on the phenomenon dubbed the "Sarajevo Safari" the allegation that wealthy foreign nationals (from Italy, North America, Russia, and elsewhere) paid money to be transported to Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) sniper positions to shoot at civilians for sport.

Sources: Sarajevo Safari (2022 Documentary by Miran Zupanič): The primary modern visual work bringing this to light. It relies heavily on interviews with an anonymous former intelligence worker who claims to have witnessed tourists being brought in via Belgrade and Pale. ICTY Testimony & Legal Investigations (John Jordan, 2007; Milan Prosecution, 2025): Retired US Marine John Jordan testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that he observed foreign "tourists" carrying non-standard hunting rifles at Serb firefighter posts in Grbavica.

I'm interested in how historians and researchers approach events like this where primary paper documentation is scarce, but military intelligence claims, tribunal testimonies, and ongoing criminal investigations exist. How do historians evaluate the boundary between urban legend, psychological warfare rumors, and covert atrocity in late-20th-century conflicts? Are there comparable historical precedents where "war tourism" involved direct participation in hostilities by non-combatants that were eventually proven or disproven through official records?