A Recap of AskHistorians 2022-04-02 to 2022-04-08

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Popular This Week: You might have clicked too early, so here are the responses to some of the most upvoted questions from the past week:

• "What is the current, most heated debate on a topic in your specific field of study that most people are not aware of?", got some great responses - in particular check out those by /u/BeondTheGrave on the Vietnam War and by /u/JosephRohrbach on the Holy Roman Empire.

• "Why did the voters of Ukraine vote 82% to stay Soviet in March 1991 but 92.2% to leave in December?", response by /u/Kochevnik81

• "Was it actually popularly claimed that the Titanic was unsinkable, or did that part of the story grow in the years and decades after the sinking?", responses by /u/mimicofmodes and /u/yourlocalTitanicguy

• "The popular sea shanty "What Shall we Do with a Drunken Sailor" suggests throwing the titular sailor in bed with the "Captain's Daughter". Did Age of Sail captains often bring their families on long voyages? What was life like for them at sea?", responses by /u/reallyin2seashanties and /u/An_Anaithnid

• "When a Roman emperor or European king would mint new coins with his portrait (or whatever) on them, did they take the old ones of previous rulers out of circulation? Or would citizens be faced with a myriad of coins with different faces of different people?", response by /u/Frescanation

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Things You Probably Missed: Great stuff flies under the radar every week! Here is a selection of responses the Mod Team enjoyed, but didn't get the attention they deserved:

• "It is said that the European military revolution in the early modern era was caused by innovation resulting from the endless fighting amongst the various European powers. But endless conflict was also a reality in other parts of Eurasia. Then why did a military revolution not occur anywhere else?", response by /u/LXT130J

• "This is a niche question, specifically about the preservation of books in a digital format. In short, how true to the originals are the images we see online? What are the implications if preservation in digital format alters the experience of the thing being preserved?", response by /u/bloodswan

• "Why didn't Liu Bei become the emperor when he's the descendant of Liu Bang?", response by /u/dongzhou3kingdoms

• "I saw on a TikTok that Alexander Graham Bell wanted to ban intermarriages between deaf people and people who are not deaf, wanted to ban sign language, and was pro-eugenics. Is this true? And, if so, how common were these views about deaf people?", response by /u/woofiegrrl

• "Did children in the Residential school system ever fight back?", response by /u/anthropology_nerd

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Still Looking for an Answer: Sometimes great questions don't get answered. Yet. Maybe you have the chops to give these the answer they deserve though?

• "What is the history of April fools?"

• "Were the scents of ancient & medieval cosmetics & personal grooming products gendered the way they are now? Were some flowers girly & others manly? Did women back then wear cedar & sandalwood stuff (or abstract stuff like "rugged" or "nightlife") that's mostly marketed to men today?"

• "Most of the food we eat comes through complex supply chains. When did this shift happen from comparatively local production?"

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Features You Might Have Missed:

• 2022-04-05: "Tuesday Trivia: Museums & Libraries"

• 2022-04-01: AskHistorians Podcast April Fools Special 2022 – Tartaria with /u/EnclavedMicrostate

• 2022-04-01: Our April Fools for 2022: AskHistoricalFiguresAnything, aka r/HistoricalAMA

• As always, don't forget to say "Hi" in Today's Friday Free-for-All

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Features Coming Up:

• 2022-04-11: Our next weekly theme is: Christianity!

• 2022-06-03: AMA with Dr. Luke Reynolds, author of the upcoming book "Who Owned Waterloo? Battle, Memory, and Myth in British History, 1815-1852"

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Tuxedo (cat) Junction

Being a fancy boy all the time can be tiring.

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Plenty more you might have missed though, so as always, don't forget to check out the most recent Sunday Digest or else to follow us on Twitter! For a complete archive of past newsletters, check out /r/BestOfAskHistorians.

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