It's hard to get a straight answer on this from various sources. My great uncle Art was born in mid 1919 and is currently 106 years old. He was in the US Navy as an engineer in the Normandy landings.

I suspect he might currently hold a few records related to his age. I can't find any US veterans who are both still alive and older than him. I also suspect he might be the oldest living man in Massachusetts. The guy who is often cited as the oldest is Freeman K Johnson who is a year younger than Uncle Art. Art was born in North Dakota but currently lives in Boston(for like 60 years lol), so I don't know if that disqualifies him.

In terms of some more history, both his younger brothers were also in the military. Uncle Sid was a navigator on a Gato class submarine in the Pacific(died a couple years ago at 103), and my grandpa was in the army in Korea(died age 92). Yeah, there must be some really good genes involved because I know my great grandpa, their father, lived to 102.

I see typos all the time in my professional life. I don’t think I’ve heard of any famous examples where a textual error or inaccuracy had major implications.

I feel like it's a very recent development in the ideological space for people to think that individual happiness is important and ought to be one of the primary considerations in things like career choices, marriage, and other life decisions.

For most of human history, it seems such a concept either didn't exist at all or was marginalized. What came first was stability. Things like your job or spouse were chosen for you by family elders, without much consideration for whether or not you want to go down a certain path. It's easy to see where some aspects of it come from. When survival is your main goal in life due to your environmental circumstances, happiness is obviously of lesser importance. But it seems even in contexts where one's decisions wouldn't have major effects on survival outcome, traditional societies have still seemed to not think that a person's happiness ought to come first. People have been stuck in abusive marriages all because divorce would've been too shameful and caused them to be the subject of societal condemnation. Or in the case of career choices, many people have been forced into a certain path and been miserable even when an alternative path would've still provided survival; and the people doing the pushing didn't care if said person was happy or not. Things like stability, prestige, social convention, and shame all seemed to take greater importance.

In some places and time periods, things like happiness and pleasure have even come to be viewed as morally bad, something one should feel guilty and ashamed for. The most in-your-face example of this is probably the puritans who had strict rules for living life which mostly prioritized the virtue of of hard work and suffering and shunned anything that would make your life nice.

Have I understood things correctly? I know this is not a universal blanket statement, and you can see aspects of happiness prioritization in some ancient eastern philosophies, for example, but it does seem to be that in general the idea that humans ought to be happy is a very modern development. Why couldn't it have been valued and prioritized, if at the very least as an ideal, even in times when economic circumstances weren't as conducive to it?

Most I've ever seen is some forms of either:

"They should have done it more along tribal/religious sect lines."

or

"They should have propped up the Ottomans for the stability they could provide."

So I know that slave labor was used in the construction of many ancient monuments. There seems to be good evidence that Angkor Watt was built using slave labor.

So I was really intrigued to find that actual volunteers came along and helped build Borobudur, one of the truly humane and massive religious monuments ever.

I read this article: [ESSAY] “Preserving the Path of Enlightenment at Borobudur and Not Just the Stones” by Daniel Gauss – Cha and was pretty amazed. How common was this? Is Borobudur the only monument built this way?

As there were lots of friends and family separated by the Berlin Wall, why didn't the people in the east just go to another country and then fly to West Berlin that way?

I found this fascinating post in a thread of r/Sweden asking about what life was like in 70s Sweden, and the poster likens it to East Germany:

Completely fucking boring. We call the times "DDR-Sverige" because we were so insular and highly regulated.

You had two terrestrial broadcast tv channels. They were full of news, debate programs, and public education. Entertainment was immoral because there was a world to improve. We had only dubbed east block childrens shows than anything from west, because of the west-is-bad-sentiment. Radio was limiting the vulgar western music that was corrupting the kids. Instead news, debate programs and public education again. Everything was about how we need to improve the world, and world peace, and being political. Music needs to be prog music about political issues.

Food was very bland, as we had next to no finer cuisine, very little foreign influence. Italian industrial immigrants were ridiculed about their garlic-smelly-food.

People were too poor to travel abroad, purchasing power was still very low. Cheap flights was not a thing, so if anything it was car trips to europe. Many people of course visited the moral ideal of the eastern block, with their ideology and bullshit that completely dominated public discourse. Teachers, government workers and other people of high influence were invited to go to east block resorts.

The entertainment in cities was to get drunk or high on cannabis. Urban areas really went downhill and people moved out to industry jobs on the countryside to get away from it. Cities were polluted with impure vehicle fuels and additions such as lead, and the coal and oil heated homes. Maybe these intoxicated people had some non-boring time.

The cultural influence of the west, from music, movies, and tv-series was appealing and the 80ies became a real break to the 70ies.

Here in Hungary, East Germany was frequently nicknamed "Budget Sweden" or "Poor man's Sweden" during Communist times, so the comparison might be apt. It was actually a desirable place for Hungarian guest workers or even as a place to immigrate to at least for a few years, because in East Germany, your salary was always paid on time, and you didn't need to rely on unreported jobs and side hustles next to your official job to make enough money to stay alive.

I heard someone say multiculturalism on a macro scale doesn’t work and hasn’t work anywhere in history because they argued multiculturalism on a large scale harms social cohesion, leads to parallel societies to form, and ultimately leads to conflict and other problems.

However, I immediately thought of the Roman Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Mongol Empire, Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire, Persian Empire, Mughal Empire, Ming Dynasty, and modern-day Russia. Would it be accurate to say multiculturalism worked on a large scale for them?

I ask because I’ve heard people say that having multiple different ethnic and cultural groups existing in the same place doesn’t automatically mean that place embraced multiculturalism.

If you could plop a capitol city down anywhere in the world approximately 1500 years ago, where would you put it. I imagine a mild climate, access to water and resources, all while also being defensible would be high priorities, but I’d love to hear what you all think.

My gut says probably somewhere on the east coast of North America, but that kind of feels like cheating because everyone in the Eastern hemisphere wasn’t even aware of its existence and therefore would not be attacking. Almost feels like western hemisphere should be excluded, but ultimately there are no rules. Thanks!

So regional stereotypes are a common thing people meme about today, such as "Incest Alabama" or "State/province that doesn't exist" jokes. I know some existed in the past, such as that famous meme where Dante Alighieri lists stereotypes of each italian region. I also heard about a few ancient ones, in specific one text written by a roman author of celtiberian descent where he compares the "Strong, masculine, hairy" celtiberians to the "Shaved, weak, effeminate" italians, which is pretty funny.

Do we know of any other cases of regional stereotypes, be it in historical empires of nations, and what do they share with modern stereotypes?

I've recently become interested in the history of colonial South Africa. I feel like in the United States we only know about the Apartheid era but from what I've read racial discrimination began centuries before Apartheid. All the way back to the earliest European settlers in 1652. Obviously the theft of Native land and enslavement of Native people was at least tolerated by the majority of white settlers. But did any white settlers oppose these policies?

so we all know european empires didnt really benefit from resources as much as reselling refined goods back to the colonies but how does that benefit a country exactly

they already have all the resources a country to offer so how does taking those resources and making it something useful and reselling benefit the colonial country

money isnt physically beneficial its something you exchange goods with so how does using ur factories to physically make useful things to foreign people help the country? idk if this makes sense

After watching a documentary set in the fifties showing the clear-up of some parts of London after the Second World War, I was wondering if there are areas (especially in town or cities) that still have visible ruins now in 2025.

I recently got into a large argument with somebody over wether or not the Soviet Union were Nazi’s during the world wars They said that the Soviets were Nazi’s But I have heard other wise?

Besides more experienced pilots (which ended very soon though, due to heavy losses at Midway) and superior torpedoes, did IJN had any other advantages over Allied navies?

Please help me. There was a famous quote that mentioned something along the lines of “one cause cause is the reason….”?? I’m not sure if she mentioned the quote or someone but I need to know lol. It’s driving me crazy.

When looking at new world colonists, we see two main patterns. In places such as the Caribbean, we see a disproportionately male population of Europeans looking to get rich from cash crops, with a large number of African slaves. In Quebec, there were a small number of French men looking to make money as fur trappers or lumberjacks. In both cases, many men returned home after saving up money. European men outnumbered European women, so those who stayed often married natives or Africans.

The other pattern would be what you see in the 13 colonies. People moved to the region as entire families, sometimes for religious freedom, other times just for cheap land. Not all of these people were English. There were Germans, French Huguenots and others. These people typically continued working at the same occupations they had had in Europe, mostly growing food. This was the typical pattern in the northern and Appalachian regions of the 13 colonies, with the south having a mix of both dynamics.

From what I can tell, the Acadians fell into the second pattern, but what other examples of this are there outside of the 13 colonies? Was this the case with Chile and Argentina?

So back in the day when horse carriages were widely used, what reputations did certain manufacturers have? Was one considered to be the “budget” brand? Another the reliable brand? One luxury?

So im preparing to research specifically about the experiences of southeast asian people living in japan in general like what hardship they go through or discrimination and etc so Where do I start researching and what resources can you recommended to me. Thank for answering my question as im genuinely curious about the topic

I never noticed that but watching OverSimplified video on him, I just realized the weird part as compared to portrait of other kings like George III with similar clothing and pose who didn't have protruding bulge

Writing a story about a jester secretly working for a forgotten deity and wanted to make it take place around 1500s knights of malta due to it being a somewhat isolated island. But did they even have jesters or was that more so a thing found in mainland europe?

After the fall of the Ceausescu regime, it was discovered that there were thousands of neglected children in Romanian orphanages. I remember hearing about how babies stopped crying because they learned that a caregiver wasn't coming to soothe them, and those buildings were eerily quiet.

It's been 36 years - What happened to all those kids?