Did nearly 1/2 the population wander around nearly blind? Or is astigmatism and nearsightedness a relatively recent phenomenon? If vision issues are a defect, why didn’t natural selection weed that out?

I am Chinese, and in China there has long been a common narrative about the "Big Four" Allied leaders of World War II: President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, General Secretary Stalin, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. However, in many English-language sources, I usually see only the "Big Three"—Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin—with Chiang not being placed on the same level.

I am wondering whether the idea of the "Big Four" is mainly a Chinese interpretation that gives China more prominence, or whether it is also internationally recognized. After all, China was still a poor and largely agricultural country during World War II. Did Chiang Kai-shek really have enough influence to be considered one of the four great Allied leaders?

Or rather, what we would now recognize as DID? I know it’s debated whether DID is real which is why I’m curious… did Sybil solely invent DID or were there people who might have actually had it before her time?

I looked into it briefly and Wikipedia suggests it did happen, but not the way it was presented.

It appears to me the theory became very widespread from when Maines made the theory, won the American Historical Association's Herbert Feis Award and was the inspiration for Sarah Ruhl's 2009 play In the Next Room and Tanya Wexler's 2011 film Hysteria. Until 2018 apparently when Maines conceded her theory was likely very exaggerated

"I never claimed to have evidence that this was really the case. What I said was that this was an interesting hypothesis" - Maines said, when her theory was challenged by Lieberman. But what did she mean?

From Lieberman's Wiki: Lieberman disputes the theory that Victorian doctors used vibrators to cure women’s hysteria. Lieberman traced the theory back to Rachel Maines’ The Technology of Orgasm, and while agreeing that sources do back up claims that Victorian doctors used vibrators to treat upwards of 300 different diseases (hysteria being one of them), none of the diseases were cured by vibrators.

On this same note, Lieberman also argues that Victorian vibrators were penetrative in purpose, and did not appear to be targeting clitoris stimulation

So basically vibrators were used but they didn't cure it? Maybe someone else knows more here

I recently got into family genealogy, and I discovered that one of my ancestors was murdered in antebellum Texas. His killer was the son of a prominent politician, and the political scandal that surrounded the crime touched on themes we would recognize today: stacking the judiciary, the power of pardons, etc.

Others have written about this case before.

But something new has come up from my genealogical research. My ancestor actually came from a family of slaveholders, and I've become pretty convinced that he and some siblings did something remarkable: they conspired to buy all the slaves from their father's Maryland estate and set them free. They weren't abolitionists or anything. In all likelihood, they had grown up in close proximity with the people their family owned and didn't want to see them sold off and their families broken up.

I started writing about it, and now I've got 3000 words just on my ancestor's early life. My question is...what should I do with it?

Regardless of whether he actually drank as much coffee as he claimed to, Balzac seemed to be a guy who like a lot of coffee. How was someone drinking a ton of coffee in mid-19th C France going to be preparing it?

Thanks!

I'm aware that both the White House and the Press attempted to minimize the knowledge that the president couldn't walk, but at some point after his death it obviously became widely known. My question is when exactly that happened, and what were the reactions to the truth? I just watched a movie from the 60s that portrays him as disabled, so it obviously happened sometimes within that 15 year span, I'm just curious as to the how, and as to what opinions people had to it?

In both print and on screen, it appears that rural towns in the UK are very dangerous places to be, with murders a plenty, often solved by citizen sleuths like Miss Marple, Father Brown, and many more.

Have there been any actual, successful amateur investigators upon whom these characters are based? Even the most famous characters like Sherlock Holmes and Auguste Dupin appear to have been inspired by characteristics of real people in other professions.

I’m pretty sure that being afraid of the dark is not a new thing as much as a primal one…but electricity is a relatively new thing. I was wondering, then, how did children of the past sleep at night. Now, I’m pretty sure that most children from working class families probably just had to deal with it,but what about children from wealthier families, who presumably could afford otherwise? Did they put candles on during the night or keep the fireplace on? Did parents complain about how many candles a kid went through in a short amount of time?

Film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_Star_(film)

Historical character: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Armitage_Brown

I’m an English tutor and after-school teacher, and some of my high schoolers are learning rhetorical analysis. The thought hit me that I can’t remember a true oral speech from anyone earlier than around 1550. Of course, I’ve read pieces from classic Greek philosophers, but at least as far as I’m aware, those weren’t necessarily performed orally, but were philosophical treatises that were written down rather than spoken. Were there any emperors, kings, ancient revolutionaries, etc., that gave a speech in person that was so memorable that it was written down or referenced in documentation? It could be from anywhere in the world!

Various sources refer to the execution of two Oxford students leading to an exodus of students from Oxford to Cambridge, but the circumstances are maddeningly vague. Some sources say they caused the “death of a woman,” and some add that it was an accidental death, without providing details. One says that the two executed weren’t responsible; they were the roommates of the one responsible (adding again that it was an accident).

Some sources say that prosecution of Oxford students was generally prohibited because they had taken orders in the church. One source waves away the event, calling it “strained town-gown relations.”

What’s the deal here?

I don’t understand, there aren’t any Italian clauses to peace of Westphalia, Austria still acted as overlord to Milan and Mantua in Spanish War of Succession. And Habsburg claims to north Italy outlived the HRE itself! What gives?

I know that he was not a slave when the Haitian Revolution began. Looking around on the internet I learned that he was freed from slavery in the 1770s, owned property and even slaves. But why would a French plantation owner free a slave? I know that sometimes a US slave could work for money on the side and eventually buy their own freedom. Did he do that? Was his owner liberal?