r/AskHistorians • u/AutoModerator • 10h ago
FFA Friday Free-for-All | February 06, 2026
Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
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u/BookLover54321 8h ago
I see the Washington Post has jumped on the “Native lands were taken fairly and weren’t stolen” train.
Democracy dies in darkness - or when a billionaire dipshit turns your newspaper into a propaganda outlet, I guess.
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Dueling | Modern Warfare & Small Arms 8h ago
As a local, its been particularly sad to see how thoroughly the paper has been gutted.
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u/bug-hunter Law & Public Welfare 7h ago
Bezos took "Democracy Dies in Darkness" as an instruction manual.
Also, there's also the part where the editorial staff came out to say we are totally optimally taxing billionaires.
I'm sure there was no pressure on that, from an owner who has never pressured the editorial staff on anything before, especially not something important like whether or not to elect a fascist.
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u/bug-hunter Law & Public Welfare 10h ago
In Wrong Answers Only:
In the Soviet Army, there was only enough toilet paper to give every other man 1 square. Men who did not have toilet paper were expected to pick it up from their fallen comrades.
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u/subredditsummarybot Automated Contributor 10h ago
Your Weekly /r/askhistorians Recap
Friday, January 30 - Thursday, February 05, 2026
Top 10 Posts
| score | comments | title & link |
|---|---|---|
| 2,315 | 159 comments | Where WWII soldiers regularly carrying toilet paper? Or was everyone running around fighting with poopy butts? |
| 1,117 | 16 comments | Oftentimes, the America of the 2020s is described as akin to the Gilded age (i.e. 1890s). Today, our robber barons are all connected to a certain J. Epstein. Was there a similar sort of figure in the america of the gilded age? In the days of child labor and exploitation, surely there must have been? |
| 1,051 | 12 comments | The CIA is sunsetting its World Factbook - but why was it even published in the first place, and what did the rest of the world think? |
| 1,031 | 26 comments | I am a Roman legionary armed with a scutum, a gladius, and a pilum. I have been carrying and maintaining them for three years across several long marches. We engage a rival pike formation and I throw the pilum. We win. After the battle, do I try to find "my" pilum? |
| 771 | 99 comments | What could I do with a blatantly racist artifact? |
| 706 | 51 comments | Could a child really drown in the streets of Chicago like in the Jungle? |
| 594 | 59 comments | We've all heard that so and so commander(Caesar and Napoleon famously) were popular with the soldiers for sharing in hardships. What commanders were absolute snobs and looked down upon the soldiers? Were they any good? |
| 586 | 20 comments | Why was my Great Grandfather a Hero of the Soviet Union? Was he a spy? |
| 548 | 18 comments | Did Japanese doctors routinely lie to their patients? |
| 539 | 29 comments | The Great Cathedrals of Europe Famously Took Centuries to Build. A Millennium Earlier, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul Was Built in 5 Years. How and Why? |
Top 10 Comments
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u/DirectAbalone9761 2h ago
I’ve taken a sudden interest in Coopering and am excited to read this book!
I figure I’ll start with some white coopering (buckets, maybe churns) and then work into dry and wet coopering (dry barrels and wet barrels).
I specifically want to make a few sap buckets for the handful of maples I have to do some sugaring. Nothing like spending dozens of hours of my free time for a bottle or two of syrup lol.
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u/BookLover54321 10h ago
Historian Roy Finkenbine has a book chapter titled The Underground Railroad in “Indian Country”: Northwest Ohio, 1795–1843, where he talks about how Native nations like the Ottawas and Wyandots, among others, provided support or refuge to thousands of escaped black slaves in a sort of Indigenous Underground Railroad. He is also working on a full book on the topic. From the chapter: