AskHistorians Weekly Round-Up and Newsletter | 2026-04-03

[TITLE] AskHistorians Weekly Round-Up and Newsletter | 2026-04-03

#A Recap of AskHistorians 2026-03-27 to 2026-04-02

We hope everyone enjoyed our April Fools Event where we revisited r/HistoricalAITA for a second round. Be sure to check out the round-up of submissions if you missed it though!

We also encourage you to take a minute and drop your vote on the 'Best of March' voting thread.

And we have a great AMA happening right now with Dr. Josh R. Shiver. Check it out! - What motivated Confederate soldiers to fight? What role did emotion play in their military service? How did emotions compel southern men to break cultural norms? I’m Dr. Joshua R. Shiver, a teacher and Civil War historian, and I wrote a book on the emotional motivations of Confederate soldiers. AMA!

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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:

• "How did "changing horses at an inn" work in Regency-era England?", response by u/obversa

• "Is Cinderella's famous blue dress in the animated Disney film based on any historical clothing, or is it just whatever the animators thought looked nice?", response by u/becs1832

• "How Much Whale Oil Did It Take to Keep Household Lamp Lit for an Hour?", response by u/Borobeer49

• "My great grandmother, a poor Scots-Irish woman from rural Virginia refused to eat pork because she believed that pigs "had no veins" and that they were unclean. Is there any historical or religious background that might explain this? Was this a common belief among rural Appalachian communities?", response by u/gerardmenfin

• "I'd like to ask about the "Jews and Hollywood" stereotype as an antisemitic trope (bad), and also separately about the actual history of Jewish people in the development of the US entertainment industry (interesting and cool).", responses by u/insearchofshadows and u/Frenchitwist

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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:

• "How common were Asians like Filipinos or Chinese folks in early colonial Mexico, California, Oregon and Washington?", response by u/Narwen189

• "How did the (Catholic) Irish go from escaping the potato blight and working as manual laborers, to electing one of their own to the New York City mayorship in 40 years?", response by u/fearofair

• "Are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey the oldest versions of those stories we have?", response by u/kiwihellenist

• "How did the Aztecs view the god Tezcatlipoca, especially in comparison to Huitzilopochtli?", response by u/400-rabbits

• "How historically accurate is The Odyssey?", response by u/spencer_a_mcdaniel

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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?

• "How did indigenous peoples around the Great Lakes and along the northern parts of the Mississippi River view these large bodies of water? Did they think they had reached the ocean or was that even a concept for them?"

• "Last night a friend took me to a bar with music so loud we couldn't hear each other shout! How and why did this become an acceptable industry standard?"

• And if you have only a few minutes to kill, be sure to check this week's "Short Answers to Simple Questions" thread, as you might see something you can help with!

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Flair Profile of the Week: Looking for some old classics to read? This week the [randomly selected flair profile is that of u/antiquarianism](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/antiquarianism), flaired for 'Prehistoric Rock Art & Archaeology of Africa and North America!

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Features You Might Have Missed:

• 2026-04-02: AMA: Creating an Informed Citizenry in the Early Republic with Dr. George Oberle

• 2026-03-30: "I am Dr. Josephine Hoegaerts, here to talk about voices, what people sounded like in the past, and my book “Speaking, Stammering, Singing, Shouting: A Social History of the Modern Voice”. AMA!"

• 2026-03-27 : "I am Olivia Weisser, a historian of medicine and author of The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London. Ask Me Anything!"

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

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Features Coming Up:

• April 6, 2026: AMA with Dr. John Garrison Marks, author of Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory
• April 8, 2026: AMA with Dr. Noah Eber-Schmid, author of Founding Fanatics: Extremism and the Formation of American Democracy
• April 10, 2026: AMA with Dr. Anny Gaul, author of Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato
• April 13, 2026: AMA with Dr. Michael Bycroft, author of Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution
• April 14, 2026: AMA with Dr. Camilla Townsend and Josh Anthony, editors of After the Broken Spears: The Aztecs in the Wake of Conquest
• April 17, 2026: AMA with Dr. Mills Kelly, author of A Hiker's History of the Appalachian Trail
• April 20, 2026: AMA with Dr. Charles L. Ponce de Leon, author of Rolling Stone and the Rise of Hip Capitalism: How A Magazine Born in the 1960s Changed America
• April 21, 2026: AMA with Dr. Ciruce Movahedi-Lankarani, author of Accelerant: Energy Infrastructures and the Natural World in Making Modern Iran
• April 23, 2026: AMA with Dr. John Wendt, author of Procuring Victory: The Army Quartermaster and the Economics of Expansion in Nineteenth-Century America

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Corgi Corner

Birthday Blep

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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 Bluesky! For a complete archive of past newsletters, check out r/BestOfAskHistorians.

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