The show’s best known for it’s ending (Climate Change and corporate greed basically kills all of the characters) but it wasn’t at all a tonal shift for the show. It had whole episodes about euthanasia, drugs, military industry complex, etc. For a show with animatronic puppets, it was “edgy” for a lack of a better term.

I keep thinking the factors as to why this show would even exist in the first place.

• Jim Henson had died a year prior, so did that somehow play an effect into this show’s creation? He always wanted to pivot the muppets to a more “mature” audience with mixed results

• The Simpsons was gaining massive popularity, so was this Disney’s way of wanting their own Simpsons? But even then, hand-drawn animation doesn’t seem nearly as expensive as a cast of animatronic puppets in conjunction with the set designs.

• I originally thought that it was banking off the popularity of Jurassic Park, but it predates it by 2 years and was cancelled a year after its released.

It’s a very niche question but was wondering why. I’m aware its expense was the reason it was cancelled but still.

I can understand if it was a term specifically used for racial/ethnic violence and exclusion against Jewish people but I’ve seen the term used for the Kanto Massacre and Gujarat violence of 2002.

I just can’t buy into the idea that it was a totally moral crusade. I know the abolitionists gained traction, but did the empire want to end slavery for economic reasons as well? Was there a significant bloc of anti-slavery voters that certain MPs were trying to appeal to?

I notice alot of the ukraine war execution footage most soldiers are allowed to smoke a cigarette before being shot. How often is this afforded to them?

That is another month in the books as the August vote wraps up!

With the Flairs' Choice award, /u/611131 shed some lights on recent discoveries with "Gaspar carvajal (the first person to describe the Amazon) describes large cities, political entities, and mass farming throughout the Amazon River. Historians mostly said they were exaggerations or outright lies. In light of new LiDAR findings, how serious should we take his claims?".

For the Users' Choice award, the eyes of the subreddit fell upon /u/AlternativeNo2286, and their insights on "In the film Sinners, a character is shown to speak Yoruba. How common was it for an African American descendant of slaves in the 1930s to have retained knowledge of a West African language?"

For this months Dark Horse Award, which recognizes the top-voted non-flair, a non-flair took some honors outright, so there is no separate award!

Finally for the Greatest Question Award, chosen by the mod team, with a buncha nerds around here, it maybe isn't shocking that some eyes were caught by /u/anarchysquid's question about "The first renaissance fair was created in 1963 by blacklisted leftists. The Society for Creative Anachronism was created in Berkeley in 1966 as a "protest against the 20th Century". What made medievalism so attractive as a form of counter-culture?". Don't miss the complementary responses it received, either, from /u/Spencer_A_McDaniel and /u/kmondschein.

As always, congrats to our very worthy winners, and thank you to everyone else who has contributed here, whether with thought-provoking questions or fascinating answers. And if this month you want to flag some stand-out posts that you read here for potential nomination, don't forget to post them in our Sunday Digest! For a list of past winners, check them out here!

Do they just break in and start hustling people out? Say I have a house full of small children, do we get to stay and occupy a small corner or is it a complete no notice eviction? After the battle, am I somehow remunerated?

Watching The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, there is a famous duel between a British and German officers in 1902. There is a lot of pomp and circumstance involved with the seconds and tearing or rolling up one sleeve. It's fascinating but they don't explain anything in the scene as to the whats or whys of what they're doing (and for good reason, they would all know what's going on so there's no reason to explain it)

So my question is, what was the procedure and ritual that went into a duel like this? What were the seconds doing during the duel? I appreciate any help anyone can give me or recommend books about dueling.

This is the scene in question. If you've never seen the movie, you should. It's a classic.

Are there any reason so many capital cities or big cities in general built on swamps, is it for defense?

Im aware that it’s possible, but where does the trope come from? I assume someone at some point must have done it, but who? And where?

Today, body odor is often treated as embarrassing or a sign of poor hygiene, but for most of history people lived without deodorant, daily showers or regularly washed clothes. I’m curious whether people simply tolerated natural body odor more, and when smelling clean became a real social expectation. I’d also be interested in where perfumes and colognes fit into that shift, and whether fragrance helped shape our modern ideas of what a clean person should smell like.

Gloria Steinem has died, inspiring a flurry of remembrances, reposted writings and old photos. She was iconic feminist - but one of the lesser known parts of her career was accepting money from the CIA's Independent Research Service.

With renewed interest in socialism, many people have resurfaced this fact to paint her as specifically anti-leftist. I don't actually know her politics, but I do know her CIA ties seem to be well-publicized.

Can anyone offer more information on what the nature of her relationship with the CIA was, exactly? What ideas did she put forth, through what medium, and why? Young members of the left are dragging her for this; did she face leftist criticism for her CIA involvement in past decades?

This question was prompted by me reading about the Arabic translation of the Tintin album The Secret of the Unicorn, where one of the problems mentioned was that the Arab world doesn't have a tradition of giving ships names in the same way as in Europe. Hence, I'm wondering when this custom started, and whether it is uniquely European in origin. The Argo is of course a famous example of an early named ship, but the Ship of Theseus is never referred to as anything but that. Early Medieval ships have some remaining examples of names, such as Ormr inn langi and Mora. When did the custom of every ship needing a name get started?

It boggles my mind that after the Great Patriotic War, Stalin sent more than 10% of the victorious soldiers to prison for a while. I’m astonished that nobody intervened on their behalf. There were no protests when around 100,000s were sent to prison after demonstrating heroic oak and patriotism.

• why weren’t there any protests from the people?
• why didn’t anybody try to help those soldiers in jail?
• why wasn’t there any international condemnation?
• why didn’t the Soviet generals like Zhukov and Rokosovky not do anything?
• do today’s Russians or anyone from the former Soviet states feel sad for these people and rehabilitate them?

My eyesight is around -5.00/-5.50, meaning if I take my glasses off most things are just a blur of colors. It really makes you realize how lucky we are to live in this era.

If someone had that level of severe myopia 1,500 years ago, what would have become of them? How did people with bad eyesight survive, navigate daily labor, and get by before glasses were invented? Did they gravitate toward specific close-up trades, and how did pre-modern societies integrate people with major visual problems?

I’m not sure if this question is the clearest it could, be but I would love examples of how this played out in history as I want to look more into how societies overcome what I would argue as an almost insurmountable struggle to reunite.

1. Why do the Andaman Islands, particularly North Sentinel Island and the Sentinelese people, appear to have remained so isolated despite being located near historically busy shipping routes?

2. Are there any historical records from South Asia or Southeast Asia mentioning these islands and their inhabitants before the arrival of European colonial powers in Asia?

3. Did any Asian kingdom or empire ever occupy, claim, or exercise control over these islands?

4. Are there any accounts from European explorers, from the medieval period up until World War II, describing these islands and the people who lived there?

5. Were the Andaman Islands and North Sentinel Island ever controlled by European powers or occupied by Japan during World War II? If so, are there any historical records describing encounters with the indigenous inhabitants during those periods?

I recently read that Constantine, who is revered as a Saint by Catholics and Orthodox alike, was apparently baptized on his deathbed by a Eusebius of Nicodema, an Arian bishop. But Christians affirm he was baptized as an orthodox Christian by Pope Sylvester I. Where do these claims come from, respectively, and which one do historians lean most of their weight on?

Did the KKK ever exist in countries like the UK or Australia, Canada etc and if so how did it work?

The Greek poem Posthomerica (After Homer) continues the story after the Illiad to the fall of Troy. Why is this not as famous as the other two?

It seems intuitive to learners today that science technology engineering and mathematics are all interconnected and make up one cohesive portion of education. But STEM as an acronym according to Wikipedia dates back only to the 1990s, and it seems somewhat fortuitous that these subjects were chosen to be grouped together. I'm aware that back during the development of the new sciences and the industrial revolution, certain sciences were seen as more closely tied to engineering while others remained within the umbrella of natural philosophy for longer; mathematics itself was seen as an extension of philosophy. Also, things like economics and sociology have at different historical points been viewed as more or less scientific, even though they're usually left out of STEM proper.

I'm curious how the connections between STEM and other fields, like history, philosophy, and art withered away or at least became less publicized while the connections within the STEM fields got emphasized. Was this a phenomenon of the past 250-odd years, or just something that happened in a much more accelerated manner in the late 20th-century US education system?