Questions?

Friends, Romans, Countrymen lend me your ears. History is all about questions.

“What was that? Can you repeat that?” asks a conveniently-placed near deaf octogenarian.

“Exactly. And yes it can be repeated, but we will get to that later.” I reply politely before never talking to or mentioning that old sage again.

Like I was saying history is all about questions. In fact, the word “history” comes from the Greek historia which roughly translates as “inquiry, interrogation, or 'Praise Zeus that Herodotus guy had a Halicarnassian crapload of questions.'”* That being said, let's immediately abandon the idea that history stems from a portmanteau of “his” and “story” because not only is that infuriatingly incorrect, but also because we do not want feminist censors ransacking this site like the Catholic Crusaders' 1204 Siege of Constantinople (that was not a pretty picture and let's all remember we are all in favor of spreading knowledge here.) Yes, if one of your high school history teachers ever told you that fractured fairytale they were probably not the sharpest sarissa in the Macedonian phalanx and quite possibly did not know an elbow from an Uighur nomad, but I digress.

As I was saying, history is all about questions and there is nothing wrong with that. The same teacher that claimed they were an expert on the etymology of “history” probably also told you, “there are no stupid questions.” This time they were right. Unfortunately, the answers to these questions can often get more confusing and long-winded than Herodotus' Histories (Book One of nine clocks in with a nauseating 216 chapters). That's where this blog shines. We are not here to choke your brain, we are here to make sense of it all and maybe trigger a chuckle a long the way.

Before you came here maybe you did not know: where the word “history” comes from, when Catholics sieged Constantinople, what a sarissa is, or who Uighurs are. But now, you know: the word “history” comes from Greek, Constantinople had some trouble in 1204, a sarissa is a particularly sharp weapon, and Uighurs are nomadic peoples. It's not much, but its a start.

History is full of questions and I am willing to answer them. All you have to do is ask. So send any historical questions you might have anywhere between Plutarch and Putin to dgeary4@gmail.com because we are here to answer history's questions better than anyone else in history.

*A Halicarnassian crapload is equivalent to approximately 2.2 Sparatan shit-tons.