> On the day of the invasion, the Allies faced heavy resistance from the German forces

One nit - besides Omaha beach the Germans were not able to strongly resist the landings. They did not have force available to man all the beaches. Resistance only stiffened significantly when the Germans were able to centralize their forces as the Allies tried to push inland away from their artillery support.

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Which one was that?

Why was the Iliad considered to be historical in medieval times despite everyone being Christian (aka not pagan) back then?

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Time Team! My son and I loved watching it together.

There is a french animation franchise with the title "Once Upon a Time...". They did a series about human biology, history, science fiction, the age of discovery and the history of the USA and while it is dated, it's some of the best material I have experienced that gives young children a broad understanding of history and science in general.

I would start young children with that before anything else and leave deeper topics of history for later.

Edit: Also if your child starts to take interest in any part of history. Feed them books from Osprey Publishing. They go a damn good job of showing the tools and clothes of past centuries and you learn more about history if you know the technologie the people had back then in their daily lifes, than from tales of wars and political events.

It's basically fake history, similar how renaissance intellectuals claimed the christian middle age was a "dark age", modern intellectuals like to hate on the past as imperialistic to make themselves look more enlightened.

The other side are Anti-European intellectuals from ex-colonies, who use it as a tool to justify their hate of Europeans. The irony is that most of those people have the same "might makes right" mindset like those dead Europeans they complain about. They are the real life version of the french comic figure Isnogud.

Honestly it's terrifying how demented this part of humanity is. You see really well educated individuals decry an event from centuries ago as the worst thing to ever happen, only to brush off the crimes of present day political entities as something justified.

4000 Chinese non-combatants had been killed every day for the past eight years, and another 4000 non-combatants (Filipinos, Indonesians, Burmese, Rōmusha) were being killed every single day for the past 44 months. The non-combatants killed in two atomic bombs didn't equate to an average month of non-combatant deaths during WW2 in the Pacific, and yet the Japanese seem to be the only victims of the war despite only suffering ~5% of non-combatant deaths.

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My daughter is 15 now and is a history nut and it's because of Horrible Histories on TV. It also reminded me how much I love history.

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Thank you for the correction!

I’d start off with Spanish Inquisition and then go from there

> Spain just didn't invest in administering their territories and didn't develop them b/c there was little reason to. The wealth that could be potentially made would be concentrated into a few chosen subjects of the Crown, the Crown, and the Church.

That has a few parallels with what would be called crony capitalism today, extracting resources and exploiting labour…not really to improve the economy in the homeland let alone the colonies, but more to pay off the Crown and the Church, and anyone they saw as their favourites.

I wonder if that's also why a lot of former Spanish colonies (including the Philippines!) tend to become pretty corrupt and sometimes have dictatorships and kleptocracies where leaders resort to similar kinds of cronyism.

Little, if anything. Like with our other colonisers the average Filipinos think little of the Japanese as a colonial force here. At most we get taught a little about what their contributions and a list of a few of the big events that happened while they were here, but that's generally it.

If we do think about them, we tend to be more positive or apologising for colonial rule because we think they brought good things or at least weren't that bad. There are exceptions who know a bit more about the Japanese/WW2 period including the atrocities, but even they probably are neutral to at most positive about Japan today. Filipinos don't usually hold grudges against colonial powers (but can hold them against native/local opposition for years).

Where in Time is Carmen San Diego was fun. Then later the computer game " A Brief History of Time" with the accompanying book by Stephen Hawking. There was another computer game where time was all scrambled up and the player had to put time back together by knowing which object or invention could be used to solve a puzzle. Can't recall the name of the game though it was from 1995/1996. One of the first puzzles was how to lower the draw bridge to get into the castle. You had to go to the apothecary shop and get a flask of Phosphorous to add to a screen where you turned knobs to get a sine wave on the now working oscilloscope to match a carving on the stone next to it, then the draw bridge opened. Then to get into the basement you had to get the steam powered pump to draw more than 32 feet of water. The solution was to dip a bucket into cold water and put it under the condenser cylinder of the steam engine so that the steam was cooled more quickly, creating a vacuum permitting the steam pump to pump another 32 feet of water out of the basement. Now the nuclear reactor was accessible and you had to add cadmium control rods to the reactor in order to control the reaction and generate electricity so you could go to the telegraph office and send a message. But first had to find the player piano in the saloon that played horrible music because the player piano roll had been coded with Morse code not music. Put the player roll into the auto telegraph and the message gets sent in Morse code to call your mont golfier balloon to come pick you up. The game kept going with all kinds of inventors puzzles having to be solved. Cannot remember the name of the game but there was also a sinister figure who would show up and mess up time again if you were taking too long to solve any one puzzle.

I loved the horrible history books as a kid and have watched the cbbc series as an adult and loved it. Is it an accurate representation of history? No, it isn't really. Did it get me super interested in history? Yes, and I and many people I know, even the really nit picky historian types give it a pass because it gets kids into the idea that history isn't just a series of events written in boring books.

I also do school history workshops and try and bring along as many props/replicas as possible so the kids can be hands on. The best objects are:

Clothing - always one kid who tries to wear everything I have and then overheats because it's mainly wool and they were already wearing school uniform

Quern - it spins! It hypnotizes, they can see it working as the grain turns to flour and they are all waiting to take turns

Flint and steel - difficult to get right but keeps them focussed

Weapons... doesn't need much of an explanation why

Kids respond to stuff that is sort of familiar to their day to day life but not the same, it gives them something to relate to!

>Stoicism was influenced by Skepticism

No, not much at all. Stoic epistemology was overall very positive and much adverse to Skeptic arguments. The debates of Stoics during the centuries after Zeno of Citium, the founder, were mostly directed against the Middle Platonists of the so-called Skeptic Academy, who were those that actually were very influenced by the Skeptics. In fact, this skeptic alignment of the Platonists allowed the Stoics to revisit Plato and make more and more use of him, i.e. there was a Platonizing effect on the Stoa's teachings during this time. Originally, Stoicism had its roots in the teachings of the Cynic and Platonic schools along with a good helping of the Dialecticians (Megarians) and Stilpo (a 'free lancing' 'Socratic', and one of Zeno's teachers).

My boys have enjoyed a few episodes of the podcast You're Dead to Me

In a radio interview after his final term in office Truman would claim he had been misled about where they were going to drop the atomic bombs. He said he was told they would be dropped on Japanese naval bases, rather than on the residential areas almost entirely filled with sleeping women and children. I think this indicates that he did in fact experience remorse for what he and many other men were responsible for doing.

Even the most cursory reading of modern military history will show that there was no good reason at all to murder all these hundred of thousands of civilians when we did. And that’s not some liberal revisionist history. It’s the assessment of scholars at places like the army war college in Carlisle. It was a repugnant and unnecessary act.

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There's a reference in Polybius (I believe, can check in the morning), that discusses Romans bringing in captured Carthaginian mercenaries in the First Punic War. In this, the Romans were said to have made note of physical attributes that the individuals had and put them in different roles depending on that. We do have to be careful about taking this as gospel for a couple of reasons, but it does at least tell us that Polybius didn't view this as an abnormal practice or out of the realm of possibility (or even his imagination). We have some Roman infantry specialists around here so hopefully someone can comment on the possible practice further.

So this is a good question, and I think there is some room for some discussion on this here.

I think mainly you need to look at how teachers approach this subject. At the early levels we do need to stick a bit to narratives. This does create some issues as it does simplify "history" to the point where a lot of people think that just telling the stories is what historians do, when in reality we just call that class "history" for simplicity's sake. Because what historians do is far more complex, and we try purposefully to avoid narratives and story-telling.

But this method is effective for younger kids for a few reasons. 1) It's simple. To compare it with science, it's a popular meme, but there's a reason people still remember things like "mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell"; that's effective teaching. Some kids are going to want to go "okay, but what does that actually mean, what's actually happening?" and learn more, but for the average person with no real desire to learn more about cells beyond the requirements this is ensuring that kids have a basic basic basic understanding.

So in comparison to history, we might say "Ostracism was a practice in Ancient Athens created by Cleisthenes in the late 6th century that allowed the people to remove politicians that they saw as dangerous which began in the early 5th century."

Anyone familiar with ostracism at an academic level would immediately go on about the weaponisation of ostracism, how it did pretty much nothing to help the Demos, and that its origins (while still more firmly in the Cleisthenic origin/Hipparchos camp) are murky when we take into account the problems of the fragmented statement of Androtion compared with that of Aristotle and the whole τοτε πρωτον debate.

But you've lost most kids, and most undergrads, at that point. That's point 2 about why narratives are good, they're a bit more accessible for everyone. If a student shows they're really keen on ostracism and really interested in ancient Greek and historiography and want to learn these things it's easy enough to open up and start going "well, it does get a bit complicated, but..." and scale up the lessons. But if kids walk away at the end of the term knowing "Cleisthenes. Ostracism. Athens. Politicians sent away" then that's a win.

And this is visible throughout most podcasts, most youtube videos, and Popular Histories. People tend to want the story told to them, and then allow themselves to branch out if something in particular piques their interest.

And after a long winding rant which ironically boils down to "get to the point, you'll keep people more interested in that way" I'll do so. The point being that you can still teach your kids the truth, and not hide the dark parts of history from them. But also you want them to be engaged, and you want them to learn early to start exploring, to start questioning. If you tell them a bit and they just respond "okay" then leave it at that. But ask them if they have any questions, ask them what they think, get them talking and if they show interest in developing a wider understanding then you can guide them towards that. And don't be afraid to say "You know, I don't know, but let's find out" and teach them how to find information, how to check out books from the library, etc. Hell, do that even if you do know the answer sometimes.

Being a kid is kinda like an internship. You want them to understand how to do the basics and get them to the point where they can take out the rubbish without accidentally starting a fire, but a lot of interns lead to great employees, and some even to bosses. But it's not going to happen all at once. Build that foundational knowledge, and let them add to it, guide them as you see fit, but don't pile things on if they're not keen. So discuss Columbus, discuss transatlantic trade, and even slaves, but let them start to connect the pieces and just facilitate their learning instead of just megaphoning knowledge at them. Eventually you could get to a point where a kid wants that, and wants to have in depth, lengthy, difficult conversations about the dark parts of history, but it won't be on day one.

Hope this helps and I've actually answered your question instead of just ranting away.