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This is a very under discussed era of the US, 100% agree. I’m still not super familiar with the era, but much if the little that I do know was pretty mind blowing and changed the way I looked at the US fundamentally

A lot of people are forgetting that the black plague wiped out a lot of people.

However the Irish might escaped the worse and could have fished in Newfoundland or Nova Scotia

Which means they could have been travelling to Newfoundland on dry in the mid 1400s. They had plenty contact with the English and Vikings and trading with them and would have had knowledge of Viking exploits a few centuries earlier

The reason I mention the plague. There were continual outbreaks in the near east and Central Asia and Europeans might have just stayed away and the Silk Road closes when the ottomans take over Constantinople meaning Europeans turn to explore the western ocean

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This stuff is complicated, but you can already see a rehabilitation of Stalin's image. The economic hardship in post Soviet Russia, the incompetence of the government, propaganda about the predations of the west all have contributed to his image among people who are dissatisfied with Russia's current condition. I imagine as Russian society breaks down more we'll see a stronger move to beautify Stalin.

For Hitler it probably won't happen b/c his legacy is such a failure. Stalin died on his own terms, not cowering in a bunker as his society was utterly destroyed by his own bad advice. There were no forced migrations of millions of Stalin supporters into Georgia or some kind of equivalent like post war Germany had. The benefits of Hitler's corruption weren't widespread enough or long lasting enough to create any kind of constituency to try and call back "the good old days." Most of the people who would make that up are obvious misfits and usually pretty embarrassing. Hitler's rule was just too closely tied to devastation to really have any other legacy. He didn't industrialize Germany. He bankrupted the economy in about 6 years and then on top of all his other atrocities basically destroyed Germany.

Here is one from a little farther south. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_penny

I like the US from about 1850 to 1940. There was just a huge sea change in the understanding of the Constitution, economic institutions, and development in the country. It's a fascinating period to learn about. A lot of the conflicts from that time are still driving politics to this day. Right now we're basically in a reversal of Constitutional understanding back to a Lochner era reading where civil rights aren't important but economic rights of the elites are paramount. This is basically con law from 1939 to 1870 in reverse.

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If I recall correctly, the Democrats had to limit the benefits of the New Deal that went to African Americans to retain the support of the southern Democrats.

That's a lot of good times

What was the average monthly salary in 1938 Austria (more specifically Vienna) after the Anschluss?

This happened over a long period of time that really started after 1915. You had the big boll weevil infestation in the south and Black sharecroppers, people tired of the constant violence and intimidation, economic refugees, etc strated to immigrate to northern cities. The GOP in the northern cities was a lot like the financial wing of the GOP today, with a concentration on small business owners, big corps, low tax policy. B/c of that they didn't really have any institutional infrastructure to integrate Black voters into their political machinery. But the Dems, even though being still racist, did know how to organize the laboring class. So you start to get this uncomfortable alliance of both groups saying, we don't really trust each other, but if you help us, we'll help you. A famous example of the uneasiness of the relationship is Chicago, where the Black voters supported Daley even knowing he had participated in the race riot of 1919 during the Red Summer.

There were set backs to this relationship, Wilson's presidency was an example. The party leadership had to balance the conservative racism of the southern wing of the party, the labor jealousy and racism of the northern party, and the needs of big city political machines in the north.

But during FDR's presidency the Black voting community became more important and FDR was forced to grant more benefits, like guarantees of jobs for Black people in war department jobs. But he still maintained segregation in the military and federal government, and imposed segregation on federal military contractors in housing, to placate southern democrats.

As Black Americans in the south saw the help their northern kind were getting, they started to align the alternative political structures they had with the national Dem party. And they got more results, like Truman's integration of the military.

By the end of Truman's term a combination of the contradiction of fighting the Nazis for freedom while maintaining Jim Crow, the political use Communists made of Jim Crow, and the valor of Black servicemen in Korea made it pretty clear that Jim Crow was immoral. If the north was forced to face the issue they would usually do the right thing. So, the Supreme Court, even the Eisenhower justices, started to swing towards the new norm.

JFK had campaigned with civil rights as part of his platform. As civil rights activists started their bussing campaign, violence broke out across the south. This was all captured on Television and broadcast the south's brutal and savage racism to televisions across the north. This forced Kennedy to move closer and closer to the civil rights movement. He was not particularly good at it and it was awkward with lots of missteps, but that's the direction he was pulled in (Tom Ricks has a new book, Waging The Good War, out that should be easy to find that gets into how the Kennedy brothers were used to leading and very uncomfortable not being in control of the movement. JFK didn't have time to learn and adjust but RFK did. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/08/thomas-e-ricks-civil-rights-january-6-waging-a-good-war-book-military-history)

During LBJ's term, the need for the civil rights act was pretty obvious. The civil rights activists used a couple new strategies. One was having white college volunteers come down to the south to work with them and the other was to involve children (high school aged) in their activism. While a lot of Americans could look away as Black people were brutalized, it was impossible for them to ignore attacks on children and young white Americans. LBJ was able to get several civil rights bills passed.

And that's when the break gets dramatic. There were still prominent Black republicans like Jackie Robinson who wanted to work with the party. But Barry Goldwater sensed an opportunity. He started claiming that segregation was a "states' rights" issue. He refused to condemn groups like the Ku Klux Klan that showed up at his rallies. He moved GOP primaries (illegally) into segregated venues to keep out Black Republicans, and opposed the civil rights laws and court decisions ending segregation. He turned the GOP convention into a near race riot that drove out even the most dedicated Black Republicans.

Goldwater failed, the violence and barbarism was too much for people. The Alabama murder of 4 little girls at church was too much for people who considered themselves civilized and Christian to tolerate and Goldwater failed to respond. The parties really changed at that point. Southern Dems switched, they had already started leaving the party with the Dixiecrats, but now went over to the GOP. Nixon formalized it into the Southern Strategy and the election of Reagan and his dog whistles made it clear to Black voters where the GOP stood. The GOP was able to gain influence among white working classes in the North and the west by playing into this racism too. A lot of Nixon's support and the organizing for the future GOP came from California housewives in places like Orange county that were worried about integrating schools in S. California which had seen a big increase of Black people who moved to California for the war industry jobs. The best book on covering the whole topic I know of is Joshua Farrington's Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP. You can hear an interview with him on The New Books Network.

https://newbooksnetwork.com/joshua-d-farrington-black-republicans-and-the-transformation-of-the-gop-u-pennsylvania-press-2016

A couple good books on how the GOP picked up northern working class White people by playing to racial anxieties is Nick Buccola's The Fire Is Upon Us about William F. Buckley and James Baldwin. Buckley's campaign for mayor of NYC. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/books/review/the-fire-is-upon-us-nicholas-buccola.html

and Ralph James's Northern Protest about MLK's failed Chicago campaign. It's out of print but still relatively easy to get from a library or through ILL. Rick's book touches a little on it and ties it together with the failed campaign in XX.

Michelle Nickerson's book, The Mothers of Conservatism, is a good book on the political organizing women did for the GOP in places like Orange County. You can hear an interview with her on The New Books Network: https://newbooksnetwork.com/michelle-nickerson-mothers-of-conservatism-women-and-the-postwar-right-princeton-up-2012

Perpetual prayers for the dead and masses for the dead were meant to lessen people's time in purgatory. Most Protestant sects rejected the belief in purgatory, so they also did away with masses and perpetual prayer for the dead.

Both officially remain part of Catholic doctrine and requesting a mass for a dead loved one is as simple as calling up a local parish to request one, setting a date, and paying a small fee, it's just not practiced nearly as much as it was in the past.

Im 867-5309 years old so I have been around for them all.

Could be even older viking coins found there

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The High and Late Middle Ages and the 19th and early 20th centuries in general

John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) did indeed lead the first documented expedition to North America, however it has long been speculated that sailors already knew something was out there.

It is theorised that sailors from Bristol knew about the new world earlier in the 15th century, although there isn't any concrete evidence (to be fair, it's difficult to find sources about sailor gossip in the 1400s).
Sailors and fishermen were already travelling far into the Atlantic at this time, it doesn't seem too outlandish that some were swept far off-course and washed up in Newfoundland or similar...

Perhaps someone washed up there in the 1430s, which would explain this coin. Maybe they even made it back, but I suspect they didn't if they parted with such a valuable item.

We only know about Cabot because he was high profile enough to secure warrants from the King for his expeditions as well as funding from wealthy merchants. For my two cents, he wouldn't have been granted these without some level of proof that the new world was there.
To be fair, Columbus's expeditions had returned recently so central America and the Carribbean were known about. Maybe someone wondered how far north the New World went, but also maybe someone started taking those drunk Bristolian sailors a bit more seriously.

There are some reputable historians looking at this (see The Cabot Project), and there might even be evidence to support it. (Unfortunately an important and well regarded historian claimed to have evidence and was writing a book about it when she passed. In her will she said to destroy all her unpublished work, so the book and her claims never saw the light of day).
However, as a Bristolian myself, I like to think that we discovered the Americas ages before Columbus or Cabot and that they just stole the limelight.

The mint also withdrew many of them in a couple years.

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I heard another theory that also seems to hold validity. A prior major shift was during the 1930's. Poor and working class folks (a lot of them African Americans) moved to the Democrat party during the New Deal policies which appealed to lower-income individuals.