texts: Castaways rescued by a message in a bottle?

texts:
Has there ever been a time when people were rescued by sending out a message in a bottle to drift across the sea?

The "bottle" doesn't have to be an actual bottle.  It could be a box, a cask, a barrel, any kind of physical item bearing a message.
It does have to drift across the sea, though.  There was an incident where some people off the shore of Costa Rica tied a message to a long line dragging behind a fishing boat -- that's not what I'm looking for.  I'm looking for a case where the message was carried by the sea.


texts: Was there the idea of "peaceful Crusades"?

texts:
Was there the idea of "peaceful Crusades", which had symbolic meanings for pilgrims, or was it just the political invasion of Palestine territory, initiated by religious people (Pope Sylvester II and then Pope Urban II)?

Addition description.

I 'm sorry for the misunderstanding.
So, i mean original intention of Crusades (not the meaning).
I found some material that surprised me. (Book "The secret ideal of the templars")
It tells that the idea of the Crusades firstly mentioned by Pope Sylvester II (946 – 1003),
but this famous Pope was in good relationships with the Arabian world (he studied a lot there), and as i see Jerusalem was free for pilgrims in this time.

So, i came to a conclusion that he call to 'peaceful' Crusades (like a 'pilgrimage'). Am i right?


texts: Is whig history generally considered to be 'bad' history?

texts:
I am new to history, but what strikes me is that people in the field often complain that a certain text is too much whig history. (See wikipedia for a definition.)
It really seems like a critique, or insult to the author when he is accused of whig history. Is this true? Is whig history considered to be bad history, or are there authors who are proud of doing whig history and explicitly propagate it?


texts: Why did the Allies lose the Battle of France (1940)?

texts:
I know for a fact that Allied forces were slightly inferior to German forces  on some points. I know that the Ardennes was ill-protected on the French side. The defenses were poorly constructed, and the battle's plans were not properly executed.

Then I found this source where German military planners claimed that:

an invasion via the Ardennes had no chances of success because they had to sleep at night.
Germany mass-produced amphetamines for its armed forces.
Germans were actually surprised that their plan did work.

So, my questions are the following.

What are the objective reasons for the devastating defeat the Allies suffered in the Battle of France?
Was the French high command actually that bad?
Or did these drugs play a major role in the French defeat?


texts: Which Greeks besides Cappadocian Karamanlis spoke native Turkish, who went to Greece after 1922/23?

texts: I am interested in Greeks of Asia Minor, who were Turkish speaking but not Greek speaking, and who fled to Greece after the Turkish-Greek War; but before Lausanne Treaty. I am not looking for those who migrated after the population exchange treaty (such as most of the Karamanlis). (It can still be groups of Karamanlis, who fled during or right after the war).


texts: When did people first started to consider lead poisoning as a possible problem?

texts:
In our modern view lead poisoning is very bad for cognitive development and might even bring people to commit more crimes.

When in history did people first started to see lead as a possible problem?


texts: Civilians in Napoleon's Grand Army when he invaded Russia

texts: It is fairly well documented that Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in 1812 was somewhat slowed by the large amounts of civilians following the army. My question is - where did these civilians come from and why did the Grand Army accommodate them? What happened to them when they were captured by the Russians?


texts: What was the Romans or Roman Empires opinion on the Vikings?

texts: How were they depicted by the Romans in Ancient History?


texts: Has anybody a complete list of Obelisks in the World?

texts:
I'm interested to see if we can build up a full list of all Obelisks around the world.
It would be great to have the coordinates of each location, so I can mark them on Google Earth.

Yes, I did do a Google search and it came up with an old question on this forum and on skyscrapercity.

So I would like to see what knowledge we have about these symbols of Ra.
(Edit 20th February)
By which I mean any Obelisks of significant size.

I want to see if their location and time of construction is linked to center of cultural dominance.
I find it intriguing that the Washington layout matches the one in the Vatican St Peter square.

I would like to find any older and newer.


texts: Why was a 10-year old kid appointed consul?

texts:
This guy was appointed consul in the Eastern Roman Empire in 491 when he was 10 (ten) years old. As far as I know this was a rather irregular proceeding - I don't recall other cases where children were appointed consuls (the only thing that comes to mind is a certain horse but he didn't get the job in the end).

Presumably this was done because the boy belonged to an important family of the military aristocracy and the emperor wanted to show a token of appreciation for their support. But the question still remains - why in this particular way? It has a very un-Roman feel about it. It would have made more sense to make the boy's father consul, wouldn't it? But perhaps the emperor didn't want to raise this man too high so he gave the plum title to his son instead?

And of course, I looked up the date - 491. It's just when Zeno died and Anastasius succedded him, so there is a good chance the weird proceedings had something to do with the change of regime - but how exactly?

Or, perhaps I am wrong, and it was a Late Roman custom after all to appoint children to the position of consul?


texts: Was the United States meant to be a confederation of states?

texts: I read the Constitution, and, if I recall correctly, no members of the Federal government were to be elected by the common people according to the original documents. Governors, however, were elected by the people. Does this mean that the United States was meant to be only a confederation of states, where every state almost acted on its own?


texts: Recommended electronic versions of old public domain US history textbooks?

texts:
I realize it's common practice for historians use primary sources, but what I want is some old US history schoolbooks pre-copyright, say 1700-1900. Something high-school level or higher (i.e. not for little kids).

Unfortunately Project Gutenberg does not allow searching by publication date and I don't have any idea of what authors to search for. Any recommendations or suggestions for where to begin?

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?start_index=26&query=american+history


texts: Did Hitler, or any non USSR residents in the 30s-40s know about Stalin's purges?

texts: In Downfall, Hitler laments about how he should have purged the military officers like Stalin did, so my question is: would people have actually known about Stalin's purges during that time ?


texts: US Army stations in France during World war 2

texts:
My grandpa served in World War 2 as a technical Sergeant for the Signal corps (414 signal company).  He kept a very extensive list of everywhere he traveled and I'm trying to put together a map of all of these places for him.  One place he listed was Ecramarville .  I've searched everywhere but cannot find a city with a name like this.

I'm hoping somebody out there knowledgeable in European geography, especially as it relates to World War 2, can help me out.  The previous entry was boarded boat at Southampton for France.  This gives me a reason to believe the city is in France.  The entry immediately following this is Rennes , which is also in France.


texts: When did the Egyptians stop wrapping their dead in bandages?

texts: I'm curious as to when the Egyptians stopped wrapping their dead in thin strips of fabric and transitioned to burial shrouds. Any historical speculation as to the reasons for this transition would be appreciated as well.


texts: What were the key factors to the fall of domestic socialism in the USA?

texts:
During the late 1800s, and early 1900s the United States saw the rise of trade union membership, the coming and going of the populist party, and watched the progressive era come to institute reforms to correct the social damages of the Gilded Age.

During this time, we see the rise of a small domestic socialist party, even with some minor political successes, and yet by the 1920s, many of these groups have lost momentum, have declining memberships, and have seemingly been bullied out of existence.

What are the key factors that really led to the collapse of this movement during this era?


texts: Why does English use Roman months, but Germanic days of the week?

texts: From what I understand, the Germanic tribes borrowed their calendar and names for days of the week from the Romans. But they decided to localize the gods - Thor's day, Frey's day, etc. How come the months didn't get the same treatment, and are still named after Octavius, Augustus, Julius, etc?


texts: How much in total did Nazi Germany spend on their war machine

texts:
How much German marks did Germany spend on there army during WW2.
They had around 13 million soldiers they had to pay them and manufacture there gear.


texts: Could depicted items (brooch, urn, key) really be 3000 years old?

texts:
My father, who died a few years ago, has left the depicted items to me. Apparently he found them as fragments near a local hill. He had the items dated by some authority and according to that source they apparently are from 1000 BC and in the Illyrian tradition. They are said to be a brooch, an urn, and part of a key (depicted from left to right).

I'd be curious how you would go about re-dating such items without too much effort or trouble? Could the items really be that old (but then, all the natural stones close to the spot where they appeared are much older :) and belong to the indicated time and culture? I can say a bit more about location, etc., later but I'd like to hear some clean-slate opinions first.


texts: Is there a name for analyzing historical societies based on who murders who?

texts:
When I was in college mumblety years ago, I had a professor who mentioned an interesting idea I'd like to learn more about. While discussing the society of the Roman Empire, she mentioned in passing that one way to analyze a historical society was to look at who was committing the murders, and who they were murdering.

So if the most common murders are fathers killing their sons and vice versa, that tells you that a major point of strain in society was the father son relationship. Likewise if most murders are husbands killing wives or vice versa, that tells you something different.

This was an undergrad survey course, so my professor didn't go into any great detail, and it's long enough ago that I may well be remembering it completely incorrectly. I'm hoping someone can either point me to a name for this concept so my Googling will be more successful, or point me to a good book on the subject.

Thanks in advance for your time.


texts: Is taking away decorations of traitors a normal modus operandi?

texts:
In the USSR, people convicted of treason were routinely stripped of their State decorations, even when they were honestly earned before the treason (e.g., Власов, Добробабин, Берия). The sentence also routinely included a confiscation of all personal property of such convicts.

What about other countries?

E.g., were Kanao Inouye's WW1 decorations revoked? (The 1st trial record does not indicate so).

(The rest of people in List of Allied traitors during World War 2 do not appear to have been decorated before their treason).

I am specifically interested in the Western countries of the 20th century, but I do not want to restrict the question to military decorations or military treasons. I am interested in the concept "this crime wipes out all previous merits".


texts: What uncertainties and questions surround the death of Attila?

texts:
Merriam-Webester's Concise Encyclopedia says

  Attila died on his wedding night, possibly murdered by his bride.

What uncertainty does the word possibly imply there about the death of Attila?


texts: Did the King of Siam offer war elephants to the Union during the Civil War?

texts: I have read many sources stating that Lincoln refused an offer for war elephants during the Civil War. I have also read that this was not true. I was hoping that this site could shed some light on the truth. So did the King of Siam truly offer war elephants to the Union during the Civil War?


texts: Why does religion eventually disintegrate into sects?

texts:
I'm currently reading Ancient History of India and I have the following question -
It has been widely documented that religion is divided into sects on account of differences in the interpretations of scriptures/teachings of their founder. so, Why is it that the language of the texts or their ideas weren't represented in a clear and ambiguous manner so that there arise no future conflicts? why keep texts or teachings that opens up to multiple interpretations (not that multiple interpretations are bad since we have an enormous diversity of thought and intellect) in a way which invariably lends itself to differences in opinion on what "ought" to be the case and to head in a direction which is in direct opposition to what its founder intended. For eg- Shia-Sunni under Islam, Jains too were divided into two sects on account of differences in opinions.
How to resolve this?
I think it is like the constitution of the country where it is widely interpreted differently to evolve with society and hence, stay relevant. Is it the same with religion too? But my primary concern remains how to ward off the animosity that grows between the two sects?
Please, share your thoughts and knowledge. This question is literally bugging me up.

Grateful and Thank you


texts: Why were ancient cities protected by walls?

texts:
I know the obvious answer to this question is "for protection"! But I would imagine that for a wall to be justifiable in terms of costs, attacks must have been fairly frequent.

If the attacks were so frequent, what was there to protect farmers who would be working (and living?) outside the city walls? Surely their job was of paramount importance, or their wouldn't be any food for the city... So how would this work?

Here's a photo of Conwy in Wales, showing the walls surrounding the city, as well as the fields surrounding it.


texts: The histories of California by Alvarado and Vallejo

texts:
In the 1870s H.H. Bancroft employed bilingual scribes to visit elderly Californios and record their oral histories. Two of his best sources were Juan Bautista Alvarado and his uncle, just one year older, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. Both supplied extensive insider information on the political struggles of the Mexican period and were later the subjects of academic biographies. Each of the two texts occupies five manuscript volumes or five microfilm reels.

Perhaps surprisingly, the memories of Alvarado and Vallejo, unlike those of many less-known Californios (for example, see Testimonios by Beebe & Sencewicz and Californio Voices by Mora-Torres), have not yet been published. Some possible reasons, and I'm sure there are more, suggest themselves:

Bancroft's questions were poorly chosen
The documents are inconveniently long
The sources had forgotten crucial details
Their tellings were self-serving

Like many scholars before me, I am wondering if it's worth the trouble to read these documents. Citations to the manuscripts are pretty uncommon. Are the testimonials of Vallejo and Alvarado actually good sources on any particular topics?


texts: Can anyone identify these ships? And what year?

texts: I found pictures from a house my friend is going to buy and remodel and I find these pictures very interesting. In the back they have a red stamp with the word Kodak 69 pa


texts: Is there a process name for islanders becoming unisolated?

texts:
Basically I would like to know if there is an official term for the process which an independent island would undertake once reaching the point in societal/technological development to travel to other islands/land masses and end their isolation by interacting with other peoples through trade/war/etc.

Just to clarify, I mean the island's isolation ending due to the islanders themselves exploring the outside world, not other people landing on the island and colonising it (etc).


texts: Why did Russia accept the legal framework that led to Kosovo's independence?

texts:
Kosovo's unilateral secession was judged not illegal by the ICJ based on Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999) and  the UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosovo) regulations promulgating the Constitutional Framework for Provisional Self-Government.

Russia did not even abstain during the vote for resolution 1244. It's interesting to draw some contrast between Resolution 1244 and a few other ones that expressly prohibited secession; these arguments were brought up by the pro-independence advocates, cf. Goodwin (2007):

in Resolution 787, on the possibility of secession of Republika Srpska within Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Security Council expressly affirmed that it would not accept ‘any entities unilaterally declared’.
in Resolution 1251: ‘a Cyprus settlement must be based on a State of Cyprus with a single sovereignty international personality and a single citizenship’
in Resolution 1225 and in Resolution 1255, the
Council expressly called for a ‘settlement on the political status of Abkhazia within the State of Georgia.’

So clearly 1244 not having such a prohibition left the door open... which was eventually used. From the press-release of ICJ, the lack of specific prohibition in 1244 did matter:

  The Court further found that previous condemnations by the Security Council of unilateral declarations of independence had to be seen in their specific context noting that the illegal character of those declarations stemmed from the direct connection with the unlawful use of force or other serious violations of international norms of jus cogens character. However, the Security Council has never taken this position with respect to Kosovo. Further, the Court reasoned that the exceptional character of those resolutions containing a condemnation of a declaration of independence confirmed the absence of a general prohibition against unilateral declarations of independence under international law.

So my question is: to what can we attribute Russia's support for a resolution that (as subsequent events proved) enabled Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence... keeping in mind that Russia still does not recognize Kosovo's independence, although they have made reference to the event in justifying some of their own (unilateral) actions, in Crimea in particular.


texts: Khagantes, Aghas, and Sultanates, a feudalism of the east?

texts:
I'm confused about these terms, to keep it simple I've heard of people refer to khagantes and the system of Aghas in Kurdistan and sultanates as a kind of feudalism of the East with a pretty close analog of fiefdoms.

I know feudalism, even in the west, was a pretty vague term and has come to servitude to a well armed landlord with limited state powers.

The definition of Feudalism on Wikipedia is,

  Feudalism was a combination of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.

Is Feudalism specific to the west, or can it be applied to the Khagantes, Aghas, and Sultanates?


texts: What kept 19th century Europe's workers going?

texts:
If the salary of an industrial worker was so low that they barely survived and couldn't even dream of ascending to upper classes¹, what kept them from revolting all the time? One could argue that there was always a great number of unemployed workers just waiting to substitute employed ones when these went on strike, but how did those unemployed workers survive if they had no income?

¹Mentioned in Hobsbawm's "The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848" and further explained in "The Age of Capital: 1848-1875"


texts: Why were old fortifications shaped like stars and not like circles?

texts: The fortifications of Copenhagen, Fredericia and Acre are star-shaped. (Defense of Copenhagen is shown in the picture below.) Why not have defenses or fortifications in the shape of  a pure square or circle?


texts: In the late 18th century, would any of the southwestern area of Germany used Franks instead of their own currency?

texts: While looking up family history I found an old German marriage document which specified a dowry of "1000 Franks." With that, the families in question were from the Suggental/Waldkirch area in what is today the German State of Baden-Württemberg in the northern parts of the "Black Forest." The two possibilities I can think of is that either they used Swiss or French Franks or Francs because they may have moved from either area, or there might have potentially been some sort of Swiss or French influence in the area. The latter, to me, does not seem as possible.


texts: Is there evidence that German soldiers tried to prevent the Jedwabne Pogrom?

texts:
I believe I saw this in one of historian Sir Martin Gilbert's books but I have not seen it elsewhere nor do I know which book of Gilbert's it was. Note that I am not talking about SS but what I recall is that it was regular German army. Maybe it was only non-nazis among the army observing a brutal attack by civilians and not only not participating but even saying, Hey, maybe you want to tone it down? Does anyone have any information on this?

EDIT: The title should be "is there any evidence..." because I am really wondering whether it happened or not. It is not possible that it happened if we know that it did not in fact happen. Gilbert mentions it having happened and I am looking for more information on this.


texts: Could a person in Victorian UK be in charge of their own money at 18 years old?

texts: Could a male or female in Victorian UK be in charge of his or her own money at 18 years old? (Circa 1888) Could a legal guardian argue in court that since the age of majority was 21, he should be in charge of the money? My research shows that Victorian fiction abounds in characters who come into money at some stage during their childhood, and it's often their parents or guardians who control it until they are adults. Here is where I'm stumped. If he or she were 18, would it be a useless argument to make that they were in charge of their own money?


texts: Has a battering ram been used to breach a gate?

texts: I am looking for a specific example of a battering ram used to breach the gate of a castle or fortification in Europe. I can find lots of indirect references to the use of battering rams on gates (Valturio's De re militari, Vegetius' Epitoma) but no actual examples. Likewise, I can find examples of their use to breach walls but not gates (siege of Paris, Masada, Josephus The Jewish War 3.7.19, siege of Hurara, Battle for Jerusalem in 70 AD). I have not been able to find an example of one being used on gates. I admit I am used to dealing with history on a geologic scale so I have had a lot of difficulty researching primary historical sources.


texts: What kind of incense was used by the Sumerians?

texts: Today, there are many different kinds of aromatic substances used for incense.  What kind of incense was used by the ancient Sumerians?


texts: What did Boston shoemakers do with cattle brands?

texts:
In the Mexican era, whole cattle hides were California's principal export. To prevent theft law enforcement sometimes checked the brands on hides before they were exported by sailing ship. Most went  to the Boston-area shoe industry. The hides would stay intact during export and tanning, then be cut up at a shoe factory to be reused in the higher-value product. I figure that many, many copies of California cattle brands reached the hands of the Boston shoemakers.

The brand symbols are reasonably well documented in California records, but did anyone in Boston know or care which symbol was which? Was the branded part of the leather clipped and scrapped, or just incorporated into a discreet part of the shoes?


texts: Did Wright or Pickett set the high-water mark for the CSA Advance on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg?

texts:
According to Henry Pfanz's book, The Second Day, there is a historical dispute as to how far General Ambrose  Wright took his brigade of Georgians up Cemetery Ridge during the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg.  According to Wright's after-action report, Pfanz writes, his units reached the crest of Cemetery Ridge and he was able to accurately describe union troops on the Baltimore Pike -- something that he would not have been able to see from below the crest.  This would put the high-water mark of Wright's brigade as far up as the widow Leister's house before Stannard's Vermont troops counter-attacked and caused heavy losses on Wright's left flank unit, the Georgia 48th, and well-beyond the high-water mark of Pickett's charge on Day 3.  Pfanz further elaborates that Wright's account is bolstered by his personal report to Lee where he said it had been relatively easy to charge up that hill, perhaps causing Lee to commit Picket's units to reattempt the assault the next day.

I find these facts persuasive, but I note that other historians dispute Wright's claim nevertheless and believe Pickett went further.  What facts do critics muster to counter Wright's claim?  How did Pickett's high-water mark come to be the definitive furtherest line of advance on so many maps and descriptions?


texts: Which personal weapons, if any, were carried by the 1606 Janszoon expedition when it landed in Australia?

texts:
Wikipedia mentions early 17th century exploration of New Holland beginning in the first few years of the 1600s, but insofar as I can tell doesn't really go into what was carried on board those ships. I'm mostly interested in the first few expeditions, which makes this primarily about the 1606 expedition by Willem Janszoon (February/March 1606), and to a lesser extent those of Pedro Fernandes de Queirós (May 1606) and Luís Vaz de Torres (August 1606) because the latter two didn't land on the Australian mainland.
I want to know what types of weapons were carried. In case none were actually carried (I find that to be unlikely, but you never know), then what types of weapons were carried on otherwise similarly equipped journeys around the same time (as in, what would have been carried if they had carried weapons)?
I'm mainly interested in weapons that would be usable and ideally carried by individuals (such as knives/daggers, handguns or muskets). Details on weaponry available on the ship (such as cannons) might also be of interest, but isn't my primary focus with this question.
As indicated by the example of knives or daggers above, this question is not limited to firearms.


texts: Why did ancient cultures (e.g. the Mesopotamians) use sexagesimal?

texts:
Why did ancient cultures, such as the Mesopotamians, use sexagesimal (base-60)? I've been doing some reading on this, and there seems to be no consensus. Of course, it's rare that there's perfect consensus in archaeology and ancient history, but, as I see it, the answer is wildly different depending upon which author you consult.
Do we have any sense of why base-60 was chosen? It seems like such an oddly large base to choose (even if it was more of a 'fusion' of base-10 and base-60). Why not something smaller and 'countable'?


texts: Does any country have an official celebration for the annexation of foreign territory?

texts:
Most nations/countries celebrate their independence from some foreign power, a historical victory over aggressors or the end of a war. Are there any modern era examples where a historical event of annexation is being celebrated?

Note that I do not mean the case where native populations regain the control of an area lost to invading armies, but an invasion which is celebrated by the invaders, as a glorious event.


texts: Why did archery not make a comeback when armor was phased out in the 18th century?

texts: Even if we account for the argument that it is much more tedious to train a man to use a bow than a musket, why then did the arbalest not make a comeback? Its effective range - reportedly at 300m, is still much better than a smoothbore musket from the 18th century and is probably more accurate as well. An army composed of 14th century arbalesters seem to have much more tactical options than an army of fusiliers, so why did the crossbow not make a comeback?


texts:
My naive mental picture of Nigeria - the second largest economy in Africa - is as follows:

A Muslim North scratching out a living in the Sahara desert
A nominally Christian South making money on the Internet (and seemingly offering an unending supply of unattended million dollars!)
A bunch of oil workers in the Niger Delta.

Each of these regions seems highly antagonistic to the others (witness Muslim killing of Christians in the North, or Goodluck Jonathan's uneasy rise to power). Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be much of a synergistic effect amongst these different regions.  In contrast, even empires as vast as the United States or the Soviet Union seem to be able to cohere a "national purpose" or at least trading partnerships that enrich most of the country.

What is that thing for Nigeria?  What keeps it together as a single states rather than three separate nations under one rotating leader?


texts: Relation between Afroamerican religions and colonial metropoles?

texts:
In most of Brazil, Afroamerican religion is Candomblé, which is rooted in Yoruba traditional religion, with influences of Angola-Congo traditions. The main exception is the Northeastern state of Maranhão, were Daomeyan (Ewe) tradition (Vodum) dominates.

Now, Maranhão was settled by the French, before being conquered by the Portuguese (São Luís is, as it is said, "the only Brazilian capital city that wasn't founded by the Portuguese").

And if I look for other places where Vodum predominated over Candomblé, I find Haiti (Voudu) and Louisiana (Voodoo). In the rest of the Americas, either Afroamerican religions were completely eradicated, or they are predominantly influenced by Yoruba tradition (except, I think, for Guyana, where Fanti-Ashanti tradition is the main influence).

But both Louisiana and Haiti were French colonies, like Maranhão originally was. So my questions are, is this merely a coincidence, or is it somehow related? Would it have to do with different European metropoles controlling different regions in coastal West Africa, or different slave trade routes? Are there studies, books, papers, that deal with this issue? Or have the sources that could shed some light upon this destroyed, leaving the question unanswerable?


texts: When did UK working class women shift away from home birth?

texts: In urban areas of the UK when did it become more common or usual for working class women to give birth in a hospital or maternity clinic rather than at home?


texts: Why didn't line infantry tactics try to keep up a constant volley of fire?

texts:
Often in movies on the American revolution and back when muskets were common place the opposing armies would line up facing each other and take turns firing. One side, then the other. Kind of like a volley.

While I'm not sure if this is historically accurate, brief research online says yes.

From a more tactical standpoint why didn't one army just shoot, then have their first line duck and/or move behind the second line thus allowing the first line to reload and the second line to shoot with their already loaded weapons? In such a fashion that they would be hot-swapping empty shooters with loaded shooters and not having any quell in firing from their side. This always seemed like a point of contention for me.


texts: What day and year was the first public & general confession held in the Church of England?

texts: Was it proscribed in the act of supremacy of 1532?


texts: Why Canada failed to emerge as a Great Power like UK or France?

texts: What factors prevented Canada to become a Great Power like UK or France?


texts: Why are former SS Engineers and Scientists who worked for NASA still honored?

texts: This is a very serious question for me and I hope this will be treated with seriousness. One can look up on the NASA website the biography of, for example, Debus who was a member of the SS. There is zero mention of this or even clear indication that he fought against the USA during WW2. It is my understanding that he is among former SS who have buildings and awards named for them. The removal of Confederate statues of people who I think are clearly less reprehensible and much further removed in time from the present. What prospect is there of NASA removing the names of these fascists from such awards, etc. or at least giving an accurate account of their nazi past?


texts: Why did General Billy Mitchell regard war with Japan as inevitable as early as 1912?

texts:
llama stated in Comments about General Billy Mitchell's observation from March 1912 after touring Russo Japanese War Battle Fields, "war between the United States and Japan is inevitable".

  @llama
  I don't think you can say something nearly 30 years in the future is inevitable, even if it turned out that way in hindsight. There are innumerable things which could have turned out differently and changed the course of things, especially in the 20s.

Question:
In response to llama's comment,  what could General Billy Mitchell have observed which drew him to such a strong conclusion?  Is there anything in history which he could have been relying upon when he made this strong declaration?

I have some thoughts on this and plan to write my own response.

Related Thread:
Was Japan known to be a potential threat to the USA in the 10 year period prior to 1941


texts: Which Babylonian tablets contains the list of squares and cubes?

texts:
The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive writes

  Two tablets found at Senkerah on the Euphrates in 1854 date from 2000 BC. They give squares of the numbers up to 59 and cubes of the numbers up to 32.

(though this has been copied, it seems, all through the Internet).

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Babylonian_mathematics.html

I've tried, with no luck so far, to find which tablets these were. The information is not specific enough for me to search it, for example, on cdli.

Any idea how I can find this?

Follow-up: I emailed the authors of the article but have not received a response in the 4 months since I sent it.


texts: I know that dogs were used in WW1. I know that they weren’t vital, but didn’t play a reasonable role in helping the soldiers in the trenches. However, there is one thing that confuses me: How were dogs used to aid in communication in the trenches? Such a task of getting them to deliver a symbol would take intense time wasting training. Something that can be invested in troop training. Other than communication, there only other uses were carrying equipment (not vital) and as a physiological comfort. Does anybody have any-more uses?


texts: France vs Germany in 1940: equipment vs. organization

texts:
Many times I heard that in 1940 France had more tanks than Germany and that French tanks were better than German ones. Is it indeed so?
What about airplanes?


texts: Where can I find primary sources on mortars/artillery in world war one?

texts:
I need primary sources for artillery from ww1. I have looked everywhere such as the database of the World War I Document Archive, Proquest and archive.org but with no luck. So I am asking here as a last resort to get some help with my research.

Only thing I found was this: http://sill-www.army.mil/firesbulletin/archives/1918/OCT_DEC_1918/OCT_DEC_1918_FULL_EDITION.pdf

Its a an American Journal from 1918.

However, I cannot find anything from the British or the German which is what I need. The source materials I need are where artillery/mortars are the main topic, because during my search i also found out many diaries touch upon the topic of artillery but most mention it as a casual thing and doesn't speak about it to the extent I need.

Any type of textual documents on the topic is highly appreciated.

Thanks beforehand.


texts:
After the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq there has been a lot of talking about how many soldiers suffer from PTSD when they return home.

I'm interested in knowing more about war trauma and PTSD in ancient warfare. It would perhaps be useful to narrow it down to the lets say the Roman era.

I imagine that wars back then can be considered more "brutal" than what we have today, most of the fighting happening in very close combat with many dead and dismembered bodies laying around (as opposed to the relatively small engagements modern armies are use to today and of course the fighting parties tend to keep greater distances between themselves nowadays). My initial guess would be that soldiers surviving these engagements would suffer from terrible trauma.

On the other hand, these people would have led more "brutal" lives than we have today. I imagine they would have been exposed to violence at younger ages (crucifixion of criminals, arguments ending up with swords, animal and possibly human sacrifices, more instances of death around them etc...). Additionally I imagine their culture and religions probably prepared them for this level of violence. Compare that with the childhood and the life the average (Christian, religion that doesn't really prepare for war and violence) westerner lives before seeing war for the first time.

I'm particularly interested in knowing if any ancient writers left any records talking about war trauma in soldiers of their time?


texts: When Louis I of Hungary died in 1382, why did Polish lords choose Jadwiga instead of Mary as the monarch?

texts:
I am looking at a particular moment in Polish history when Louis I of Hungary died in 1382. Although the Hungarian throne was inherited by his daughter Mary, local power brokers back in Poland did not want Mary and negotiated for her younger sister Jadwiga to be monarch instead.
Jadwiga finally came to Kraków and at the age of ten, on 16 October 1384 (or possibly 1385), was crowned 'King' (not Queen for legal reasons) of Poland.
My question is the following: why did they find Jadwiga more acceptable than Mary? One reason I have seen is they did not want to 'continue the personal union with Hungary' but that doesn't make sense to me since they both have the same father and are therefore involved in that Hungarian union.


texts: What did the Gauls look like during the 1st century BC?

texts:
Right around the time of the Roman conquest of Gaul, contemporaneous accounts describe the Gauls as having looked like beasts or savages, with thick knotted cloaks and unkempt long hair and beards. Roman depictions of the day clearly came with a victor's bias, with the Romans having both social and political reasons to depict the Gauls as brutish or uncivilized, further legitimizing Gaius Julius Caesar's claims of "civilizing" the Gauls.
Ammianus Marcellinus wrote in his Roman History, available from Gutenberg:

Nearly all the Gauls are of a lofty stature, fair, and of ruddy complexion; terrible from the sternness of their eyes, very quarrelsome, and of great pride and insolence. A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single Gaul if he called his wife to his assistance, who is usually very strong, and with blue eyes; especially when, swelling her neck, gnashing her teeth, and brandishing her sallow arms of enormous size, she begins to strike blows mingled with kicks, as if they were so many missiles sent from the string of a catapult.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in Roman Antiquities XIV, available from UChicago, said both:

The Gaul was a tremendous creature in bulk, far exceeding the common build.

and:

Now the barbarians' manner of fighting, being in large measure that of wild beasts and frenzied, was an erratic procedure, quite lacking in military science. Thus, at one moment they would raise their swords aloft and smite after the manner of wild boars, throwing the whole weight of their bodies into the blow like hewers of wood or men digging with mattocks, and again they would deliver crosswise blows aimed at no target, as if they intended to cut to pieces the entire bodies of their adversaries, protective armor and all; then they would turn the edges of their swords away from the foe. On the other hand, the Romans' defense and counter-maneuvering against the barbarians was steadfast and afforded great safety.

Clearly unbiased sources. I'd imagine paintings of the day aren't a particularly good source either, so I'm really looking for info from a source which had little reason to be biased, or secondary sources that take efforts to find accuracy in the inherent noise and bias involved. What did the Gauls look like, as far as hair, clothing, facial hair, and the like, around the first century BC?


texts: How were Father-Presidents of California Missions chosen?

texts:
During the Spanish Colonial period, the California missions were run by a priest with the title of Father-President (padre-presidente).  I'm trying to find more information about this office, specifically:

How was the Father-President chosen?
Did they have the authority to decide where new missions would be placed?
Is there a list of all the Father-Presidents of the era?


texts: How to collate the available contemporary press coverage of the 1936 US olympic hockey team?

texts:
This question is essentially asking how to go about searching as many mid-1930s newspapers and magazines as is feasible. I don't even know where to begin. Some major papers that are still in business such as the NYTimes have digitized their archives and put them on the web, but I would guess many haven't fully digitized back that far yet, let alone put the archives up on the web.

I am interested in assembling as many press clippings about the US 1936 Olympic hockey team as possible. I have a budget of perhaps $1,000 USD. I'd be happy to pay an archivist to do the work, if that's an option. I am in DC at the moment and could conceivably access the Library of Congress.

I hope "How to research History" is a valid topic for this site.


texts: Were the Bonus Wars in the USA during WWI about unpaid salaries?

texts: Were all US soldiers paid in full during World War One (WWI)? Were the Bonus Wars not actually asking for additional money but for back payments for salary never paid?


texts: How young of a child could do significant labor?

texts:
I've been trying to find out whether, in some cultures historically, a child of age 3 or 4 could do enough work to "pay for their keep", so to speak.

In the search I've found out that modern child labor surveys don't look at children under age 5, and it seems that in most lines of work and places the minimum age was older than that (from browsing various references with phrases like "children as young as __").

But I have this memoir, The Worlds of a Maasai Warrior, by Tepilit Ole Saitoti, which gave me a mental timeline of him herding 2-year-old cattle by age 4. Specifically, he says he "must have been about 6 years old" when his mother died, after which he stopped living with his grandfather where he says he lived for 2 years of hell because they were working him too hard--making him herd the older cattle (and he mentions coming home to his grandfather, so they weren't out with him, though maybe other boys were), whereas before moving to his grandfather's he was tending lamb and goat kids.

I think the memoir is vague enough that perhaps he started herding/tending animals independently at age 5-6 and was mostly just along for the ride with older people doing the actual work when younger than that age, but that's not how I read it originally. (And of course memoirs are not always accurate.) But I'm wondering if anyone has more concrete info on child agricultural labor at ages younger than 5, or specifically ages when children would be set to tend animals independently.


texts: How could the Roman sestertii/sesterces be converted into modern terms (say 2017 US$)?

texts:
Of course, the value of the sesterti must itself have fluctuated over the centuries it was in use. And so if I must narrow it down, I am particularly interested in its value during

the time of Lollia Paulina who was once covered with 40M sesterces' worth of jewels; and
the time of Cleopatra, who once drank a dissolved pearl worth 10M sesterces,

both of these stories being from Pliny, Book 9, Ch. 58.

Adam Smith writes in The Wealth of Nations:

  When we read in Pliny, therefore, that Seius bought a white nightingale, as a present for the Empress Agrippina, at a price of six thousand sestertii, equal to about fifty pounds of our present money; and that Asinius Celer purchased a surmullet at the price of eight thousand sestertii, equal to about sixty-six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence of our present money

Smith also writes:

  Three sestertii, equal to about sixpence sterling,

which would be consistent with the previous quote, since £1 = 240p.

So according to Smith, 6,000 sestertii ≈ £50 "of our present money". The Wealth of Nations was first published in 1776. Using the Bank of England's inflation calculator, £50 in 1776 = £7,519.57 in 2016, or about US$10,000 at current conversion rates (according to Google).

So 6,000 sestertii ≈ US$10,000 in 2017 or 1 sesterti ≈ US$1.67? Thus

Lollia Paulina's jewels (40M sesterces according to Pliny) would be worth US$66.7M today? And
Cleopatra's swallowed pearl (10M sesterces according to Pliny) would be worth US$16.7M today?

Of course, I have no idea how Adam Smith did his conversion, but presumably some modern day historians/economic historians have since done better.


texts: How is the term "medieval" used to describe non-European civilizations and cultures?

texts:
I have done a quick Bing search, and the term refers to the Middle Ages, a time period in Western European history. It has the alternative meaning of "very old-fashioned or primitive".
Yet, people talk of "Medieval Japan" or "Medieval China". Not to mention, the Middle Ages seems to only apply to Western Europe, not Eastern Europe. I found one source that seems to pinpoint "Medieval China" as the time period between the fall of the Han Dynasty and the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, but why? That seems to be pretty arbitrary to me. In Chinese, people may use 清朝末年 and 民國初 to refer to the end of the Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China - a dramatic shift from the old imperial system to the modern system.
Obviously, the term "medieval" is English, so whoever coined the term is a Westerner or a person who is born and raised in the West, specifically the Anglophone world.
I just can't seem to understand why a specific time period in China or Japan is chosen and called "Medieval".
Maybe, the term "medieval" is used because the society has cool-looking castles and big armies that Westerners can relate to?
I just googled "Medieval China" and "Medieval Japan".


texts: What does the date on the tombstone mean?

texts: This photo was taken in the Cathedral of St. Martin in Bratislava. I found information about the genus Palffy, but not one of his representatives died in 1845; moreover, it turns out that this person lived 245 years. What exactly does this date mean?


texts: What's the difference between Country Born and Mulatto people in the 18th century New England?

texts:
I have a history assignment and it's asking me to provide context of the table already provided that contains "background characteristics of New England Runaways."
To be specific, it states the following categories: African, Country born, Mulatto, Negro, and West Indies, along with percentages of runaways every ten years.
I'm a bit confused as to what the difference is between country born and mulatto people. Professor didn't include any information regarding the differences and I can't find much information about it online.


texts: What type of opportunity seemed to be the most prevalent in attracting immigrants?

texts:
I'm trying to pinpoint (if it even is specific) the opportunities that people will leave everything in order to have.

At first I thought this happens when people move far away to go to college, or to accept a job offer. Those both offer the same opportunity: more wealth. But what really interests me are the entire waves of immigration, and how they seem to have the same motivating factor: the California Gold Rush for example.

But there have been all kinds of groups of immigrants. Pilgrims to the New World, Mormon settlers to Mexican Territory, refugees from wars, Italians to Argentina, groups of Jews have immigrated to various parts of the world, and many other significant waves of immigration- considering all of those, immigration waves included a wide variety of people.

Is there still a common thread across almost all groups? Is there a specific type of opportunity that almost every group of immigrants wants?
(This is assuming the group of immigrants had a common thread and prevalent opportunity among themselves, maybe that's not even true. And I'm not saying immigrants always grouped to one location, but I'd like to focus on just those stories.)


texts: Are there examples of battles fought under the influence (of alcohol)?

texts:
I'm looking for documented antecedents that describe the use or abuse of alcohol in the historical context of battles. Not necessarily well known battles.

I remember watching (many years ago) a Discovery Channel special on pirates where someone took on some battles there where fought under the influence of alcohol... for some reason.

Also I've read some very interesting questions about the use and abuse of rum and other beverages by navies in the past:

Did pirates really drink a lot of rum?

Historical use of alcohol as a source of clean water

Why is rum naval?

But they focus mainly on the generalized drinking but not on a particular incident that might have taken place while or because people was under the influence of alcohol.

Just read about Dutch Courage which I suppose is very relevant to the subject... =)


texts:
How did people wake up on time before alarm clocks?

I was thinking about this as I lay me down to sleep last night, and came up with a null hypothesis:

They didn't. Keeping precise time wasn't considered as important in the past as it is now.

Other options:

They did, by intentionally going to sleep 7–8 hours before they meant to wake up. (Incidentally, I recently read a snippet of a Socratic dialogue in which he claims that we spend "half our lives in each state, sleeping and waking" — is that a wild exaggeration or did people sleep longer?)
They did, because roosters.
They did, because church bells (and other types of shift-sleeping?).

At this point I decided to stop theorizing and just ask here where people might actually know. :)

A fully satisfactory answer would give a rough indication of how it was done in different periods if the available technology made any difference.


texts: Was late-medieval French education recalcitrant to math?

texts: The teaching of mathematics (as we understand the subject today) in France is said to result from Ramus. However, It was his predecessor Oronce Fine who convinced François 1 to include it at the College Royal, despite its not being thought much of as a subject (le peu d’eſtime qu’on faiſoit alors de cette ſcience. Jean-Pierre Niceron; Memoires pour servir a l'histoire des hommes illustres dans la republique des lettres…; Briasson; 1737). While the quadrivium of medieval learning – arithmetic, geometry, music (or harmony) and astronomy (or astrology) – did include arithmetic, what was it about math that didn’t fit medieval (religious?) thinking?


texts: Was combat beneath the pikes a common type of fight in XVII century?

texts:
As far as one can see, warfare is always defined by the leading army that at some point dominated a region. For instance in Europe in the XVII century one of the most famous and effective "army" was the Spanish Tercio. Watching the movie of Alatriste in the final scene, I have always wondered if the battle beneath the pikes was common during the period. This is somehow at odds because Hollywood movies always depict most of the time e.g. Romans, medieval battles without this technique. So my questions are:

Was this common during an encounter between the armies?

Does it have a particular "name"?

Was there an appointed unit to specifically do this? (In the movie the "musketeers" are the guys going below.)


texts: Why did the Ottomans rebuild Byzantine gates to a smaller format?

texts:
It's very perplexing to me. Here are some examples:

https://pages.pomona.edu/~sg064747/travel/images/Turkey/Fortifications/1600-LandWallsArchGate.jpg

https://romeonrome.com/files/2013/09/66.EmperorsGoldenGate-600x450.jpg

https://pages.pomona.edu/~sg064747/travel/images/Turkey/Fortifications/1024-YedikuleGoldenGate.jpg

http://romeartlover.tripod.com/2a.jpg

http://www.livius.org/site/assets/files/21526/thumbnail_istanbul_wall_theodosius_02_ab.jpg

https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0a/0f/da/40/walls-of-constantinople.jpg

One theory I heard about is that it's due to cultural differences between the conquerors and the conquered.


texts: What was the trend of forced labor in Germany and its conquered territories during WWII?

texts:
All I can find online about forced labor is the fact that by late summer of 1944, "German records listed 7.6 million foreign civilian workers and prisoners of war in the German territory, most of whom had been brought there by coercion."

Source: Forced labor in Germany during WWII

Can someone find a graph or any statistics for each year of the war? I certainly cannot find any other useful data online.


texts: Book (and/or podcast) recommendations for providing a historical & cultural context for Sichuan?

texts:
A couple friends and I plan on taking a tour in the southwestern region of China, specifically Sichuan & Yunan, around spring of next year. I find that it always makes the trip more engaging and enjoyable to get some historical and cultural contexts for the place beforehand.

Being ethnically one myself, I'm not completely ignorant of Chinese history and culture (though my friends will mostly be). But I'd still love to get some book and/or podcast recommendations that has this region as its primary focus.

I understand that it's often impractical to treat an entire region of China as if it were in a vacuum, (Shu Han will almost invariably be discussed in the context of the other two kingdoms of its time for instance), so that's not what I'm expecting. But if you know of any good media that at least places Sichuan (and this broader southwestern region of China in general) at the forefront of its discussions, whether they be in the context of history (any periods), culture, economy, travel/geography, etc., and can recommend them, it'd be greatly appreciated.


texts: How beneficial were war bonds to the US during WWII

texts:
I've been watching classic cartoon shorts from Disney and Warner Brothers. So many devoted time to encouraging Americans to buy war bonds.

Did money collected from war bonds amount to a significant contribution to the overall US war effort? Were those who purchased war bonds rewarded with a decent return, or was it more of a philanthropic sacrifice for the country?


texts: Was the Social War the only war fought to integrate into an empire?

texts:
The question is based on this line from the book "Cataclysm 90BC" by Matyszak.  He says ,

" this book is a study of some very odd events, of nations so
desperate to give up their independence they fought a war against a
state that refused to take it; of the Roman Republic losing that war,
itself a rarity, then winning by giving their enemies exactly what
they wanted.  So the only instance in history of the opposite of a war
of independence, was also one of the few cases where surrender brought
victory to the losing side."

I have discussed this with friends and we were unable to come up with any other example.  So was the Social War the only instance of a subject nation fighting to be fully integrated into the existing political system (without the goal of destroying said political system,) a sort of "reverse" war of independence to paraphrase the author?


texts: Are there any images from ancient times in which Heracles is shown with a cornucopia?

texts:
I have read in Wikipedia the cornucopia was created when Heracles wrestled with the river god Achelous and wrenched off one of his horns.

Are there any images from ancient times in which Heracles is shown  with a cornucopia (Not necessarily with presence of Achelous)?


texts: What was the basic structure of power in the CPSU and how were the politicians at each level chosen?

texts: I'm aware of the very-basics like the General Secretary, the Politburo and Central Commitee, but could someone give me a simple rundown of the lower levels to the bottom? Also, I'm particularly interested in how the politicians at each of those levels were chosen?


texts:
Are many Russians descended from Varangian Vikings? Some historians say yes, but some do not.

There had been archaeological diggings in Saint-Petersburg and the Novgorod region, as seen in one rare documentary on Youtube.

Its hard to find articles on the origins of Russians and therefore I am asking if anyone of you would know any possible explanations and answers. I think the strongest proof is archaeological proof, but Russian archaeology is very unpopular.

How does the influence of Varangian Vikings compare to that of other tribes that wandered in the area that we now know as European Russia?

Sources:

История Государства Российского-Рюрик
Second Link


texts: Did Goebbels really say "Truth is the enemy of the state"? If so, when?

texts:
One of the most famous so-called quotation attributed to Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels is:

  If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.  The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally
  important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension the truth becomes the greatest
  enemy of the State.

This is cited by many, many sources. However, the site False Nazi Quotations argues that this is a false attribution. Who is correct? Did Goebbels ever actually say this?


texts: Before television sets became commonplace, did people generally watch movies only once?

texts: As I understand it, home television sets first became commercially available in the US in 1938 and grew in popularity throughout the 40s and 50s. Before people had televisions, did they have a way of rewatching movies after watching them at the movie theater? Was it like live theater, in that there were "revivals" every so often where people could go and rewatch them? Was there a way for people to buy film reels and play them with home movie projectors? Or would a person watch a movie once and then never again?


texts: Was the danger of Germany bombing the US East Coast taken seriously and were measures taken to address it?

texts:
In this CNN article an old lady from Dillon, South Carolina, recalls her memories from World War II and mentions not just fearing bombs from airplanes, but actual measures being taken against aerial bombardment: blackouts and voluntary spotters.

  A few years later, her high school graduation was canceled when a
  blackout went into effect. World War II was underway, and there was a
  threat that airplanes would bomb the area.

  " (...) and someone told me there was a bomb threat, that airplanes
  were going to fly over and they didn't want the lights shining."

  The blackouts and the war made life challenging, but Shelley rose to
  the occasion. The teenager became a volunteer spotter, and would spend
  Sundays on top of the local department store. "All you had was a
  telephone, binoculars, and a big chart with pictures of the airplanes
  underneath so when you looked up you could identify them."

Some of that could suggest just some reasonable mass panic just after Pearl Harbour ("someone told me there was a bomb threat") but blackouts and spotters seem something more organized as if some authority has taken seriously the danger of air attack. At first sight, the blackout could be to prevent submarine attacks, but Dillon is about 100 km inland and the article clearly states that spotters were given identification charts for airplanes, not for submarines.

We have the benefit of insight and we know that neither Germany nor Japan had the means to air bomb North American mainland, but that might have been seen in a very different light during the war.

Then, my question is whether the danger of air attack on the East Coast was taken seriously and if measures of defence against it - like widespread blackouts and spotters - were put in place.

This related question just hints that providing AA guns to shore batteries in the East Coast wasn't a priority, but that's just assessing that it was better to send the scarce AA guns to other places which were actually under air attack and it doesn't make clear if the East Coast was seen under threat, even in a lesser degree.


texts:
What are the best books on the politics leading up to and during World War 2?

Thanks

Edit: Just wanted to add that I just realized that reading biographies of the people involved with the politics at that time, for instance Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, etc. is an excellent way of gaining an in-depth perspective of the behind-the-scenes political machinations. Another book that came to my attention recently is "Yalta: The Price of Peace"


texts: What caused the Roman phallus symbol to fall out of use?

texts:
In a lot of old Roman artifacts from statues to jewelry to even oil lamps,
The phallus is often a prominent feature. From what I gather, it was used as symbol of power and protection.
However, when Christianity became prominent the phallus symbol was seemingly removed from the public. What was the reason for this? Was it simply the need to distance oneself from anything from the old religion and so the phallus was branded sinful needing to be removed or where there other reasons?


texts: Do Egyptian mummies contain DNA? If so, was it viable enough to analyzed it?

texts: I just had my DNA completed with 23andme and was wondering if we have any information regarding the ancestry of Epyptian mummies.


texts: How big was the percentage of white people in the USA who were not against granting the blacks equal rights?

texts:
How big was the percentage of white people in the USA who were not against granting the blacks equal rights at the time when the blacks finally got the equality of rights (which I think was in 1964).

If it's hard to give the percentage, then, perhaps, it is possible to give a general review of the situation in American white community in terms of their general view on this matter?


texts:
Colonel John Tiltman wears a very strange uniform in this picture, dated 1919.

The original webpage where I saw the picture is http://www.colossus-computer.com/colossus1.html.


texts: Why was silage only invented in the 19th century?

texts:
For thousands of years in the Northern climates mankind had to slaughter a large proportion of their livestock due to a shortage of winter fodder.

What prevented mankind from using silage/haylage until the 19th Century?

Was it just that no-one had the idea until the 19th Century?


texts: What similarities exist between the Kalapas theory from Subcontinental Indians, and the modern theory of atom?

texts:
There is an assertion here that the Ancient Indians had a theory of a model of the atom. (In the Ancient Greek sense of Atomos rather than the Bohr model).

This document also makes this claim.

My question is - how developed were the Ancient Indian theories of the atom?  What are the similarities and differences between Kalapas and 'Greek atoms' or the contemporary (Bohr) model?


texts: What led to Japan committing war crimes in WWII?

texts:
Japan committed  cruel war crimes during World War 2.
According to this article WW2 Japanese war crimes - Japanese Invasion of China 1937-1944 (World war II two -Asian Holocaust)
and this The Asian Holocaust Killed Twice As Many People As The Nazis Did the Japanese showed extreme cruelty.
Why so? What were the causes that had been building up over the years prior to these events?


texts: Liking and disliking among the Napoleonic Marshalls of the Empire

texts:
It is anecdotical but I want to know if the Marshalls of the Empire appointed by Napoleon got well along or if they could hardly tolerate each other.

I'm specially interested in Lannes, Davout, Desaix, Masséna, Murat, Ney and Soult.

I already know - please, correct me if I'm wrong - that Murat wasn't very much appreciated by Davout, Lannes or Ney. That Ney and Soult hated each other after Spain. That Desaix and Davout were friendly, and that Masséna refused to sentence Ney to death after the Hundred Days.

If all of the above is correct, is there anything else worth mentioning - relationship wise - among these seven Marshalls of the Empire?


texts: Why did Hitler not claim the German-majority areas of Schleswig?

texts:
As a part of the Treaty of Versailles, and following the results of the two Schleswig plebiscites held in 1920, the northern part of Schleswig (Zone 1) was returned to Denmark while the central part (Zone 2) remained a part of Germany.

The map below shows the percentage of people who voted either way (blue shaded areas for Denmark, pink one for Germany).

Atrib: By Bennet Schulte (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Although Zone 1 overall voted heavily in favour of Denmark, there were areas which favoured remaining in Germany by as much as 80% but they were still handed over to Denmark. Further, Wikipedia says that

  The Danish/German border was the only one of the borders imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after World War I which was never challenged by Adolf Hitler.

Given that Hitler disputed all the other borders imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, why didn't he contest this one? Denmark was a much smaller 'target' than either Poland or Czechoslovakia and thus potentially easier to bully.

Did Hitler think it wasn't important enough, or did he perhaps think that Britain (especially) would object more strongly than it did over other claims which were geographically more distant from Britain?


texts: Could the anti-Napoleonic forces have done better by uniting earlier before Waterloo?

texts:
During the Waterloo campaign, there were TWO Allied armies facing Napoleon, one under England's Wellington, and one under Prussia's Blucher. Napoleon first defeated Blucher at Ligny, then turned on Wellington's then outnumbered army at Waterloo. The latter was a close battle until the badly wounded 72-year-old Blucher arrived with the remnants of his badly defeated army to reinforce Wellington, late in the day. Then the combined forces crushed the French.

Could the Allies have avoided the defeat at Ligny, and the near-defeat at Waterloo by combining/uniting their forces earlier?


texts: Why were Soviets so extremely effective snipers in WW2?

texts:
I found a top 10 sniper list from 2nd world war which contains 9 soviet soldiers, and only 1 Finnish soldier.
Namely:

Stepan Vasilievich Petrenko
Vasilij Ivanovich Golosov
Fyodor Trofimovich Dyachenko
Fyodor Matveyevich Okhlopkov
Mikhail Ivanovich Budenkov
Vladimir Nikolaevich Pchelintsev
Ivan Nikolayevich Kulbertinov
Nikolay Yakovlevich Ilyin
Ivan Mihailovich Sidorenko
and the only Finnish man on the list: Simo Häyhä

The page claims:

  The Soviet Union was the only country that had expressly trained sniper units in the decade leading up to the World War Two, and their superiority (with the obvious exception of the top-ranked sniper on this list) is clearly displayed by the numbers beside the names of its marksmen.

What were the key factors of Soviet sniper warfare success? Only training? Equipment? If any of these factors matter, why other countries didn't do the same tactics?


texts: What was character of Chmielnitski's rise?

texts: What was the character of Chmielnitski's rise? It has started as a private conflict between him and a polish nobel, Aleksander Czapliński. But what was after? And what was the reason to fight when Chmielnitski ruled all the Ukraine?


texts: Why is Sulla's nose in the bust in Munich Glyptothek broken?

texts: I was just wondering if someone did this as a slight to Sulla in the same manner that crosses were carved into the foreheads of Roman busts.!


texts: How did the Soviets decide what to annex in WW2?

texts:
During and after World War II Soviet Union annexed some countries while others eventually became member states of the Warsaw Pact.

What is known about how the Soviets made the decisions about which countries to annex and which were to remain more or less independent (or was it negotiated with the other Allies)? Is it known which of these fates the Soviets had planned for Finland, had they successfully occupied it?


texts: Why did Timur attempt to restore the Mongol Empire?

texts: I have read that Timur Lang was a conqueror who attempted to restore the Mongol Empire. But why did he attempted to do that? Was he a decendant of Genghis Khan as he used to say?


texts: Did imperialist propaganda inflate map size?

texts: I'm fairly certain I've seen this in the past and I highly doubt I'm making this up - I'm not sure whether it was of the British Empire or Japan's or maybe even some other nation - but I'm fairly certain I once saw a map in which one of the aforementioned nations made their own borders a whole lot bigger than they actually were as a sort of propaganda. Or it might've been an inflated size "competing" with a rival/opposing nation. I was hoping someone could confirm this.


texts: Why did the NATO (help to) overthrow Kadhafi?

texts:
What was NATO's goal? What was the strategic objective?

NATO tolerated Kadhafi when he was quite hardline against the West and attacked him when he took a much more cooperative attitude towards the West.


texts: What was the meaning of Samnite swastika?

texts:
I was recently reading about the Samnite Wars and since I wanted to have better image of how soldiers on both sides during the period looked I googled images of Roman and Samnite warriors and one of the first images that popped out was this:

  "...a reconstruction of the dress which might have been worn by the Samnite army at the Battle of Aquilonia in 293." Also, "F2, together with various figures in the background, represents the balance of the Samnite army, dressed in their 'parti-coloured' tunics. ... Bands of decorated material were applied at the shoulder, sleeves, hem, chest, etc., as in these examples, which are based on paintings of warriors from Paestan tombs and Lucanian vases. The decorative colours and motifs have been repeated on the shields."  Sekunda, 'Early Roman Armies'

What really stands out to me are the swastikas on the shield. I am aware that swastika is a historic symbol and that version of it were found on various artifacts but I never associated it with Italian peninsula. Since the picture above is an artist representation of what Samnites looked like my first question is:

Are there some records of it being used on shields or is the above representation ahistorical?

I tried to search for some more pictures of Samnite shields but this was the only one I could find that has this patter which makes me think that maybe this is just an artist representation. The source of the image also does not have any explanation of the symbol or reference to some other source.

If the swastika was actually used what was its meaning if it is even known?

I know that swastika is a religious symbol in some Eastern religions, did it have the same meaning in ancient Italy? I tried to find answer on my own and I found some sources that associate the symbol with happiness when it comes to Romans, but I was not able to find any source discussing the symbol for Samnites.


texts: What is the evidence to repudiate this version of the "stab in the back" myth?

texts:
The Stab in the Back Myth

Among claims that need context and checking:

  The Jewish Lord Rothschild used his connections with American Jewry to get America into the war. This was, of course, very easy for the Jews there, who were in control of the media and were serving in senior government functions. In return, the British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour wrote a declaration, promising the Jews their own Zionist state in Palestine.

While there is no evidences of this beyond the delaration's existence, context is removed.

  The Marxist Jews in Germany organized strikes and revolutions. Hitler expands on this in his book. These Jews were trying to stir division between the Bavarians and the Prussians, between the common man and the aristocracy, etc. Also they did their best to agitate the soldiers against their government.

Most sources point out that the revolutions were having no effect on the war.

What historical evidence refutes these claims?


texts: How is the "Blitzkrieg" different from the "glubokaya operatsiya"

texts: I am asking this question from memory. I remember to keep hearing and reading that the Soviets, in the final stages of WWII, advancing into Germany, have "learned" the "Blitzkrieg" from the Germans. However, they have had developed the "deep operation" strategy, that seems suspiciously similar to the Blitzkrieg to me, before the war. How are both strategies different and have they learned anything in terms of strategy from the Germans?


texts: Were any French aristocrats guillotined facing up?

texts: There is a myth that Robespierre was guillotined faced-up (he wasn't); but it raises the question of which aristocrats or disgraced revolutionaries were provably guillotined face-up during the period of the French Revolution (1789 - 1799).


texts: Why was Lithuania not colonized by Soviet Union?

texts:
During the Soviet occupation of Baltic States, Estonia and Latvia saw their countries settled by Russians who eventually made up more than 30% of their populations. However percentage of Russians in Lithuania was never more than 8%, a relatively small number.

How did Lithuania avoid a large colonization by the Soviet Union?


texts: Where did a ship's navigator usually work?

texts: On a 16-1700s ship, did the navigator have his own room/section of the ship to work? If so, where? Any articles I find just talk about how the navigate, not where.


texts: Did the Tamil People discover that the earth was round 2000 years ago?

texts:
I heard "Tamil People found that the earth was round 2000 years ago.
They named the planets 2000 years ago." Is this true?

The Tamil poet Manikkavachakar wrote about the earth in Tiruvacakam:

  By lust bewilder'd;- in this earthly sphere
  caught in the circling sea of joyous life;-

Research:

Manikkavachakar - Encyclopædia Britannica
Transalation of Tiruvacakam by Rev. G. U. Pope


texts: «Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος» (anerriphtho kybos, lit. Let the die be cast) was attributed by Suetonius to Caesar when it was reported that some legionaries cross the Rubicon.  Why did Caesar move to the Rubicon and stop there?  Was it because after that, a civil war would be unavoidable and Caesar wanted to avoid it?  Was it just an excuse to start the war anyway?


texts:
What were all the countries of the First, Second and Third Worlds, when WWII ended?

That is, using the World terms in their Cold War formulation.

  The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO, or the Communist Bloc. The United States, Western European nations and their allies represented the First World, while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and their allies represented the Second World.

The First World was all the capitalists

USA, Canada, Britain... Japan...

The Second World was all the communists

Russia, China,

The Third World was all the neutrals.

Switzerland, South Africa...

What I'm wanting is a list of all countries under their World numeration, as they would have been evaluated immediately after WWII.


texts: Rommel's letter to his wife from November 16, 1942

texts:
I'm looking for the original German version of Erwin Rommel's letter to his wife Lucie Rommel from November 16, 1942. You can find the English translation on page 354 of "The Rommel Papers". The English translation starts like this:

  Dearest Lu, Another good step back. To cap it all it's now raining,
  which makes it all the more difficult to move. Shortage of petrol!
  It's enough to make one weep. Let's hope the British are having
  equally bad weather...

I want to find these two sentences in Rommel's original words: "Shortage of petrol! It's enough to make one weep." Google translate comes up with:

  Mangel an Benzin! Es ist genug, um einen zum Weinen bringen.

My German is OK, and the above seems like a pretty good translation to me, but does anyone have the original?

I am giving a public lecture on Monday about the worldwide primary energy supply. I'm using the quote as evidence of the importance of oil in war. The book was first published in 1953; the editor and translator worked directly with Rommel's son Manfred, who had collected and organized the papers. So there were no archives consulted, per se. From what I've seen there's no note in the book indicating what was done with the originals after the book was written


texts: Who was "Lt.-Commander R.T. Chaloner Woods"?

texts:
I am collecting information about Christian authors writing about economic topics. The other day, browsing my university library, I found a copy of this book, titled "A plain Christian looks at finance", published in 1932, in London. As the information says, the author is described as

  Lt.-Commander R.T. Chaloner Woods R.N. (retired)

I cannot find anything about the author online. For example, if you google "Chaloner Woods" R.N. commander and browse around all you see is the above link about the book. I also searched the UK Who's who online, without success.

Why do I ask here? Well, as historians or people interested in history, you might have plenty of experience on methods/techniques to find out things or people. So any idea, hint or suggestion about where to look is welcomed. For example, maybe you know a database for military people, or have access to some specialised database of people.

PS: I am not asking you to look "for me". As I said, I went very far into the google results pages, using different searches. I am satisfied with an answer which guides me on where to look, specially if it ends up being successful. Naturally, you are free to look yourself and I fully appreciate if you are able to find something, purely because you just know better how to search.

PS2: I asked on meta whether a question like this might be on-topic, receiving a fairly favourable answer. Hopefully the rest will agree.


texts: Were union disputes the only reason for low female employment in WWI German factories?

texts:
While giving a lecture on the end of WWI, Prof. David Stevenson mentions a disparity in female employment between the Allies and Germany. The relevant portion is here.

The British army is not short of shells, nor is the French. One of the
reasons for this production miracle is that Britain and France
are more successful than the Germans in incorporating
very large numbers of women, probably about 2 million in the British
case, in the munitions workforce. This means that more men can be left
at the front, whereas the German army is releasing hundreds of
thousands of men from its army in 1917 and 1918 to go serve in the
munitions factories. The German army, for that reason, doesn't run out of shells in 1918, it runs out of men.

This BBC article also mentions the relocation of men from the trenches and into factories:

In the summer of 1916, Germany instituted the poorly thought-out and ineptly administered Hindenburg Programme - named after the army commander Field-Marshal Paul von Hindenburg - in an attempt to boost its production of weapons.
Instead it drained the army of a million men, brought on a major transport crisis and intensified the shortage of coal.

It seems very odd that as the war was nearing its end, Germany's Supreme Army Command (OHL) was allowing the female labor source to be less utilized in factories than in France and Britain. There were hotly debated wage disputes going on in all three countries regarding female employment, but evidently labor unions in Allied countries were able to sort this out. I found this excerpt in Women and the First World War by Susan R. Grayzel:

That was in 1916 and I haven't found any law that superseded it. The topic of trade union disputes is reiterated in this (blog?) entry:

In contrast, Germany saw fewer women join the workplace than other
countries at war. This was largely due to pressure from trade unions,
who were afraid women would undercut men’s jobs. These unions were
partly responsible for forcing the government to turn away from moving
women into workplaces more aggressively. The Auxiliary Service for the
Fatherland law, designed to shift workers from the civilian into the
military industry and increase the quantity of the potential workforce
employed, only focused on men aged 17 to 60.
Some members of the German High Command (and German suffrage groups)
wanted women included but to no avail. This meant all-female labor had
to come from volunteers who were not well encouraged, leading to a
smaller proportion of women entering employment.

I have also found this article to be very informative, as it illustrates the many other factors going on with regards to labor shortages. But unless I missed something, it is still unclear how unions were able to apply so much pressure to the German government. Were there other factors involved with low female employment in factories? How is it possible that trade union opposition held so much sway over German High Command?


texts: In the Battle of Noryang, the combined navy of Chosun (Korean kingdom) and Ming (China) tried to prevent the Japanese from making a safe retreat. But considering the fact that the Koreans or the Chinese did not have any intention to follow them to Japan, what was the reason for preventing the retreat? The allied forces must have known that Hideyoshi had died, and the Japanese had no hopes of invading Korea again. Then, why did they not simply leave the Japanese alone, considering the fact that they did not have much to gain even after winning the battle?


texts: How accurate was the depiction of the Japanese Canadian community in the movie Vancouver Asahi?

texts:
In the movie "Vancouver Asahi", it is shown that

Japanese Canadians in Vancouver lived in their ethnic neighborhood and did not mingle with white Canadians at work.
second generation "Nisei" people did not go to college and were restricted to blue collar jobs, and they were paid about half the salaries as white Canadians.
the community was excluded from college scholarships. Didn't Canada subsidise college education in that era? Was this community excluded from the subsidized fees as well?

Could someone verify if the above depiction in the movie is accurate, and also answer my question about the college fees?


texts: Why did the USA invade Okinawa instead of one of the many other islands in southern Japan

texts: There are many other islands in southern Japan that seem large enough for B29 runways (the current runway is 2 miles). Why didn't the USA pick the island of least resistance? I'd assume Okinawa was the most fortified due to its size and local population.


texts: What was Babur's attitude upon watching heads of his enemies stacked up forming a tower?

texts:
A lot of websites mentioned that his attitude was one of enjoyment. Even a wikiquote says this.

Are these sources reliable, meaning that this is true? Or are there other sources that impeach or contradict them? What, in fact, do the most reliable sources say about Babur's attitude in this regard?


texts: Why were the continuity states of Imperial and Royal Austria-Hungary disunited, while the continuity states of Imperial Russia were united?

texts:
Towards the end of WWI, both Austria-Hungary and Russia faced populist or socialist revolutions and successful nationalist uprisings. In both cases, both revolutions and uprisings resulted in the creation of numerous successor states. In both cases, war existed within and between successor states.

In the case of the successors of Imperial Russia, the new states generally united.

In Union as of 1922: RSFSR; SSRS: Ukraine, Byleorussia, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan,
Non union: Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland
Major wars: Russian civil war first (internal) and second (intervention) periods, with warring successor states above, and failed alternatives to the above

In the case of the successors of Austria-Hungary, the new states did not generally unite.

In unions: Czechoslovakia; Yugoslavia
Non unionate: Romania, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Ukraine, Italy
Major wars: Hungarian revolution intervention, Trieste, Russian Civil War

In particular, the central economic mass surrounding the dominant nations of Imperial Russia formed a union, whereas in Imperial and Royal Austria Hungary the peripheral nations formed the only unions.

Why the difference?


texts: When was "diablo" first used to refer to the Devil?

texts:
I'd curious to know how and when the word diablo came to mean the Devil.

In Luc Ferry's A Brief History of Thought, he states:

  The devil is rather one who, spiritually speaking, does everything in his power to separate us (dia-bolos in Greek meaning 'the who who divides') from the vertical link uniting true believers with God, and which alone saves them from solitude and death.

Wiktionary's trail runs via Latin ultimately to Greek where its etymology reads:

  From διαβάλλω (diaballo, “I slander”), from διά (dia, “across”) and βάλλω (ballo, “I throw”)

Etymonline's entry provides a little hint:

  O.E. deofol "evil spirit, a devil, the devil, false god, diabolical person," from L.L. diabolus (also the source of It. diavolo, Fr. diable, Sp. diablo; Ger. Teufel is O.H.G. tiufal, from Latin via Goth. diabaulus), from Ecclesiastical Gk. diabolos, in Jewish and Christian use, "Devil, Satan" (scriptural loan-translation of Heb. satan), in general use "accuser, slanderer," from diaballein "to slander, attack," lit. "throw across," from dia- "across, through" + ballein "to throw" (see ballistics). Jerome re-introduced Satan in Latin bibles, and English translators have used both in different measures. In Vulgate, as in Greek, diabolus and dæmon (see demon) were distinct, but they have merged in English and other Germanic languages.

But what does "from Ecclesiastical Gk. diabolos, in Jewish and Christian use" actually mean? Also, was it imported by Ecclesiastical Greek when the word meant, as Ferry suggests, "the who who divides", or the Wiktionary meaning of "slanderer". Or did the word already represent the Devil by then? Also, when did this happen?


texts: Did any Chinese warlord claim the mantle of the Beiyang government after 1928?

texts: In 1928 Beiyang government was replaced by the Nationalists, with its last leader, Zhang Xueliang, agreeing to submit to the Nationalist government. But did any warlord cling to the symbols etc for legitimacy after that?


texts: How did the United States avoid (or recover from) post revolution corruption?

texts:
I was recently reading a novel set in post-revolution Ghana1.  A central theme of the novel was the deeply entrenched culture of corruption that developed with independence.  It seems that this type of institutional corruption very often plagues newly formed states and really hampers their progress.

How did the United States avoid the development of extensive post-independence corruption, or if it didn't how did it recover from it?

The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah


texts: Meaning of Margaret Sanger's 15-20 million soldiers

texts:
Margaret Sanger gave a speech titled My Way to Peace 17 January 1932 to the New History Society, in New York.
I don't know how much to include in my question, but an excerpt is:

c) keep the doors of Immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feeble-minded, idiots, morons, insane, syphiletic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred from entrance by the Immigration Laws of 1924.
(d) apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization, and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.
(e) to insure the country against future burdens of maintenance for numerous offspring as may be born of feeble-minded parents, the government would pension all persons with transmissible disease who voluntarily consent to sterilization.
(f) the whole dysgenic population would have its choice of segregation or sterilization.
(g) there would be farm lands and homesteads where these segregated persons would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.
The first step would thus be to control the intake and output on morons, mental defectives, epileptics.
The second step would be to take an inventory of the secondary group such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection and segregate on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct.
Having coralled this enormous part of our population and placed it on a basis of health not punishment, it is safe to say that about fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense–defending the unborn against their own disabilities.

...

With the future citizens safeguarded from hereditary taints, with five million mental and moral degenerates segregated, with ten million women and ten million children receiving adequate attention, we could then turn our attention to the basic needs for international peace.

...
There was also a recorded question and answer session afer the speech.
Who are these 15-20 million soldiers?  Are they literal soldiers enforcing the "stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation"? or are they the people prevented from reproducing? or are they the people allowed to reproduce? or something else that I can't think of?


texts: Is there any chronology of the repartition of productive capital since -1000 B.C?

texts:
I'm looking for a (rough) estimation about who owned the productive capital since the beginning of history.

I'm mostly interested up until before the industrial revolution.

For example, in an agricultural civilization, the ownership of the productive capital (tools and fields) could be either concentrated in a few people (Landlords vs Slave) or equally distributed (small owners cultivating their own land).

Is there such data available ?


texts: Has there ever a period in history when people were not killing each other?

texts:
Has there ever a period in history when people were nice to each other and not killing each other?

In other words, since humans arrived, have the inhabitants of this planet ever enjoyed world peace?

To answer this, we first have to define period.  Let's define period as a minimum of 50 years.  If there are any periods of time without records, we will have to ignore those periods.

Now let's define not killing each other.  By this, I mean no known battles, wars, or genocides on planet earth.  I'm not referring to individual acts of violence.

As a curious side note, with over 5,000 questions asked on this StackExchange site, this is the first question to ever implement the peace tag.  Well... almost... I just realized that I don't have enough rep to create a new tag, so perhaps a moderator will be kind enough to add it.


texts: Did the German people actually know Joseph Goebbels as the "Minister of Propaganda"?

texts:
I've been trying to understand this for some time now. It seems to me that propaganda should only work if the audience doesn't know that it's propaganda. So if the Nazis' goal was to control its population and deceive them via Goebbels' ministry, which controlled the media and produced popular films and so on, wouldn't they be undermining themselves by calling this ministry the "Ministry of Propaganda"? (To me, it's a lot like giving someone a placebo and then telling them that it's a placebo. It no longer works in that case because its efficacy depends on the subject genuinely believing in its authenticity.)

People have suggested to me that perhaps historians have retroactively given Goebbels and his ministry these titles. But, the impression I get from all the literature and documentaries is that, at the time, then and there in Nazi Germany, his title really was Minister of Propaganda.


texts:
Wikipedia's article on the Delphic oracle says:

  The usual theory has been that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapors rising from a chasm in the rock, and that she spoke gibberish which priests interpreted as the enigmatic prophecies preserved in Greek literature.

But also:

  The idea that the Pythia spoke gibberish which was interpreted by the priests and turned into poetic iambic pentameter has been challenged by scholars such as Joseph Fontenrose and Lisa Maurizio, who argue that the ancient sources uniformly represent the Pythia speaking intelligibly, and giving prophecies in her own voice

I’m confused. If all the ancient sources say unanimously that the priestess spoke intelligibly, why does anyone believe she spoke in tongues? If they don’t say the priestess spoke intelligibly, what are Fontenrose and Maurizio talking about? Also, do historians know if the oracle generally gave straight answers, or deliberately ambiguous ones?


texts: To what extent is the independence of India a result of Indian Independence Movement?

texts:
India received independence from the British Empire in 1947. It had a long history of independence movement, stretching from 19th century, but it had gained a massive support only from 1910-1920.

The question is, to what extent is it due to the independence movement? Or is the weakened state of British Empire after WW2 the major reason behind granting independence? I'm not exactly asking Would India have gained independence had there not been WW2?

I am asking - Was the independence movement a nontrivial factor behind the independence?  And if it is, what made the British Empire pay heed to the peaceful protests (for the most part) of the Indian independence movement?

Note: I have posted this question after a discussion in chat. Moderators are free to edit this question so that it's within the scope of this site.


texts: What happened to UK national debt when the NHS was created?

texts: The National Health Service (NHS) was created after World War II, so UK national debt must have been high (?) at that point. The creation of the NHS should have caused a great increase in national debt, did it?


texts: What historical reasons did the Nazis give for hating the Jews? How did they identify non-practicing Jews?

texts:
What historical or cultural reasons did the Nazis give for hating the Jews? Did they ever accurately and precisely identify non-practicing Jews?

I asked Jewish culture differences singled out by Nazism? on Judaism SE and they said that for a secular reason to Nazi prejudice I would have to ask here.


texts: References or accounts in historical Egyptian literature about the Exodus

texts:
In the Bible, there is a long treatise about the miracles that had forgone the Exodus, the Book of Genesis details these. Then there are the dealings between Moses and Pharaoh, the magic fight of Moses' and the Egyptian Sorcerers  and, most importantly, the Plagues of Egypt, related in the Book of Exodus.

Are there any references or possible conjectures about these events in historical Egyptian literature?


texts: What access did people in the Warsaw pact countries have to Western television and radio?

texts:
Did people in socialist East Germany and Central Europe really watch Western television as casually as Westerners did, during the cold war? Were there laws against it? Were TV and radio receivers designed to block "enemy" broadcasts? How did the socialist governments handle the fact that people could see the wealth and freedom of the capitalist societies? Did the politicians really believe their own lies so much that they thought that allowing their enslaved population watching "degenerate" Western media would help their cause?

A Romanian friend tells me that it was the soap opera Dallas, with straight talking JR Ewing if you remember, that actually tore down the wall. Access to Western media seams to have had at least some effect in undermining socialist governments' authority.


texts: What is the definitive biography of James Madison?

texts: I'm in the early stages of a project whereby I want to read a biography of each US President.  Can you point me towards the best such biography on James Madison?  I'd like something that covers his entire life, rather than something like Labunski's James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights.  I'd also like something approachable by the layman (i.e. me).  I'm not scared by tons of footnotes and such, but don't want something written with tons of references aimed at a specialist.


texts: What was the scale of eroticism in Byzantine theater?

texts:
When reading the texts of saint John the Chrysostome i found a very severe criticism of theater because of 'nude harlots' that could be seen there. I have also read some fragments of Procopius' Secret History, where he describes an infamous performance of Empress Theodora. However the latter book also features Justinian's flying head.

So my questions are:

What reliable sources about eroticism and nudity in theaters of Constantinople do we have?
Was the christian church successfull in it's fight against this phenomenon?
What were the tendencies in this matter during the existence of Byzantine Empire?