texts: Is there evidence to suggest that vampire fiction was invented to satirize Lord Byron?

texts:
Erin Horáková writes:

  Byron was such a tool ppl invented vampire fiction to take the piss out of him...

Tony Lewis writes:

  Polidori’s relationship with Byron soured for various reasons, and he was soon dismissed from his job. The doctor returned to his father’s native Italy, and there decided to get his own form of literary revenge on Lord Byron. .... Polidori’s Lord Ruthven was a vampire, but unlike the vampires of traditional folklore, this one was a suave aristocrat who preyed on the young women of the British upper class, destroying their lives with his evil. The character was, again, a thinly-veiled satire on Byron and his hijinks. To rub salt in the wound, Polidori plagiarized Byron’s ghost story and created a novel called The Vampyre.

Kim Newman writes:

  Polidori, who was making the point that his friend Byron sometimes acted like a callous, blood-sucking monster, dressed up the fiend in smart clothes, gave him a title (there was a real Lord Ruthven at the time, but he didn’t sue) and set him loose as a predator in high society.

My question is: Is there evidence to suggest that Vampire Fiction was invented to satirise Lord Byron?


texts: Is there an historical example for the possibility of peaceful resolution of Kashmir conflict?

texts:
For decades two nations (born out of one) have been looking for excuses to hurt each other. Just when you think that both nations have gotten over their respective pasts and are finally moving towards enjoying a peaceful neighborly relationship, things get ugly.

With constant ceasefire violations, killing civilians, children, women, I am just curious to know if history holds any answers for us?

Has there been ever a peaceful resolution to a conflict of the size and magnitude of Kashmir issue?


texts: How common or acceptable was it for a female yeoman or peasant in 14th century Germany to move around alone?

texts:
My query is specifically about an early teenage yeoman's daughter in what is modern day Saxony-Anhalt region in Germany. My period is the turn of the 14th Century.
From my reading in medieval histories it's clear that it could be dangerous for anyone, male or female to travel long distances alone (especially in certain areas). My curiosity is specifically about local travel for women, ie moving about for foraging, going to market in a nearby town, visiting in a nearby village etc. Even if this was considered unadvisable or unconventional, I'm interested in whether it might still have been done.


texts: I am reading Gettysburg The Last Invasion by Guelzo and it is recounted that a captain advised a sergeant to make sure that men who were chronic "playouts" be taken into the fight or killed by the sergeant himself. I assume the term means, men who avoided fighting but can find no such definition. Assuming I am guessing right, I wonder further how common dealing with such playouts by killing them was.


texts:
I’m interested in the manufacture, sales and use of beads in the ancient Indus Valley, particularly during the mature Harappan Civilization.
Would beads have been manufactured predominantly by men or women at the time?
I’m referring primarily to Carnelian, Quartz and Stone beads, but I’d be happy to hear any information about any bead production at the time, or indeed broader jewellery production.

Were those beads sold in an ancient version of a jewellery store or would they have been sold on the streets?
Would the beads have been sold by men or women?
Were these sorts of beads and other jewellery worn mostly by women or would men have also worn them?
Were the beads mostly for jewellery or were they used as currency etc?


texts: What's the Ancient Egyptian word for "benedict"?

texts:
I've been searching for, but can't for the life of me find the equivalent in ancient Egyptian to the word "benedict". Tried with "blessed", "glorified", and "exalted" too to no avail.

Thanks in advance.


texts: What was the reason for the ubiquitous pigeon farms in Soviet cities?


texts: How did a besieged city/castle defend itself vs. catapulting diseased dead bodies into it?

texts:
I was a bit shocked to read that diseased dead bodies/animals where catapulted into besieged castles/towns. Biological warfare in the middle ages. But this "method" of warfare had probably a lot of advantages and disadvantages (no own losses, but patience needed and no chance to plunder).

Was this a common method in the middle ages, or was it only used in extreme situations, when military options didn't work/succeed? Had a besieged town any chance/method to defend itself vs. either such attacks or its consequences. Were there any remedies vs. plague/infection diseases? I didn't read anywhere about capitulation in such situations, when threatened by this "catapulting".


texts: How was armour rusting in the rain handled throughout history?

texts:
Various sources (ex) state as one of the biggest advantages of non-metal armours,  that they did not rust in the rain.

However, a knight would have a squire to clean and oil his armour every evening. I suppose even simple footman with chain mail had the time after setting camp to maintain their armour and weapon.

So how much was metal armour maintenance a hassle throughout history? Specifically during forced march in the rain or marching throughout swampy area.

Note that I assume that that soldiers wore their armour while marching in enemy territory. If that is not so ... then my mental image of war is way off.


texts: Did any nation have a demonstrable qualitative advantage in their soldiers of the 18th century, and how did they achieve this?

texts:
I once read in a primary source that whilst the Prussians had the best drilled regiments who were able to fire 4 shots a minute to everyone else's standard of 3. Comparatively, British Redcoats were the best shots, by simple virtue of the British state allowing their men to drill with live rounds thanks to their large economy and small army - other states simply could not afford it.

I've since lost this source, but anybody who could find it or present a counter-claim is greatly appreciated! If true though, how did Britain achieve this given that Britain wasn't even the strongest economic power in the 18th century (that belonged to the French and Spanish)?


texts: French Revolutionary figure who thought apes could oversee black slaves?

texts:
I'm operating off of fuzzy memory for this question but I know I have encountered this bizarre (and offensive: fair warning) historical figure who I am inquiring about here before in my previous reading.

Background to question

Allow me to provide a bit of background and context first to explain this question. In order to fulfill a requirement for a minor in history I took a directed reading course one summer several years ago on the French Revolution and had to assess and summarize varying arguments for its causes in the decades and century (or two) leading up to it. I was assigned five books to read with differing perspectives on what precipitated the Revolution (economic, political, military, cultural, etc. causes) where I read about the person described in this inquiry in passing; however, I no longer have access to the books to consult them again and thought I could outsource my question, to help with recollection.

I'm fairly sure it was not from De Tocqueville's book (one of the assigned readings), but in one of the books I read – which described the personal background of several figures involved in the early Estates General meetings on the eve of the Revolution – I encountered the French thinker whose views I am about to describe to the best of my recollection.

Description of the individual & his ideas

I, of course, do not recall this individual's name else I would not be asking this question, and only recall that it was a man; but there was a French thinker and writer who was either current with the period of the Estates General meetings leading up to the Revolution or lived just prior to then (I lean towards the former - as I got the impression he was involved in the Revolutionary events) who had some crazy ideas about slavery and what I'll call "evolution" (interestingly, prior to Darwin).

He had written about a theory that he had to attempt to improve things for slaveholders by training apes to act as overseers for black slaves while working in the fields to spare slave owners having to hire people to do so. He theorized that the cognitive abilities of apes were greater than those of black people (perpetuating many stereotypes), and (if I am recalling specifics of his theory correctly) that apes could be trained to wield whips and other disciplinary implements, and he genuinely thought his ideas were credible, acceptable, and possible to implement.

I remember being entirely appalled upon reading that, and my history professor also pointed him out as a Frenchman with some extremely strange and wacky ideas. Does anyone know who it is that I am thinking of? If so can someone provide sources that discuss some examples of his stated beliefs?

Addendum:

If I can locate the research paper I wrote for the class I could provide a bibliography, but I just recalled that among the books I read was the following volume, which I think might have been the source of that information:
- The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (Bicentennial Reflections on the French Revolution) (Duke University Press Books, 1991) by Roger Chartier.


texts: What is the diplomatic record on President Sadat's 1971 peace offer to Israel?

texts:
I have seen a lot of talk in the Israel-Palestine debate about the 1971 peace offer, but I can't find any original sources on it. Even Wikipedia's brief paragraph about it says "citation needed."

What is the diplomatic record?


texts: Was slavery abolished in the Kingdom of Hungary, and if so, when?

texts:
I can find only very little information on the abolition of slavery in the Kingdom of Hungary. The Wikipedia Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom only mentions that in 1958 Hungary ratified the 1926 "Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery". This is not the same as abolishing slavery.

The lack of information on the subject suggests that slavery was not really a thing in the KOH.

On the other hand, the review of Slavery in Early Medieval Hungary suggests that:

  The use of slave labour in Hungary continued until the end of the
  thirteenth century when a combination of economic and political
  factors brought it to an end.

However, I find it unlikely that this was the definitive end of slavery, since it is more than 400 years ahead of the other European countries, and the book deals only with "Early medieval Hungary".

Furthermore, this article suggests a revival of slavery after the black death in Europe.

Was slavery legally reintroduced? If so, when was it finally abolished?


texts: What words were spoken about oaths by US supreme court justices presiding over previous presidential impeachments?

texts:
The motivation for my Politics SE question US Chief Justice Roberts' choices of “in conformity with” and “in conformance with” during the swearing in at the Senate includes my assumption that the Chief Justice wrote these words and selected the phrases for this occasion:

at 01:35    Senators, I attend the Senate in conformity with your notice, for the purpose of joining with you, for the trial of the president of the United States.
at 02:16   At this time I will administer the oath to all senators in the chamber, in conformance with article 1, section 3, clause 6 of the Constitution and the Senate’s impeachment rules.

The time codes correspond to this CNN’s video and I am sure can be found elsewhere.
I just realized that it is possible that these are drawn directly from words of previous US supreme court justices from previous impeachments.
So I would like to ask, compared to these, what words were spoken about oaths by US supreme court justices presiding over previous presidential impeachments? Are these words by Chief Justice Roberts drawn from history?


texts: List of most populous city in each U.S. state in 1950

texts:
[I have cross-posted this question on the opendata.stackexchange (see here) but would like to benefit from your expertise as historians as well.]

I am looking for a list with the most populous cities in each state in 1950 including information on their population. Where could I find such a list?

Note, I have found several lists of say, the 100 largest cities in the US as of that time, but it is important for me to know the single-most populous city for every state (some of which were quite small and do not appear on any top 100 list).

Edit: I just realized that cross-posting is not received very well on stackexchange (see this meta post). If this makes my question on this site inappropriate, please close it.


texts: With no heavy infantry, how could melee units be effective, facing competition from ranged units?

texts:
Arrows can sometimes even penetrate heavy armor. Yet, as far as I'm aware, Egyptians or Persians did not have heavy infantry, but only had light units.

In light of this, I am uncertain how could the art of fighting at melee distance (with swords, spears etc) not be all but obsoleted by the art of using bows, slingshots and the likes. A soldier armed with a melee weapon, I'd suppose, would be shot by an archer long before he could be able to close the distance - even if he was riding a horse. Actually, a proficient, quick-firing archer would be able to kill a few melee soldiers before one of them would finally be able to close the distance.

Thus - with the presence of ranged weapons - my question is, how possible that swords and spears were even useful in warfare in these times in these lands, that had no heavy armors?


texts: Why did Chinese use high tin bronze for swords?

texts:
Also unique for Chinese bronzes is the consistent use of high tin bronze (17–21% tin) which is very hard and breaks if stressed too far, whereas other cultures preferred lower tin bronze (usually 10%), which bends if stressed too far. (Sword@Wikipedia)

Is there a good explanation for why this distinction happened?


texts: Was Jawaharlal Nehru virtually a Buddhist?

texts:
At the end of this conversation (in the podcast version at 46'30") about Ashoka the Great scholar of Buddhism Richard Gombrich made this remark:

  The Indian flag has [Ashoka's] wheel of the dharma on it. But that was
  Jawaharlal Nehru, who was virtually a Buddhist, a very, very [pure ?]
  Buddhist, and who invented the five principles and so on, which all
  comes from Buddhism.

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 – 1964) was of course the first Prime Minister of modern India.

I am wondering whether the remark (made in a casual way after the "official" recoding had ended) should be taken at face value. Do we know anything definitive from Nehru's upbringing or perhaps his autobiographical accounts? And is there a consensus view among historians?


texts: Why did the US invade Cuba in such a weak manner?

texts:
I've been reading about the US's history with Cuba following the recent death of Castro, and the failure of the Bay of Pigs seems very odd to me. The only reason I can think of for carrying out such a weak and chancy invasion is that Eisenhower must have believed he could keep the US involvement a secret. Otherwise, I don't see the sense in attempting an overthrow only to fail and be internationally embarrassed. He had the power to eliminate Castro with a proper invasion, I just don't understand why he would choose to do it half way rather than go in with full force if he was going to do it at all.

Can someone explain?

I read the Wikipedia article on this and learned what happened, but not why they did it the way they did.


texts: Why did Japan take so long to attack Wuhan?

texts:
On December 13, 1937 Japan captured Nanjing; from there they could have continued up the Yangtze to attack Wuhan, then the second most populous Chinese city and de facto wartime capital. But ground action only began on June 11, 1938, almost 6 months later. Why did it take this long for Japan to begin the attack on this key strategic city?

If we look at a timeline of the battle and preceding actions, we see this:

28 Feb 1938   Japanese aircraft bombed Wuhan, Hubei, China, causing little damage.
29 Apr 1938   Japanese aircraft attacked Wuhan, Hubei, China; Chinese fighters shot down 21 Japanese aircraft at cost of only 12 aircraft lost.
11 Jun 1938   Japanese troops began to march for Wuhan, Hubei, China.

So it's not as if they were completely uninterested in the city, conducting two air raids before finally marching on June 11. But in the intervening months, most action seemed to take place around Xuzhou, apparently to link up the Northern China Area Army with the Central China Expeditionary Army. Was this more important than attacking Wuhan as soon as possible, and why did this take so long?


texts: What was this weapon (or its mechanism), that Iraq was accused of having in the 1990's, called?

texts:
Back in the 1990's Iraq was accused of having a missile-based weapon system that could deliver a mist of toxic gas over a large area through a two-phase explosion.
In the scenario that was painted in some mass media back then, the delivery mechanism would first detonate a mist of the toxic gas around the missile and after that would detonate a secondary explosion that spread the gas around a larger area.
I have been trying to find more possible details about this purported mechanism but cannot remember if these weapons or their delivery mechanisms where referred to by some name.
What was this weapon (or its mechanism) called?


texts: Why did Xerxes choose Hellespont over Bosphorus?

texts:
The total length of the Bosphorus bridge is 1560 m [1]. The total length of the proposed bridge over Hellespont is 2196 m [2]. Even if there's a point on the Hellespont where the distance between the two sides is shorter than the shortest distance between the Bosphorus, considering the turbulent waters of the Hellespont, why didn't Xerxes chose Bosphorus over Hellespont to make the crossing?

As a side remark, I have heard the references to Hellespont far more often compared to Bosphorus, a fact which I find interesting.

References:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosphorus_Bridge
2. http://www.botek.info/detay_motor_12.html


texts: Where did the design of the US Colonel insignia come from?

texts:
I've been trying to figure out why the insignia for a colonel in the U.S. military is an eagle. Obviously, there is the connection with the seal of the united states. But why is it used by the colonel rank?

It's important with respect to the U.S. could have warranted it for use on the highest ranking officers.

Basically as I see it:

NCO's: use chevrons in various combinations
LT, 1LT, CAPT: use bars, makes sense.
Major/LTC: use oakleaves (makes less sense but might have a similar explanation/origin as colonel?)
Col: use eagle
Generals: use stars

Does anyone know the actual origin of the design of the insignia and the why?

Note that I'm not looking for the origin of the rank colonel or the origin of insignes in general.


texts: When were public roads cleaned electromagnetically?

texts:
In the first half of the 20th century, tires were more often punctured, so metal waste on the roadway was a bigger problem. The book "Lorries, Trucks and Vans 1897-1927" features an electromagnetic road cleaning device. Since there is no manufacturer indicated it might be only an artist's idea of such a device, but the included text says that it existed.

Where and for how long was such a device actually used?


texts: Why sabres replaced swords after middle age

texts:
After the middle age sabres almost completely replaced swords in the europe. I don't see any reason why sabres are superior to swords used before so why that happened?

By swords used before I mean the straight blades which enabled to cut and thrust equally well (rapiers are mostly for thrusting).

The "sabre" idea came to the Europe from the east where curved blades were widely used . Polish and Hungary fought with tatars and found out that curved blades are very effective for raiders(cavalry) when fighting unarmored enemy but I wonder if that was the only reason to replace straight swords (not rapiers).


texts: Were single men permitted to adopt in the 1930's-40's USA?

texts:
I am writing a historical fiction tale, and have a question about families of the time.
The situation in my book is that there are two brothers in the peacetime US Navy Aviation corps, and one of them ended up rescuing a young boy from what was practically a slavemaster. He's ended up adopting the kid, and has the help of his younger brother as a second father figure of sorts and even the rest of the crew of the heavy patrol bomber the two brothers serve on help take care of the boy, as they all live in the same blockhouse on the airbase.
So, my question is how a family relationship like this would have been looked upon back in the 30's and 40's USA. Would a single man even be allowed to adopt a child? How would society look upon two male siblings raising a kid? What would be thought of the rest of the bomber crew helping out?


texts:
I've been reading the Federalist Papers and, in the 63rd, Madison writes,

    "It adds no small weight to all these considerations, to recollect that history informs us of no long-lived republic which had not a senate. Sparta, Rome, and Carthage are, in fact, the only states to whom that character can be applied. In each of the two first there was a senate for life. The constitution of the senate in the last is less known. Circumstantial evidence makes it probable that it was not different in this particular from the two others. "

I looked into this to see if new evidence had been found on whether or not the senate was for life and I found conflicting evidence. Was the Carthaginian Senate for life or not?


texts: Kenneth Clark states his opinion in Civilisation that nearly all Latin literature still extant today was saved thanks to Charlemagne, who instructed his kingdom's copyists to work on non-Christian Latin texts. I cannot find evidence for this online. Do historians believe this?


texts: Chinese legendary figures with European appearance

texts:
I've been fascinated by the discovery of the Indo-European origin of the mummies in the Tarim basin. This article says:

  The new finds are also forcing a reexamination of old Chinese books
  that describe historical or legendary figures of great height, with
  deep-set blue or green eyes, long noses, full beards, and red or blond
  hair. Scholars have traditionally scoffed at these accounts, but it
  now seems that they may be accurate.

Which Chinese figures supposedly had these European features? In which works do they appear? For example, Cao Cao in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms wouldn't have these features because he was Han (if I understood correctly). But who did?

I'm rather curious... might even blog about this on my website...


texts: In WWII, what was behind the very early decision to accept nothing but unconditional surrender in 1941-42?

texts:
I'm not student of history so apologize for lack of correct year but I had heard this on a documentary. It was early as the early 40s that Roosevelt, Churchill, met to form the Atlantic Charter, and decided they would accept nothing but unconditional surrender.

The documentary talked about the war at Stalingrad that Hitler or his aides were thinking about communicating to the Russians of possible surrender but realized that was impossible because of the meeting that Roosevelt had. Now I am no sympathizer nor skin and agree that hindsight that was the best option. But I'm not sure it was really fair to do so that early without knowledge of camps.

Many people argue that Churchill just hated Germany and it kind of makes sense. What are some of the facts that lead to the decision?


texts: Asians were trading with each other. Indians, Malay, Javans and Chinese were competing with each other for trade route supremacy. As South as Timor were in touch with Asian civilizations. How did no Asian explorers reach Australia before the Europeans?


texts: What plane would have been used to airdrop someone into occupied Europe?

texts:
I'm trying to write a story in which the main protagonist is a fictional Polish spy, who has to retrieve a 'macguffin' that's been captured from the Germans. It is set in the spring of 1943. She therefore needs to get into German-occupied Poland, and back out afterwards (which is the main focus of the story), avoiding Wehrmacht and Gestapo patrols.

What kind of aircraft would be used for the drop, and where would it have flown from?

I'd originally envisioned a Lysander flying via Scandinavia, but then realised that there was no allied-controlled territory there at that time, so I'm assuming it would have been a parachute drop from a long-range aircraft directly from the UK?


texts: Did specific countries have special influence in the founding of the UN?

texts:
I'm having a presentation on the influence of non European countries in the foundation of the UN. I was wondering was specific points especially China and the US had that got into the foundation of the UN?
Also if you know some other countries outside Europe that had influence in the founding of the UN.


texts:
I'm trying to find some details about an event that my father has a vague memory of. I'm sorry this is quite vague.

It was an international event happening in about the 1950s.
It was a sporting competition between Britain and the Soviet Union taking place in England. During the event one of the Soviet athletes was arrested for shoplifting. The minor diplomatic incident resulted in the whole of the Soviet team being recalled to Russia and the event cancelled.

Does anyone know what event this may be referring to, or when it may have taken place?

Thank you for your help

James


texts: Is there historically a clear connection between a better economy and a freer market?

texts: Where as a better economy is defined as higher GDP per capita. And the ''freedom'' of a market is decided by the amount of taxes.


texts: How much more productive was Aegyptus in comparison to Africa Proconsularis in classical antiquity?

texts:
On the one hand, the Wikipedia page on Africa Proconsularis states, with no references, that it "produced one million tons of cereals each year, one-quarter of which was exported." On the other, the Wikipedia page on Aegyptus doesn't have any numbers concerning production, but from various academic works I could gather that it was the most productive province in the Roman Empire, even if these sources didn't give me any numbers.

I know there were differences in production from year to year, even within regions of these provinces, but there must exist some kind of mean value for their productivity. This is the number I am looking for, not specific annual examples, although if only annual examples survive I'll have to accept these.


texts: What are some of the earliest examples of welfare states?

texts:
I was reading about Welfare States and came across this on Wikipedia:

  Emperor Ashoka of India put forward his idea of a welfare state in the 3rd century BCE. [...] The concepts of welfare and pension were introduced in early Islamic law as forms of Zakat (charity), one of the Five Pillars of Islam, under the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century... The taxes (including Zakat and Jizya) collected in the treasury of an Islamic government were used to provide income for the needy, including the poor, elderly, orphans, widows, and the disabled. (Wikipedia)

Beyond those two examples from pre-modern history, I wanted to know if there are more. And I also wanted to know the reasons why they (including the two examples already mentioned) stopped being welfare states. Was it just a regime change, or was it due to the model not being economically sustainable?

What were the earliest examples of welfare states, what qualities did they have, and why did the end?


texts: What religions (other than Judaism) worshiped only one god?

texts:
I am thinking of before Christ kind of ancient. Also it's difficult to differentiate Judaism with other religions. Other religions have lesser gods below the supreme gods. Jews' god have angels beneath him. Yet, those angels are called elohim too, which means gods. So yea, it's not going to be simple.

Ancient Jews may have been henotheistic rather than monotheistic. In any case, they only worship one God. Did the Jews have neighbors that were henotheistic?

For example, Ugarith worshiped El. However, El had children, some of whom are also gods.

Note: I am thinking of another ancient culture that Judaism might have borrowed monotheism/henotheism from. Maybe ancient midianites? Modern Judaism sects, Christianity and Islam are just "branches" of Judaism. Modern Judaism may be the branch that differ most from the original depending on how you see it.


texts: Did Luxemburg have a constitution in 1890?

texts:
When Luxembourg separated from the Netherlands in 1890, did it have a constitution or was its ruler still an absolute monarch?

In particular, had its new,(and German) Grand Duke wished to join the German Empire, could any Parliament or other body have stopped him?


texts: Did defeated countries pay their war bonds?

texts:
This related question approaches how beneficial war bonds were to US during WWII.
I would like to know what happen with war bonds when a country is defeated.

What did happen in similar experiences?

What would have happened with US war bonds if it had lost any of the world wars?


texts: How Much Did World War Two Cost Financially?

texts:
Allowing for inflation, what was the total cost for the entire war?

I am interested in totals for all countries involved, all war-related manufacturing, mobilisation, man-power, consumables etc.


texts: Were China's problems in the past two centuries due to "missing out" on the industrial age?

texts:
Until the industrial revolution, China was (mostly) an "advanced" or at least "state of the art" country. That is, until it fell behind the West, starting in the late 18th century.

Recently, China has been making great strides in the current information-driven, computer age. This, one might expect from the country that invented the abacus.

My feeling is that China fell behind the West because it didn't "get" the internal combustion engine. Is this true?  Put another way, did China "sit out" the Industrial Revolution from 1780-1920?

To dispute this theory, please provide examples of how Chinese "engines" were comparable in sophistication to similar Western engines between 1780-1920, and then explain why they didn't have the positive impact on Chinese society as their western equivalents.

To support this theory, please give concrete evidence of how China lagged behind Western countries in the use of "engines." For instance, until the year 2000, China's consumption of oil (a key fuel for the internal combustion engine), was 1/25th that of the U.S. on a per capita basis, and only a small fraction of America's on an absolute basis, even though China's population was several times larger.


texts: When did Aurochs (large wild cattle) become extinct in Britain?

texts:
Estimated to average around 150cm (cows) and 170cm (bulls) at the shoulder, the aurochs

  was an important animal to humans, during prehistory when it was
  widely hunted, and in some areas also during historical periods. It is
  generally agreed to be the wild ancestor of domestic cattle

The last known aurochs died in Poland in 1627. In Britain it seems they disappeared much earlier (possibly due to expanding cultivation and hunting), but there is some conflict in the sources as to when:

Bronze Age (Wikipedia article on aurochs). The most recent source in the references listed here is 2005. Some of the notes indicate sources more recent than this but these seem to be mostly scientific papers related to breeding. The Wikipedia list of extinct animals of the British Isles gives c.1000 BC.
Iron Age (ancient-origins.net). This source cites an article in
the Telegraph from December 2016.
c. 1500 BC or possibly late Iron Age (Elizabeth Wright). This
doctoral thesis is from 2013. She also mentions a late Iron Age find
but I have been unable to find an update on this:

  Whilst this thesis was being written a very large distal tibia was
  found in a British Late Iron Age context at Marston Park in
  Bedfordshire... (Mark Maltby pers. comm.)

Are there any more recent sources which might clarify whether the aurochs became extinct in Britain in the Bronze Age or the Iron Age?


texts:
Comino, the smallest of the three Maltese islands, is covered in terraces and walls, which seems to indicate that at one time the entire island was heavily occupied and cultivated. As late as the 19th century I found notices that watermelons from Comino were well regarded.

However, currently, the island is unpopulated except for two hotels and a couple of tourist spots.

I know that various islands in the Mediterranean like Sardinia and the Balaerics suffered terrible massacres and raids by the Barbary pirates from 1400-1800. Was this the fate of Comino? Wiped out by Barbary pirates? Or was the depopulation a more modern phenomenon?


texts: How did Edgar Allan Poe get promoted to Sergeant Major from Private in just 2 years?

texts:
In late May 1827, Poe lied about his age and identity to enlist in Company H, 1st Artillery in Boston. He was promoted to Sgt Major in January 1829, and released 2 years into a 5 year enlistment in April 1829 to work towards acceptance to West Point which he would enter in 1830. Then Spring 1831 would see him dismissed and his military career over for good.

I wonder if Poe stuck out like a bleeding wound as an enlisted soldier, because he was native-born American from a wealthy family?  Poe had  a family legacy because his grandfather had been a quartermaster in the Continentals.

Given the inherent suspicion of the American polity toward armies and soldiers, it was rare for wealthy young men to join the army in peacetime. Most new recruits were immigrants and didn't speak English fluently. Desertion and bad discipline were rampant. In a year of Poe's enlistment, the Army not only experienced mutiny at West Point, but had a soldier murder another, and an attempt to murder an officer in a short lived Christmas Mutiny at Fort Mackinac, Michigan.

I read r/askhistorian User "PartyMoses"'s comment.


texts: What was used instead of toilet paper in the US and the UK prior to 1900?

texts:
I read in this Wikipedia article that toilet paper came to be available only around 1920. On the other hand, this article says bidets were never popular in the UK and the US.

Moreover, colonies of the UK like India, have not adopted toilet paper during the British Raj. So what was used for anal cleansing before 1900? What fills up this missing part in the history of anal cleansing?


texts: What are the historical equivalents of cooperative storytelling like modern role-playing games?

texts:
I understand the direct history of RPGs mostly coming from Dungeons and Dragons, which had grown out of the combat game Chainmail, but I am wondering if there were any close equivalents in older history. I am not looking for wargaming history, but earlier examples of similar cooperative storytelling. It seems even the ancient Egyptians had dice, so there is no technological barrier. Are cooperative storytelling games purely modern or is there an ancient equivalent?

Edit: I am in particular looking for games in which people sit down together and improv out a story for personal enjoyment. I have found examples of old war games (like chess) and we have theater. I have not found any examples of this group improv.


texts: Did Herman Melville write the "textbook" chapters of Moby Dick?

texts: In Moby Dick there is a long chapter that is meant to be an excerpt from a textbook on whales. Did Melville compose that or was it actually copied from a textbook on whales?


texts: What happened to the undergrad students who attended the Feynman Lecture Series in 1961-63?

texts:
In the academic years of 1962-2 and 1962-3, Richard Feynman gave his celebrated series of lectures to a cohort of undergraduate physics students at Caltech.  It has been claimed, probably tongue in cheek, that over the course of the two years the undergrad students themselves abandoned the lectures, but Feynman never noticed because academic staff from across Caltech replaced them, so attendance continuously increased rather than deceasing.

The careers of all those students, now aged somewhere in their mid 70's, have all ended or are winding down. Has anyone done an analysis of performance, relative to expectations, of the careers of these fortunate students?

It is worth noting that while the lectures themselves are brilliant, the courses themselves were a mess. Leighton and Sands and the teaching assistants never knew in advance what Feynman would cover in a lecture, beyond a sentence or two of outline. Everyone was always scrambling behind the scenes, after the fact, to develop meaningful exercises and assignments for the students. How these two facts affected the careers of the students strikes me as fascinating area of study.


texts: Why were Axis bombings deadlier than Allied ones?

texts:
I had been gathering data on some bombings during WW2. I mainly used wikipedia articles, since they are very well sourced.

I consider only city bombings, and civilian losses. The losses are surprising:

For Axis:

Japanese bombing of Singapour 1941: 1 000 dead / 17 airplanes (looks tiny to me, but wikipedia says that)
German bombing of Rotterdam: 1 000 dead, 80 000 lost their houses / it seems 100 bombers Heinkel 111
German bombing of Belgrade: 17 000 dead / 1 Luftflotte

For Allies:

Bombing of Koln: 500 dead, 45 000 lost their houses / 1 043 bombers
Bombing of Dresde (over several days): 250 000 to 300 000 dead / 2 448 bombers
Bombing of Singapour 1944-1945: Hundreds of dead / 76, then 27 B-29 bombers

So despite that Allied bombed later than Axis, it looks like Luftwaffe was deadlier, and Japanese air force as well. Is there a specific explanation for that?


texts: Resources containing public debates concerning slavery (post 17th century)

texts: I am interested in understanding the psychology of how humans could have convinced themselves that slavery is alright. To this end, I am looking for any recorded public debates on the subject from any time period after or during the 17th century.


texts: What was the social class of priests' children in Imperial Russia?

texts: Imperial Russia considered all its subjects to fall within a social class or estate (petty burgher, noble, privately held serf, native, etc.) Most of these categories are hereditary, but a couple hinge on the career of the individual and would seem to expire with the holder rather than be carried on by any children. What would then be the social class of the child of a clergyman or an exile?


texts: Did World War I soldiers carry swagger sticks, while in combat?

texts:
At 1 minute 3 seconds juncture of the TV movie All the King's Men, Captain Frank Reginald Beck, MVO is depicted leading an infantry charge, while wielding some kind of whip or baton or stick in his right hand.

Is this factual? If so, why would such a rod help or matter, in the fray?


texts: Who was the first woman to be made a god by Rome's senate?

texts:
Cleopatra, consort to Julius Caesar was worshiped in Egypt as a living embodiment of the Egyptian goddess Isis,  but she was never recognized as such by the Senate of Rome.

Julius Caesar was recognized as a god after his death in 42 BC by the Roman Senate.  In 29 BC Caesar's adopted son, the first Roman emperor Augustus, allowed Roman cities of Asia Minor to set up temples to him.  Augustus the son of a god, would be formally made a god by the Roman Senate on Sept 17, 14 AD about a month after his death.

In Augustus' will, he adopted Livia Drusilla, his wife, into the Julian family and gave her the name Julia Augusta. The name "Julia" allowed her technically to claim she was the daughter of a god.  Livia's status as a god however was never recognized by the Senate of Rome.

In 130 AD Emperor Hadrian made his lover Antinous a god complete with his own cult, after Antinous drowned in the Nile Oct 24, 130 CE.  But Antinous was a young Greek fellow and Hadrian bypassed the Roman Senate when he proclaimed Antinous a God.

Was any woman made a god by the senate of Rome?  Or more specifically.

  My Question:
  Who was the first Roman Woman to be made a god by the Senate of Rome?

Clarification:
I am not asking about priestesses,  nor am I speaking of female goddesses of Rome like Minerva, Diana, Lucina, or Larunda.   I'm talking about a living woman who was made god in her lifetime or after her death.   A woman who was known to the people of Rome as a living mortal who then was proclaimed god by the senate.  The same honor given Caesar, Augustus and many emperors who followed who were made god by an act of the Roman Senate.


texts: Why did Hitler meet with Subash Chandra Bose in 1942?

texts: I have read   that Subash Chandra Bosa met Hitler in 1942, why did he help Bosa by liberating indian prisoners of war, what motive did Hitler have to help Bose and who suggest him to do this for ,the Indian Freedom Movement. Since there is no information to be found about Bose and this meeting, I would be interested if anybody can help me in this matter.


texts: What explanations have been given as to why the Jews were not killed in Italy?

texts: Jews were mass murdered in Germany during World War II. Why did the same thing not happen in Italy?


texts: What is the basic structure of British Politics?

texts: This is obviously an extremely broad (but answerable!) question, and I honestly don't know where to start and have no knowledge whatsoever about the topic. Basically I would like to know how the political system is structured and how the government operates at the highest levels.


texts: Why did hobos (at least stereotypically) carry their belongings in a cloth on a stick on their shoulder?

texts:
Would not a hobo be protective about their few belongings? Why put it on a stick and carry it over your shoulder, for anyone to grab?

Why not simply walk with it in your hands, like a bag? Don't you still get the same weight/pressure? And you still need one hand to hold the stick, so it doesn't free up your hands either way.

I assume that a backpack is too modern or too expensive to work for a hobo of the kind I envision, who would likely be living somewhere in the late 19th century or early 20th century. (Also, a backpack, while freeing up both hands, is also easy to steal from.)


texts: How many total speakers of German were there in pre-WWI USA?

texts:
The 1910 US Census enumerates some 2.7 million foreign-born speakers of German in the United States then. That number must be an understatement because there were many communities of heritage German speakers in both rural and urban areas of the US at the time. Do we have any idea how large this language community was in the United States at the time?

The census switches over from foreign born speakers to both native and foreign in 1980. The result is a 25% increase of German speakers counted assuming no decline in foreign German speaking population between 1970 and 1980. It is likely that there was a decline between then meaning that even in 1980, the ratio of native to foreign speakers of German was over 25%. In the past it may have been even higher before those communities were subjected to language assimilation during the period from WWI to WWII.

I do not know for a fact how much German immigration there was to the US in the early 1900s and in what places, but I am led to believe that German immigration to Texas had largely ceased by 1910. However, a community of around or possibly over 100,000 native German speakers still existed in the state. These people would not have been included in the above 2.7 million foreign born German speakers. (Note that the estimate of Texas German speakers was simply a commonly quoted number I saw in several news pieces via google; I don't know how reliable it is, though the modern population is around 8,000).


texts: Did ancient peoples apply starch to clothing?

texts:
Source: See p 6 of 10 of the PDFs, first leftward para.
Beware that p 6 of the PDF is labelled as p 18 on the document itself.

  The English name of starch, as well as its equivalent
  in German, Sta¨ rke, or in Swedish, Sta¨ rkelse, is not related, as in Greek, to its manufacturing
  process but to its utilization. As a matter of fact,
  those names are related to the same Indo-
  European root as the adjective stark, in English
  “rigid, stiff” and in German and Swedish “solid,
  resistant,” and this relation is due to the stiffness
  which is given to fabrics and clothes by the
  application of starch.

Footnote: I researched the etymology of `starch’ after discovering its derivation fromthe PIE root ster-1)).


texts: Why did overestimated coins led to inflation and well-estimated coins to deflation?

texts:
It is said in Debt, the first 5,000 years by David Graeber (chapter 4, note 2) that when the value of metal coins represented exactly their weight, the result was deflation. The author says that when Locke's reforms were enacted, the results were catastrophic. How exactly did it pan out ?

Then, it is said that when the coins are too much altered, the result is inflation. The author says that the political power maintained the value of its money by taxes. How could it lose its value ? Some say that the fall of the Roman Empire is related to its money being too much altered, is it true ?


texts: If salt was scarce and expensive, how did people "salt the earth" to ensure their enemies would stay defeated?

texts:
A common theme through much of history seems to be ensuring that the recently defeated enemy cannot recover from the loss. A way to ensure that is restricting the ability to grow food -- i.e. "salting the earth", making it unable to grow food.
Presumably that needs a lot of salt; after all a lot of potential agricultural land would need to be destroyed. However, I've learned that salt was rare, scarce and expensive!
Is this just a figure of speech and actually mostly weeds were used? To quote from Wikipedia:

The custom of purifying or consecrating a destroyed city with salt and cursing anyone who dared to rebuild it was widespread in the ancient Near East, but historical accounts are unclear as to what the sowing of salt meant in that process.
Various Hittite and Assyrian texts speak of ceremonially strewing salt, minerals, or plants (weeds, "cress", or kudimmu, which are associated with salt and desolation) over destroyed cities ...

If so, how did this figure of speech (is that the right word?) gain traction?


texts: What was Prince Philip’s surname (prior to Mountbatten)?

texts:
Prince Philip took the surname of Mountbatten when he became a naturalised British citizen in 1947. His name prior to that was Schleswig Holstein Sonderburg Gluckburg. Did he use the full name while serving in the Navy prior to 1947? It seems a mouthful to use while on operational duties and could also presumably have caused some issues, by highlighting the German elements of his background.
Edited to clarify I am asking about naval service prior to 1947.


texts: What is the meaning of Verte! at the end of Sisi’s autopsy report?

texts:
The following document is a picture of a copy of the autopsy report of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, on display in the Sisi Museum in Vienna. It describes, in French, the wounds and the cause of death of the Empress.

While the content of this document is quite intelligible, I am intrigued by the word “Verte!” (French for “Green!”) in the bottom right corner of the page.

Does anyone have an explanation for the presence of this word?


texts: What's the advantage of the infantry column formation in the Napoleonic Wars?

texts:
In movies/books set in the Napoleonic Wars, the British are normally deployed into lines and the French into columns. The columns are usually the advancing ones, charging into the line as the line hold their ground and fire volleys at the advancing column. In the movies it's always depicted that this situation benefits the British, because they outshoot the column (the whole line can shoot vs just the front rank or the outer edge of the column), and they don't have to move (meaning they can reload easily and faster). Not to mention that it seems scarier to be in the front rank of a column.

The result is normally the French getting slaughtered before they even reach the line, or when they arrive they would be so outnumbered that it becomes an unbalanced melee. Well, to be fair of course English-speaking movies tend to show British victories.

Actual history reading seems to confirm that the French indeed liked fighting in columns, but why did they do this when it seems obvious that the line is more advantageous? The only advantage I can think is probably faster speed (because less files to harmonize), but I don't think this justifies the greatly reduced firepower.

And why is it in the movies the French seems to be the one attacking and the British standing their ground? How would the French deploy if they're the defending side? Is there a good example of a French victory using this kind of setting?


texts: Can anyone identify the regiment and rank from this photograph?

texts:
Can anyone identify the regiment this officer belongs to and his rank please? He seems to be wearing an Indian General service medal (1895-1902 pattern) with a battle clasp, but I cannot make out the theatre of engagement written on it (no point guessing as there were 7 battles/expeditions assigned to this medal).

The button design reminds me of the ones issued to the Medical Corps but that is only a guess.

The photographer is T Winter of Murree and Pindee, and dates from the mid to late 1890's.

Additional reference images from the same studio, as per the comment below by OP.


texts: Why were penal colony members from Australia moved to San Francisco in 1840's?

texts:
The Wikipedia article about San Francisco's Barbary Coast old red light district says, under the heading "Sidney Town":

  By the end of 1849, several ships from Australia brought former
  members of Great Britain’s penal colony – including ex-convicts,
  ticket-of-leave men, and criminals – to San Francisco, where they
  would become known as the Sydney Ducks. These Australian immigrants
  had become so numerous that they dominated the neighborhood. They
  opened boarding houses and various types of groggeries which had
  prostitutes affiliated with their businesses.

These individuals had originally been taken to Australia as part of the British penal transportation mechanism that was operated from 1788 to 1868, described in this Wikipedia article.

The question I would like to ask:

Why were these ex-convicts, ticket-of-leave men, and criminals moved from Australia to San Francisco?


texts: Can oral tradition be used as a source in scholarly papers?

texts:
If I wanted to write a scholarly paper on, say, Native America wars, would I be able to cite oral traditions as reliable sources of information?

As a made-up example, "the war lasted exactly seventeen days, with 3,000 men on either side. The enemy had initiated the rebellion by capturing one of our women," (Native Tribal Chief). Obviously terrible citation grammar, but the point remains, I suspect.

Can one use oral traditions as legitimate sources in scholarly papers, or is it more supplemental in nature? Or just illustrative of something else?

Can you please cite sources showing this as viable citation? Thank you.


texts: Why did Nero order many of the Pisonian conspirators to commit suicide instead of having them executed by the sword?

texts:
I noticed that many of the people executed by Nero were ordered to commit suicide or their deaths were made to look like a suicide. This is despite the fact that, in at least some cases, armed soldiers were sent to the condemned person. For example, several of the Pisonian conspirators were ordered to commit suicide:

Piso (see Tacitus, The Annals, XV.59)
Seneca the Younger (see Tacitus, The Annals, XV.63)
Vestinus (see Tacitus, The Annals, XV.69)
Lucan (see Tacitus, The Annals, XV.70)

Additionally, Nero ordered the execution of his ex-wife Octavia, but her death was made to look like a suicide (see Tacitus, The Annals, XV.64). Similarly, Nero ordered the execution of his mother Agrippina and framed it as a suicide (though the exact nature of her execution is uncertain).

It makes sense that Nero preferred to frame the deaths of Agrippina and Octavia as suicides since it might look bad for him to publicly execute his own mother and ex-wife (even if Agrippina may have been plotting to overthrow Nero). But why order some of the Pisonian conspirators to commit suicide? The people implicated in the conspiracy were plotting to assassinate their emperor, which would have given Nero ample reason to execute them. Furthermore, Nero did have some of the conspirators executed by the sword, e.g.:

Plautius Lateranus (Tacitus, The Annals, XV.60)
Subrius Flavus (Tacitus, The Annals, XV.67)

I surveyed the executions ordered by the emperors preceding Nero to see if any of them had ordered suicides instead of executing people outright by the sword. However, I can't find a clear precedent for such an execution method:

Throughout his life, Augustus ordered many executions (e.g. the proscriptions he ordered as part of the Second Triumvirate). As far as I can tell, none of the targeted individuals were ordered to commit suicide -- they were simply executed. There were, of course, a number of suicides by Augustus' defeated enemies (Cassius, Brutus, and Marcus Antonius), but they committed suicide to avoid capture.
Tiberius also ordered executions (e.g. Sejanus and his supporters and relatives) but, again, none of those deaths seem to have been suicides.
Caligula had many people executed, usually for plotting against him or because they were political threats to him. The only exception seems to be Macro, who was removed from office and consequently driven to suicide.
There were several conspiracies against Claudius and the conspirators were generally executed. The only exception I can find is the usurper Scribonianus, who did commit suicide but only in order to avoid capture after his rebellion failed.

Since previous emperors did not hesitate to publicly execute conspirators against them, why did Nero order some executions by suicide? It seems a bit silly to send an armed soldier to a condemned person and have him stand around while the condemned bled to death, especially if Nero had precedent and justification to simply have the soldier slay the condemned person with his sword.


texts: Did Greeks believe in the tangible existence of their gods?

texts:
After having read one dialogue by Plato, a question occured to me: Did the Greeks really believe in the real existence of their gods?

In Plato's dialogue there are many references to gods, but I have trouble accepting that this philosopher could believe that for example on Mount Olympus there actually lived some god-like entities.


texts: Regarding Khomeini's speech against USA in Qom-1964?

texts:
What was the significance of Khomeini's Speech against US Capitalisation in Qom, Iran-1964? Is there an easily accessible English translation of this speech?
What measures did the US or the Shah take against Khomeini after that speech?


texts: How did the written Polish language survive in eastern Germany during partition (if it survived at all)?

texts:
After the partition of poland in the late 18th century, Prussia aquired a large part of Polish territory. Those areas suffered heavy Germanization process through assimilation and suppression of Polish culture.

By the end of the 19th century, kids were instructed to read and write German language, and in German only. Polish was only used as a spoken language at home, and maybe with your neighbours, but definitely not in an interaction with anybody outside your village, anybody who would see their social rank rise had to be germanized.

The results is that people would only speak a Polish dialect with their family, but have absolutely no idea how the language is read or written, since the orthography system is very different from the German system.

I know there was some Polish newspapers, but who could read them?

Once Poland was restored in 1918, people certainly couldn't understand anything to the written language, could they?


texts: What, if any, celebrations or commemorations were done in 1000 AD?

texts:
By the 9th century, the Anno Domini system was the most widespread year numbering in medieval Europe.

Humans like patterns. Surely people must have thought it significant when "999 AD" became "1000 AD", just like they did at the start of the third millennium.

How was this celebrated or commemorated back then?


texts: What was the 'indemnity' paid out by Haiti actually for?

texts:
The Haitian Revolution was a successful anti-slavery and anti-colonial insurrection between 1791 and 1804 and led by Toussaint L'Ouvrture.

Haiti paid reparations to French slave-holders set in 1825 at 150 million francs, which was then reduced in 1838 to 60 million francs. In today's money this is around $40 billion.

Q. How much of this was actually paid and when was the last payment made?

Q. What was the indemnity actually for? Was it for land that the slaves lived upon or was it another case of former slaves having to pay for their freedom?


texts: Did either of the World Wars involve South or Central America?

texts: Were any South or Central American nations besides Brazil involved (not necessarily officially) in either of the World Wars? If any were, I'd appreciate information on their degree of involvement.


texts: Who is the most ancient Indo-European who is known by name?

texts:
Who is the most ancient historical Indo-European who is known by name?

In other words, is it Pythonos, king of Kussara (17th century BC) or are there more ancient figures?


texts: Are there examples of marking coins to know how they are used?

texts:
I've seen in a video game (Empire: Dawn of the modern world) that the king of Korea was putting mark on some coins to have a better idea of how this money is spent (in this story, it is used to discover a traitor).
Is it true?
Or does it have similarity (true) with the real history (anywhere else in the world)?
I'm searching an "old" example, let say before 1600 AD.


texts: Did the US wage war against the Ottoman Empire in 1917?

texts: When the US entered world war one, did it include declaration of war against the Ottoman Empire? Were there any actions or plans for US military operations in the Middle East?


texts: During the Great Depression in America, was there an increase in popularity of Communism?

texts: During the Great Depression, was there an increase in the popularity of Communism among the everyday American and if so, was this due to a longing for better living conditions?


texts: Where and when did Nietzsche's sister meet Hitler?

texts:
It is well-known that Nietzsche’s sister, Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, was a nationalist and anti-semite who took control of her brother’s papers on his death and propagated a distorted version of his thinking in tune with her own views.  As a review of Ben Macintyre’s biography of her puts it,

she played down his momentous break with Wagner, denied his opposition to German nationalism, and soft-pedaled his contempt for Christianity.  In compiling “The Will to Power” from her brother’s writings, […] she further distorted his beliefs by cobbling together unrelated fragments of his writings.
Kakutani, On the Trail of the Other Nietzsche

The review and Wikipedia note that Hitler himself attended her funeral in 1935.  However, there is no mention of her actually meeting the Fuehrer.  But Brigitte Hamann’s Hitler’s Vienna relates a conversation between the two people.  Hitler explained to her why he had never married:

[It was] “that he couldn’t even consider marriage, because he belonged to the whole Volk, and to the work of construction dedicated to the Volk.  He was surely not born for enjoying life, but for shaping and molding it.”  And his conversation partner, Nietzsche’s aged sister Dr. Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, exclaimed, “my brother always preached [hat immer gepredigt], ‘A hero must be free!’”
(Hamann German paperback edition, p. 538. The citation is from H. S. Ziegler, A. H. aus dem Erleben dargestellt, Goettingen 1965.)

My question:  When and under what circumstances did Elisabeth Nietzsche meet Hitler?  More generally, where could we find more examples of spoken statements by E. F-N. where she (mis)applies her brother’s thought to Hitler or to the Nazi regime more broadly?


texts: Has any national leader ever climbed as far as fast as Ulysses S Grant?

texts:
Grant went form being a destitute, disgraced former army officer to Lieutenant General in 5 years; and then President four years later?

Has any national leader in all of history every had such a rapid rise from broke to national leader in such a short period of time?


texts: Was the Vistula delta inhabited by Slavic tribes or Baltic tribes?

texts:
Specifically I'm talking about the area in between the Nogat and Vistula river. Googling maps of Old Prussian territory seem to have a mix of including this land and not including it.

This map includes it.

This one doesn't.

Yet this one does.

And this one doesn't again.

And here it is part of the revolting territory. Why would Christian Slavs revolt?


texts:
I've seen a claim that Alexander Nevsky's helmet has Arabic writing on it, saying something like "With Allah's help" and "Speedy victory".

The claim sounds about right, giving Alexander's close working relationship with the Golden Horde, but it'd be nice to have a proper confirmation for it.


texts: System of Government where the Same Family Cannot Inherit

texts:
I have been trying to find evidence of a system of government where one of the principles it works on would be to hinder the creation of effective political families (thereby allowing people to advance based on merit and not familial relations -- though I accept this would not be a natural consequence of such a system).

The dogal election system in Venice was the first possible option, and that seemed to be close although not satisfying the conditions of this question as people from the same family have inherited the title after each other: List of Doges of Venice. The election system, however, is still fairly complex and does seem to be successful in curbing the power of families. Would anyone be able to offer comment on whether the fact that people from the same families inherited was due to those people being 'ordained' by the family or actual abilities they had? Was being the doge something a Venetian even worked towards (or would they have preferred another office)? [What about the other mercantile republics of Genoa and Amalfi and Pisa?]
The Papacy is another (and, quite possibly, the strongest) candidate. However, both Roman noblemen (earlier periods) and the Italian families of the High Middle Ages seem to have exerted considerable power in choosing cardinals -- or, at least in making certain someone would not be chosen. How effectual was this way of curbing familial powers, and how easy was it for someone to make their candidate the Pope? This will have surely also depended on the time period, with more recent elections being subject to stricter rules so highlighting the change in this would also be helpful (and why a change in rules came about to begin with).
The Polish-Lithuanian(-Ruthenian) free election is another option, but that does not quite qualify as the intention of every magnate was to find a weak king. The family of the person was less relevant, although certain familial relations may have been helpful for some candidacies.

Can anyone suggest other states where the leader was chosen (either automatically, by the system in place, or 'manually') with the intention to prevent the formation of powerful dynastic blocks?

Perhaps I should add for clarity that I do not think it necessary for one family to be disqualified entirely after one 'term of office' but rather for there to be a considerable gap in it -- say that a grandson could rise to the office the grandfather held, but that the father would have been ineligible to serve in any such capacity.


texts: What were the 52 kinds of victims persecuted by the Nazis?

texts:
Out of the surviving 6,808 arrest files
  of Duesseldorf, a small city of half a million population, 1,440 were
  those of Communists alone. They were, however, only one among
  the 52 types of victims persecuted by the Nazis across the country.

The above is a quote from my 9th grade history textbook. Who else was victimized by the Nazis??


texts: Did Machimoi fight in Phalanx formation?

texts:
The 'Machimoi' were low ranking Egyptian foot soldiers, pressed into service by the Ptolemaic Dynasty during a period of manpower shortage.

  The term Máchimoi... ...commonly refers to a broad category of ancient Egyptian low-ranked soldiers which rose during the Late Period of Egypt (664–332 BCE).

Wikipedia has only a brief article on the Machimoi, and references very briefly the use of pikes.

  ...suggesting that the term was rather an indicator of their military role (for example, the pike-bearing máchimoi epilektoi or the mounted máchimoi hippeis)

The game 'Rome II: Total War' suggests they could be employed in a Phalanx, and have long pikes while maintaining 'Egyptian-looking' armour. I'm guessing this has obvious historical failings though...

Were the Egyptian soldiers in formation alongside the more professional Ptolemaic Phalangites? Is it known what equipment they were given when in this role?


texts: What happened to Iraq's debts after the US toppled the government in 2003?

texts:
My curiosity for this question came from Nigel Biggar's book In Defense of War where he explores whether or not containment (in the form of sanctions or otherwise) would have been effective in the long run:

  Richard Clarke and Peter Galbraith both reckon that continued control
  of relevant Iraq imports and further intrusive inspections by the IAEA
  would have been sufficient to avert the threat of WMD. Against this,
  however, Kenneth Pollack wrote in 2002 that containment was collapsing
  beyond repair. In that year smuggling conducted by Syria, Turkey,
  Jordan, and Iran was reckoned to earn Iraq between $2.5 billion and $3
  billion (15-22 percent of Iraq's total revenue). What is more, since
  1997 France, Russia, and China - all members of the Security Council -
  had been pressing for a relaxation of sanctions and inspections, in
  order to obtain oil and military contracts and to collect debts owed.

  pg. 295-296

The debts were clearly large enough to deter some countries from backing renewed sanctions as detailed below:

  Tony Blair reports that in mid-2001 Russian commercial interests
  obstructed agreement about new sanctions: "When Vladimir [Putin] and I
  discussed sanctions at the July 2001 Genoa G8 summit, he joked he was
  all in favor of them, provided we compensated him for the $8 billion
  that Iraq owed Russia" (A Journey, p395)

  Footnote 166, pg. 297

While it's not common for a country to default on it's sovereign debt, it does happen. Did the new Iraqi government default on it's debts? Given the unique nature of it's creation, did the US assume any of the those debts? Or was there some other mechanism that allowed for their repayment?


texts: Egyptian funeral procession: what are these people doing / holding?

texts:
The picture below is notable for being the "World's oldest depiction of a stern-mounted steering rudder (c. 1420 BC)".

This much is clear enough. However, I'm curious about the man on the left and the man leaning over the side.

For the man on the left, I'm guessing he's holding something to check the depth of the river. Can anyone confirm this?

For the man leaning over the side, he is holding something in his hand. What is it and what is he doing?


texts: What was the typical speed of a tramp steamship?

texts:
What was the typical speed of a tramp steamship in their heyday? I mean cruising speed, not flank speed; the figure you would divide into distance to see how long it would take to travel between ports.

The Wikipedia article on the Tramp Trade says

  The size of tramp ships remained relatively constant from 1900 to 1940, at about 7,000 to 10,000 deadweight tons (dwt.).

This is a fairly narrow size range, and the Wikipedia article on the steamship suggests the technology of steamships was mature by the late nineteenth century, and remained so for the first few decades of the twentieth century until replacement by diesel engines, which suggests there should be a correspondingly narrow speed range.

But all the steamship speed figures I can find, are for the big famous liners, e.g. the top speed of the Titanic was 23 knots (more than 26 miles per hour). The article Booking Passage On A Steamship - 1910 says

  There are many factors connected with the price of staterooms; the time of passage must he considered, for every increased knot of speed means a vastly increased coal consumption, which is almost inconceivable to the layman; the saving of a day in passage may mean double coal consumption.

which confirms a tramp steamer should be slower.

So what was a typical speed? (If there exists a record of tramp steamer journey time between two ports, the distance between which is known, that would also work.)


texts: Why some amphoras are pointwise in the bottom?

texts:
Most liquid containers, such as barrels, are flat in the bottom and thus easy to store and pile up.

However, some ancient amphoras were pointwise in the bottom arguably making them less easy to store. Why was that so?

(example taken from wikipedia)


texts: Did the Confederate States of America claim any territories?

texts:
Closely related: Did the territories officially choose a side to support in the American Civil War?
In an answer to the question above, Mark noted, "Legally, a territory is directly governed by the federal government, and can't pick a side. There's no possibility of "withdrawing from the Union" or equivalent." but mentioned that there were certainly Confederate sympathies in many of the existing US territories.
Both during the time of the US Civil War and today, the US Federal Government has claimed jurisdiction over "territories" which (by definition) lack the sovereignty afforded to States. Nowadays, these are mostly offshore islands and archipelagos (e.g. Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, etc.), but in the 1800's included much of mainland North America (such as New Mexico as mentioned in the linked question).
Did the Confederate States of America (CSA, or Confederacy) ever officially claim jurisdiction over territories outside of the borders of the States that had seceded from the USA? Whether these territories were simultaneously claimed by the USA (as would most likely be the case) doesn't matter. If the CSA passed a law, "For the annexation of the Territory of New Mexico as a territory under the jurisdiction of the Confederate States and the establishment of a legal system for the same guaranteeing the practice of slavery, etc.", that would count even if the CSA was unable to actually exercise any practical "boots on the ground" jurisdiction there.


texts: Why did the Japanese Post Office start using Roman characters in their postmarks for overseas mail in the late 1880s?


texts: I read that the Japanese were considered imperialists, mainly for their occupation of Manchuria and Korea. Would it be correct to say then that the Ottomans were also imperialists? They did occupy most of the Balkans, parts of North Africa and the Arabian peninsula.


texts:
What was life like for Australian convicts in the last few decades of transportation?

The last convict transportation arrived in 1868, what happened to convicts during this latter period? Were they put to work, locked in prisons or taken to convict colonies?


texts: Did medieval commanders exchange words before battle?

texts:
Random question for anyone who reads accounts of medieval battles. Was it customary for European medieval commanders to exchange words before battle, not merely for diplomatic reasons but more out of custom?

For example, I thought King Harold of the England and King Harald Hardrada of the Norwegians exchanged words at the Battle of Stamford Bridge; I think Harold was trying to broker a deal with Hardrada to avoid future bloodshed (I haven't read the account, however). I don't mean this kind of "diplomatic" exchange; I mean more like a formal declaration of war if the two armies had not met each other yet.

What makes me think this happened at least once is that, in the book The Hobbit, Tolkien had one of the dwarfish commanders (I believe from Moria) address the elves before they began the Battle of Five Armies. Being that Tolkien was a medieval scholar it seems plausible that this sort of formal, customary exchange could have happened at some point. I also know Joan of Arch on multiple occasions gave the typical "Surrender or Die" to the cities she besieged, but that served a practical purpose rather than a culture one.

It just doesn't seem plausible to my ignorant brain just to see an enemy army and shout "ATTAAACK!" without first saying something to the enemy commander, especially in a situation where it was the respective armies first encounter. That makes me think there might have been a formal and cultural way of doing it.

Examples with text would be appreciated.


texts: When has serious unemployment among educated young populations not led to revolution or war?

texts:
For background: The Eurozone crisis has moved on to the next chapter and we hear a lot of bad news this time from Cyprus. While I empathize with the people of Cyprus, I have little doubt that also theirs is a quite solvable economic problem. And for Europe as a whole perhaps: if you try to exit from or decelerate what is arguably a giant Ponzi pyramid, you are going to feel some serious pressure from those who started it in the first place. What troubles me more is the high unemployment rate in esp. Spain, which is said to exceed 50% among young people including many from the middle class and/or with college educations. This is a scenario that has led to revolutions (and it has been argued that the middle classes who lead revolutions) in the past.

The question: Are there examples from history where such high lasting unemployment among the educated youth has not led to revolution or war, but to some other relieve or solution instead. I am for instance thinking of 19th-century emigration to North America or the fact that some of the main cultural epochs in human history (e.g. during the lifetime of Michelangelo, or the Chinese Hundred Schools of Thought period, or even for members of the past-WW I lost generation such as the young Hemingway writing in Paris) coincided with periods of major economic (then usually war-induced) trouble. What evidence do we have?

Update: I came across another quote here; it also seems relevant to this question:

  I look at the most unstable force in China as college students. Ten
  years ago they had a total of six million people in universities, now
  there is six-and-a-half million graduating every year [...] They say
  there is going to be two hundred million college graduates in China
  over the next twenty years, larger than the entire workforce of the
  United States, and they are already having trouble getting jobs, and a
  college graduate average wage in China today is [...] 2,000 RNB, the
  same as a migrant worker.


texts: Who was the medieval author who addressed readers 1000 years in the future?

texts:
I'm trying to remember the author of a quotation, where the author addresses the reader in the far future. It's says something like "if you are reading this in 100 or perhaps 1000 years I hope the reader forgives me my foibles". I think it's in the epilogue of the book.

I thought it was Henry of Huntingdon or Gerald of Wales but cannot find anything like that. Probably a British medieval author, but I'm starting to wonder if I've totally misremembered.

Anyone have any idea?
Thanks!


texts: What was the original colour of the Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre)?

texts:
Most of the remains of Roman buildings that we see today are white, merely because paint decays much faster than the structure of the building which is naturally whitish. Looking at many of the statues, it is well known that they were painted. We're basically looking at history through a black and white camera.

I've tried to find out what were the original colours of the Colosseum but Google search didn't turn up anything.

What were the original colours of the Colosseum? A reasonable guess based on what other similar buildings looked like will also be accepted if no better information is available.


texts:
When I'm reading more about the late Roman Empire most of the time I read that the Roman emperors resided in Ravenna instead of Rome itself.

Was there a reason why the emperors of the late Roman empire left Rome or didn't reside there?


texts: Why did Japan commit atrocities against natives populaces after "liberating" them during WW2?

texts:
The propaganda Japan used during World War 2 when conquering China and Southeast Asia was Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
. I suppose that to mean that they would want to be seen as a liberator, one who liberated the native inhabitants from the European forces, and not as a brutal conqueror.

But Japan also committed a lot of atrocities in China and other parts of Southeast Asia after the "liberation". My question is why the generals and officers didn't stop the atrocities, even though such acts would definitely turn the tide of opinion against them, and help contribute to the resistance and the cost of occupation?


texts: Was the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age violent?

texts: In Europe, when the Bronze Age ended and the Iron Age began, was it a peaceful spread of technology, or was it a violent conquest where the newcomers were able to win by their more advanced technology?


texts: Did the rule of "all communications lead to Moscow" apply during the Tsarist times?

texts:
One of the main arguments for the Germans attacking Moscow during World War II was that it was a transportation (mainly railroad) "hub" for the Soviet Union, and if captured, would seriously disrupt Soviet communications. At that time, Moscow was the capital of the Soviet Union so this would make sense, "all other things being equal".

But during the time of the Tsars (after Peter the Great), the capital was at St. Petersburg, not Moscow.

So did the rule in the first paragraph apply during the time of the Tsars when "all other things weren't equal? Were Russian communications more decentralized during the earlier period?

Or was it a situation where most of the Soviet Union's communications were built between 1918 and 1941 so that what happened under the Tsars had little impact on the World War II situation? Or could it be that St. Petersburg and Moscow were close enough together so that there wasn't much of a difference between a Moscow and St. Petersburg hub?


texts: Can you help identify this European military uniform?

texts:
This picture was found in the possessions of a great-aunt who immigrated from Volhynia, Russia to Canada around 1908. My family is ethnically German, and many of the Volhynian Germans originally came from East Prussia. My vague guesses are that this is German/Prussian/Russian and is from approximately 1850-1908. I don't know who the man is. I can speculate that this is a military uniform.
Can anyone accurately identify his uniform (country, division, rank) or provide any other clues?


texts: Chinese funerary practice of ball/pearl?

texts:
What is the the placing a pearl/ball custom/tradition come from in China? I have inferred they used to put pearls in the deceased mouth for safe passage through the underworld but this seems slightly different although may be related.

I found the following on Wikipedia

  Tomo Miličević finds a dead woman lying on her bed, and someone proceeds to put a small black ball (A ball of mercury, which is a Chinese custom) into her mouth. Wikipedia article

Here is the youtube music video "From Yesterday."

Here is similar video from the movie "The Last Emperor."

As a side note according to Wikipedia the Sanskrit word for alchemy is Rasavātam which means "the way of mercury".  Being one of the few liquids at room temperature I could see this be used for similar purposes in Chinese history.

apparently it is from "The Last Emperor" movie. I just watched parts of the movie and they put a black pearl in her mouth when she dies I believe. I believe the Wikipedia article is wrong. Here is the scene from the movie. http://youtu.be/liUd2tukV3E?t=5m36s Here are some sources https://andrewsidea.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/the-last-emperor/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150506200811/http://www.mooreablackpearl.com/pearl_legends.htm


texts: What does an English Liberty-shaded lamp look like?

texts:
The London Venture by Michael Arlen several times mentions a woman with dark hair given a blue sheen as she sits under a Liberty-shaded lamp. Any idea what this lamp looked like?
Illustrator: Michel Sevier
Copyright, 1920, By George H. Doran Company


texts: Did Henry V’s archers at Agincourt fight with no pants / breeches on because of dysentery?

texts:
At the Battle of Agincourt (1415), according to the War History Online article The Time English Soldiers went to Battle without Pants, and Won

  The conditions for the archers at the start of the battle were dire, but they simply dropped their pants and did what needed to be done.

This is with reference to the ‘call of nature’ due to dysentery in the English army. Several other websites say more or less the same thing. For example, there’s this from Factinate:

  ...most of the English archers went into battle wearing no pants! This was actually because the dysentery which they still suffered from caused diarrhea, and it was much more freeing, to use that word, if you could fire arrows without worrying about soiling your pants.

And this from Scribol:

  ... due to a breakout of dysentery, the English archers fought much of the battle with their pants around their ankles – if not off altogether.

None of these sites have any sources, but perhaps a little more credible is History.com which cites the historian Juliet Barker in this paragraph:

  When the battle finally began on October 25, the English were exhausted, filthy and nearly starving. Many were also reeling from the stomach-turning effects of dysentery. According to historian Juliet Barker, some of Henry’s archers “were reduced to cutting off their soiled breeches and undergarments in an attempt to allow nature to take its course more easily.”

Juliet Barker is the author of Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle which, unfortunately can’t be searched on Google books for a source. The Wikipedia article on Agincourt makes no mention of archers cutting off or otherwise removing breeches / pants / trousers and nor does Robin Neillands’ The Hundred Years War (of which I have a copy).

Is there any evidence in the chronicles of the time that some or most of the English & Welsh archers went into battle without breeches / pants / trousers, or have they misrepresented the sources?

In addition to the somewhat 'sensationalized' phrasing used by these websites, I'm doubting these interpretations because:

Would archers with dysentery have had the strength to draw their longbows and fight if they had so little control over their bodily functions that they had to remove clothing from the lower regions?


texts: Did Andrew Jackson kill Dickinson fairly according to the customs of duels at the time?

texts:
Recently I read about Charles Dickinson, and his death on a duel with Andrew Jackson (then a general, later a US President). According to this link, Jackson killed him in a breach of dueling etiquette

Jackson received Dickinson's first bullet in the chest next to his
heart. Jackson put his hand over the wound to staunch the flow of
blood and stayed standing long enough to fire his gun. Dickinson's
seconds claimed Jackson's first shot misfired, which would have meant
the duel was over, but, in a breach of etiquette, Jackson re-cocked
the gun and shot again, this time killing his opponent.
from May 30, 1806: Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in duel

While according to Wikipedia it is generally acceptable, although the locals didn't like this:

Locals were outraged that Dickinson had to stand defenseless while
Jackson re-cocked and shot him, even though it was acceptable behavior
in a duel (my emphasis). Jackson could have shot in the air or shot only to injure
Dickinson; this would have been considered sufficient satisfaction
under dueling rules.
Wikipedia: Charles Dickinson (historical figure)

Was this an acceptable behaviour according to duelling customs at that time? If yes, why did the locals complain about it? If no, why didn't Dickinson's second
do something about it?


texts: How were new states admitted to the Union?

texts:
Admission of new states into the United States must be consistent with Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, but that leaves some discretion to Congress in a number of matters. What were the different ways of proceeding and which states were admitted according to which processes?

I know some examples of different ways of proceeding in the admission of states, but I also know my understanding is very incomplete, and I'm not sure any books deal with this question systematically.  Examples:

With many states, the act of Congress said that the new state would be admitted when the president signed a certain document on a certain date, but with some other states, it simply said the new state would be admitted on a specified future date.  With the first two of the states admitted under Article IV, Vermont and Kentucky, the latter procedure was followed.
Vermont and Texas make the transition directly from being a foreign country to being a state in the U.S.A. (Hawaii went through an intermediate period of some decades between foreign-country status and being a full-fledged state.)  Vermont's de-facto independence was vehemently but ineffectually disputed by New York, and New York's governor George Clinton successfully campaigned against Vermont's admission for a long time; otherwise it would have happened almost a decade earlier under the Articles of Confederation (in a sense it almost did happen in 1781 but Clinton exerted great efforts to stop it, and did).
Congress granted Texas the right to split itself into several states without any further action by Congress.
In Vermont the state constitution that had already been in effect for years simply continued in effect with no changes at all when the state was admitted, and the governor and other state officers who were already in office under that constitution simply continued their terms of office without even so much as getting sworn in in the manner prescribed by the federal Constitution.  (Might something similar have happened in Texas?)
Kentucky was a part of Virginia until it became a separate state in 1792. Under Article IV, Section III, this required the consent of the legislature of Virginia, which was given in 1789. (I think governing such an extensive state was expensive and inconvenient and they also wanted more southerners in the U.S. senate.) Strangely, the act of Congress admitting Kentucky was actually passed two weeks before the act admitting Vermont, although Kentucky was not admitted until well over a year after Vermont. Because of New York's claim that Vermont was legally part of New York (although Vermont was under a government that refused to recognize that), Vermont could not be admitted until New York's legislature consented in 1790.  Maine could similarly not be admitted (in 1820) without the consent of the legislature of Massachusetts (granted in 1819, I think?) and West Virginia was a strange case, admitted during the Civil War with the consent of some anti-secessionist legislators in Virginia.


texts: Why was the Hexamillion wall incapable of preventing invasion?

texts:
The Hexamillion wall was created to fortify the only land route into the Peloponnese peninsula ~ but throughout it's history (450-1460 AD) it failed to prevent multiple invasions, acting only as a deterrent.

It has been noted that a fortification of the Isthmus was of no utility without control of the ocean.

Was it a lack of control of the surrounding ocean that prevented the wall from being successful during it's history? Or perhaps the construction of the wall itself that allowed it to be easily breached? Maybe a series of ill-led, under strength defenders?


texts: How long would it have taken to get to the Poconos in the early 1900s?

texts:
This website on the history of the Poconos states:

  The Delaware Water Gap was the site of the first boarding house hotel, established in 1829 by Anthony Dutot, who initiated what would become a wildly successful resort industry. By 1900, thousands of visitors from the growing cities of Philadelphia and New York escaped to the high altitudes for summer vacations.

How would these visitors have made the trip? And how long would it have taken them?

Edit: I know that the train lines ran through the area, but I presume that there wasn't a line directly to each resort. If they only took the train partway, how was the rest of the trip made?


texts: What was the average age of tank crews, in particular commanders, in WW2?

texts:
It's somewhat difficult to find reliable figures for this, but it's an interesting question. Michael Wittmann, the German tank ace, was 30 when he was killed on the western front in 1944. Would this be somewhat above the average?
Figures for German, Soviet and Allied tank crews would be interesting to compare.


texts: What were the consequences of the bankruptcies of the Spanish Empire?

texts: During the reigns of Charles V and Philip II Habsburg, the Spanish Empire had to declare bankruptcy several times. What were the consequences of these events? Did, for example, some of their assets get seized by the bankers, or something like that? Despite the financial troubles, the Spanish Empire survived and grow for several more centuries.


texts:
Different from other revolutions which took place just once like Harari's

cognitive revolution
agricultural revolution
unification of mankind
scientific revolution

revolutions of communication took place several times (as I suppose):

by spoken language (part of Harari's cognitive revolution)
by paintings
by writing systems
by printing
by telegraphy
by broadcast technologies like radio and television
by telephone
by email and messaging
by broadcast technologies like WWW and social networks

Other aspects, forms and technologies of communication didn't come as revolutions but gently evolved (and didn't play such prominent roles):

smoke signals
pigeon post
couriers
mail
pneumatic tubes

I'm looking for references to concise overviews of these (and other) revolutions of communication, with a strong theoretical background (comparing and relating them to each other) that possibly give an outlook what might come next.


texts: Where is the bloodiest area with most deaths within a single day?

texts:
Caused by war or other violent encounters, where have the most people died throughout history within a single day?

These should include deaths at the hands of others, or themselves, using any conventional weapons (swords, bow/arrows/guns, etc).

These could be from beginning of history to today.

For example, during the Rwandan genocide event, there were an estimated 500k-1M deaths, but over a 100-day period.

Edit: This should not be a duplicate of this. Note that the other question doesn't have a time period, but it asks for the certain area in a long time.

Where is the bloodiest area with most violent deaths within a single day?


texts: During the American Civil war did gunboats range far into enemy territory?

texts:
In other words during the American civil war did the “front line” or enemy held territory act as a barrier to the passage of gunboats up and down rivers? Or was it possible for any to move deep into enemy territory (operate in areas where the enemy held one or both banks)? If this was not possible what stopped it happening?
By gun boat I mean any naval riverine vessel type.


texts: Financing of the Continental Army vs. Legion of the United States/United States Army

texts: As the concept of having a standing army gained acceptance, the Legion of the United States was raised which later became the United States Army. How was funding for this new army accomplished ? How did it differ from how the Continental Army was funded ?


texts: How was the administration of the liberated part of The Netherlands organised between 12 September 1944 and 5 May 1945?

texts: The Allied Liberation of The Netherlands lasted from 12 September 1944 (when the first villages were liberated) to 5 May 1945, when the German capitulation took force (not counting a few German remnants on some islands).  However, the Dutch government-in-exile did not return until the war was over.  How was the administration of the liberated part organised?  Was it under allied military administration?  Did parts of the Dutch government return to be in charge?  Did the Dutch government govern remotely?


texts: Do we know the situation in Britain before Sealion (summer 1940)?

texts:
Inspired by this other question, I had a look at the book (published in 1998/2003), and noticed this passage.

  When we captured Liège, we discovered a German map factory in full
  production. We moved a signal corps cartography group into the
  factory, and they started making maps for the American army. [...
  eventually printed on the back of German maps]
  As I folded some of the
  1:125,000 color maps, I noticed a lot of blue on the back of two of
  them. Upon closer examination, I was surprised to see that these were
  maps of southern England prepared by the Germans for the invasion of
  England in June 1940. They covered the area from the Thames estuary
  down through Weymouth and Bournemouth, the ports from which we had
  embarked. The maps continued farther west and covered all the major
  potential invasion sites on the English Channel.

  When I saw these maps, I remembered when we had first arrived in
  Codford in September 1943. [... and found a British map which] covered
  an area south of Codford, which was in Wiltshire, extending along the
  coast for about fifty to sixty miles. The British camp to which we had
  been assigned was apparently some type of command headquarters for the
  defense of this area. The map showed the location of every unit from
  battalion down through company, platoon, squad, and outpost.

  From my limited knowledge of defensive tactics, I could see
  immediately that this entire area was grossly undermanned; it was
  covered by only about a thousand soldiers instead of the usual five
  infantry divisions plus at least one motorized or armored division in
  reserve. The map showed a battalion area where a division would have
  been expected, and a company where a full regiment should have been.
  The defenses gradually diminished to the point where they had to
  actually cover the beaches. There were not enough outposts to cover
  all the exits from the beach. It appeared that there were outposts
  manned by at least an automatic weapon with a couple of men spaced at
  intervals of a mile or more along the cliffs above the beaches. They
  apparently used some type of messenger on a bicycle to communicate
  among these outposts. This British map was dated June 1940 and covered
  a small portion of the same area of the German map that I had just
  been issued.

  I have often wondered if the German decision to invade England would
  have been affected if they'd had a copy of this map when they made
  their German maps in Liège. A single German division could have
  completely overwhelmed the pitiful British defenses shown on this map.

(Cooper, Death Traps, pp. 129-30)

Is this new information, or has it been known before? Is the generallly accepted evaluation of the proposed invasion as utterly impossible based on the true facts?

Clarification: for the question to be useful, and stay within the scope of the site, let us focus on the map, the British map from the summer of 1940 that cooper says he saw in 1943. Do we know which map this was? Are these maps publically available now? If not, what happened to them? Alternatively, do we know that maps like this never existed and that Cooper must have been hallucinating?


texts: Changes to the school leaving dates in Scotland and Northern Ireland

texts:
I am looking for sources that tell me about when and how the school leaving dates were changed in Scotland and Northern Ireland after World War 2. I define school leaving date as the date you do not have to attend school anymore once you are around the school leaving age.

The current system for the UK is outlined here:School leaving age.
For England and Wales this changed in 1998 and 1962 before the current system came in.

For Northern Ireland under 4. of the 1976 Education Order for Northern Ireland I found that the power to change the dates was given to the Department of Education. However, I cannot find any changes and the Department of Education (NI) told me that they do not have records pre-dating 1972, so they cannot help me with 1945-1972.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!