texts: Why was the WW2 air war over Europe fought considerably higher than the Eastern Front?

texts:
I have read on various Wikipedia pages on WW2 aircraft that the tactical situation of the western European theater and the Eastern Front led to very different engagement altitudes for air warfare. See for example this page on the P-39 Airacoba.

This apparently led to certain planes being shipped directly to certain fronts where these planes specific strengths could play out. I.e. planes performing well at high altitude were used in Europe, whereas planes like the linked P-39 above that performed rather badly in higher altitudes were given to the Russians to use on the Eastern Front.

Can someone explain to me what exactly led to the different engagement heights?
Which specifics of theses war theaters were responsible for totally different air warfare to be fought in Europe and the Eastern Front?


texts: Was Marshal Foch predicting WW2 20 years in advance just a coincidence?

texts:
The Allied Supreme Commander at the end of WW1, Ferdinand Foch, seemingly predicted at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles hostilities with Germany recurring in the future. His prediction for the timeframe was off by about two months.

  On 11 November 1918 Foch accepted the German request for an armistice.
  Foch advocated peace terms that would make Germany unable to pose a
  threat to France ever again. Foch considered the Treaty of Versailles
  too lenient on Germany and as the Treaty was being signed on 28 June
  1919, he declared: "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty
  years". His words proved prophetic: the Second World War started
  twenty years and 64 days later.

Foch's personal opinion was that the peace treaty terms were not strict enough on Germany, and I thought this might have contributed to his gloomy prognostication. But this still doesn't explain the accuracy. Also, many considered the treaty too harsh. John Maynard Keynes referred to it as a Carthaginian Peace (too harsh on the Germans). Such figures who thought this way include:
John Maynard Keynes
Lloyd George
Woodrow Wilson
Reactions

Is his estimate of 20 years just dumb luck, a visionary and well-reasoned calculation, or an educated guess?

I know that some historians date the start of WW2 at an earlier date, say 1937, start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, but the fact that the Germans invaded in September 1939, with war being declared by Britain and France a day or two later, this prediction is really eerily accurate.


texts: Was breaching the Yellow River dykes Chiang Kai-Shek's Mers-el-Kebir?

texts:
In 1938 Chiang Kai-Shek's nationalist opted to breach the dykes of the Yellow River to flood the area in front of the Japanese advance and thereby slow down their enemy and protect the the key city of Wuhan.

The loss of life in the flooding was terrible, as was the damage done to homes and agricultural production. The government knew very well that this would be the result; it was an act of desperation.

The Chinese government didn't publicly admit to deliberately breaching the dykes. But the American government (at least) were well aware of how it had happened.

Was the dyke breaching intended partly as a message to the Americans and overseas allies (and to Japan) that China was prepared to stay the course of the war, would pay any price, and would never submit to her enemies' terms? Something like Britain's sinking of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir?

Is there evidence Chiang and his group intended the flooding to act as a message?


texts: Mexico has the right to possess firearms?

texts:
I have lived and grown up in Mexico for most of my life. I have always known firearms to be illegal here, as well as everyone I know. But just today, I came across this article on Wikipedia, (Gun politics in Mexico). According to the 1857 Constitution and also the 1917 Constitution, you're allowed to bear firearms.

  Artículo 10: Todo hombre tiene derecho de poseer y portar armas para su seguridad y legítima defensa. La ley señalará cuáles son las prohibidas y la pena en que incurren los que las portaren.

  Article 10: Every man has the right to have and to carry arms for his security and legitimate defense. The law will indicate which arms are prohibited and the penalty for those that will carry prohibited arms.

  – Constitution of 1857

  Artículo 10: Los habitantes de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos tienen derecho a poseer armas en su domicilio, para seguridad y legítima defensa, con excepción de las prohibidas por la ley federal y de las reservadas para el uso exclusivo del Ejército, Armada, Fuerza Aérea y Guardia Nacional. La ley federal determinará los casos, condiciones, requisitos y lugares en que se podrá autorizar a los habitantes la portación de armas.

  Article 10: The inhabitants of the United Mexican States have a right to arms in their homes, for security and legitimate defense, with the exception of arms prohibited by federal law and those reserved for the exclusive use of the Army, Navy, Air Force and National Guard. Federal law will determine the cases, conditions, requirements, and places in which the carrying of arms will be authorized to the inhabitants.

  – Constitution of 1917

So it's according to the Constitution, it is legal?

Here is what the Federal Law of Firearms and Explosives states you can have.

pistolas (handguns) of .380 Auto or .38 Special revolvers or smaller (.357 Magnum and 9x19mm Parabellum or larger are restricted)
escopetas (shotguns) of 12 gauge or smaller, with barrels longer than 25 inches, and
rifles (rifles) bolt action and semi-auto.


texts: Under what circumstances did feudal rulers grant land to someone new?

texts:
From wikipedia:

  A fief (/fiːf/; Latin: feudum) was the central element of feudalism and consisted of heritable property or rights granted by an overlord to a vassal who held it in fealty (or "in fee") in return for a form of feudal allegiance and service, usually given by the personal ceremonies of homage and fealty.

In feudalism, a fief generally passes to the son of the previous ruler.

In practice, kings would break this custom from time to time, and grant the fief to someone who was not the heir of the previous lord. I realize that taking lands away from a powerful lord is likely to start a civil war, and would only be done for a good reason, or in extraordinary circumstances. What were these circumstances?

When and why did historical kings grant lands and titles to someone new?

Good answers will cite their sources and be supported by specific examples.


texts: How much did Pan Am tickets to the moon cost?

texts:
I was searching online, and find a lot of references about the Pan Am moon tickets.

I'm curious how much they were going to cost though. I saw somewhere that said there was no down-payment... just reservations.

Was there ever an actual, established price on those tickets before Pan Am went out of business?

(+ Apparently TWA was also going to offer flights to the moon)


texts: Why did the Soviet Union lift the Berlin Blockade?

texts:
Between 24th June 1948 and 12th May 1949 land routes into West Berlin were blocked by Soviet forces and West Berliners were supplied entirely by air (the famous Berlin Airlift).

No one connected with the Soviet authorities had thought Berlin could be supplied this way. But contrary to expectations the airlift was an astonishing logistical succcess, eventually bringing in supplies at a rate which exceeded what had been provided by road and rail prior to the crisis.

So, although "because it wasn't working" is the flippant answer to my question, that doesn't explain Soviet thinking. While the blockade was clearly a failure from the Soviet point-of-view, at the same time it (seemingly) cost nothing to maintain. It was a success for the western allies, and a glorious one, but its costs were high. Wikipedia's article only suggests that "humiliation" forced the Soviets to lift the blockade, but surely ending the blockade and admitting their defeat was humiliating in its own right.

Why not just impose the blockade indefinitely? Airlift or no airlift.

Did the blockade impose costs on the Eastern Bloc which aren't immediately apparent? Damage to goodwill (both inside Germany and in the wider world)? Trade costs? Were there economic levers which the western allies were able to apply quietly to help end the blockade?


texts: How did changes in the balance of land versus naval balance of power prevent England from being successfully invaded by foreign powers after 1066?

texts:
The last successful invasion of England was that by the Normans in 1066. Prior to that, England had been successfully invaded by waves of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from the Continent, and before that, the Romans.
After 1066, no one from the Continent successfully invaded England. These include Hitler, Napoleon, the Spanish Armada, and possibly the French during the 100 years war. "Native" invaders like William and Mary, (the latter of whom was English) or Henry Beaufort or the Barons in the First Barons War did sometimes succeed.
The key factor appears to be that in the second millennium, England had a "critical mass" of naval clout to defeat the various would-be foreign invaders, but this was not true in the first millennium. If so, what would be the key ingredients of this naval "critical mass?" What caused this change? Was it due, for instance, to the greater efficacy of ships built in the second millennium in patrolling the waters around England?
Or put another way, why were first millennia foreigners more successful in invading England, given the same weather, and more primitive ships (unless the argument might be that the weather changed and we had e.g., a new ice age in the second millennia and not the first).


texts: Where can I find the diplomatic relationships of the nations in the Sixth Coalition?

texts:
On this page I can see which side each nation was on, but it does not mean that each country was in war with all the nations on the other site. Let me give an example: Denmark-Norway was allied with Napoleon and in war with United Kingdom and Sweden I know, but it does not mean that Denmark-Norway was in war with all of the nations from the Sixth Coalition. For example they were not at war with Prussia (which was a member of the Sixth Coalition).

Where can I find the diplomacy relationship of the nations in that period ?


texts: What was the first time clothing moved beyond necessity and a widespread trend of clothing emerged?


texts: Did Afghanistan make war with Alexander the Great?

texts: Afghani'd claim that Alexander the Great did not defeat Afghanistan or the Patans (Pukhtoon) people. Is this true or is it only a myth?


texts: What is the historical accuracy of birth of lord Sri Krishna

texts:
Online suggests that birth of lord Sri Krishna is 4th millineum BC at the below link

https://www.booksfact.com/history/sri-krishna-life-events-dates-born-18-june-3229-bce.html

but it is mentioned that Jarasandha who was against Sri Krishna was in between 1500 BC and 1700 BC. Citation in the below link

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Magadha

I would like to know the historical accuracy of Birth of Lord Sri Krishna.

Lord Shri Krishna is praised as God in India. He lived in the city of Dwarka in India. Lord is the one who taught the Indian sacred Indian text Bhagvad Gita to Arjuna in the epic Mahabharatha.


texts: Where in San Francisco did the Land Commission meet?

texts:
After taking California, the U.S. needed a way to sort through land claims and established a Public Land Commission. This operated from 1852 to 1856, principally in San Francisco but also briefly in Los Angeles, taking depositions and issuing decisions. Records of the 813 claims it heard (and the lawsuits that ensued) survived the 1906 fire.

The documentation is not sparse, but I haven't been able to answer one question: in which building or buildings in San Francisco did the Commission meet?


texts: Was there a forest in Armenia (around the city of Ani) between 961 and 1045?

texts:
Recently I discovered the existence of the ancient city of Ani (Armenia) which was "one of the world's largest cities, with a possible population of circa 100,000." between 961 and 1045. See the Wikipedia article, or this article from The Atlantic
Pictures of the ruins are stunning and show an advanced civilization, equivalent to what can be found in Europe. The city seems to be lost in an empty steppe, without resources and forest.
Was the vegetation around the city similar to what we see nowadays (a steppe without trees)? In particular, was there a forest at that time, now gone due to timber production?


texts:
I have read that germans used extensively Pervitin (Methamphetamine) in WWII. So, I guess there are other drugs used in wars and battles throughout history.

What were the most used drugs in battles and wars? When did they start to be used? Is there evidence that empires (such as the Roman Empire or more recent ones) relied on drugs to win battles? If not, what did they use to enhance their performance?


texts: Are modern Greeks related to the ancient Greeks?

texts:
Greece has been subject to many many invasions since the 7th century and there must have been a serious mixing of peoples. In a similar situation, we do not usually consider the French or the Germans to be lineal descendants of the Romans. So can the modern Greeks be said to be actual descendants of the ancient ones?

P.S.
Just to make it clear, I have no political axe to grind or anything, just curious.


texts: Who voted against German reunification, and why?

texts:
The reunification of Germany in 1990 was effected by a treaty between the governments of East and West Germany (the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany, respectively).  The treaty was voted on separately by the respective legislatures, and passed with large majorities of 299–80 in the GDR and 440–47 in the FRG.

I'm interested in learning more about who voted against the reunification treaty and why.  The German Wikipedia mentions that the "no" votes came from members of the Party of Democratic Socialism (the successor to the Socialist Unity Party that had ruled the GDR since 1949) and Alliance 90/The Greens in the GDR, and members of The Greens and the Union parties (the CDU and CSU) in the FRG.

From what I can tell, the PDS had largely renounced Leninism and expelled most of its Leninist-era leaders. On what basis, then, did they campaign for keeping East Germany as a separate state?  (Or were they in fact in favour of reunification, but not on the specific terms given in the treaty? If so, what terms in particular did they find objectionable?)

The reunification treaty was also voted against by The Greens in both East and West Germany.  Was this an official policy of both Green parties, or was it only a faction who voted this way?  Regardless, what was their stated motivation?

Finally, in the FRG, the CDU/CSU alliance held 255 seats at the time of the treaty vote, so it seems only a small minority of them voted "no".  Who were these members?  Did they act in concert, as a faction?  What reasons did they give for voting against reunification?


texts: Has diplomatic immunity ever been ignored in modern times?

texts:
I know that after Pearl Harbor the Japanese diplomat Kurusu was interned until an exchange of diplomats could be arranged and then was able to return to Japan. I also recall that in the more distant past, sometimes envoys/messengers from foreign countries were murdered such as how Vlad the Impaler treated Turkish envoys.
So limiting it to the last 500 years I would be interested in cases were diplomats were either imprisoned or executed or at least in danger of being treated as criminals rather than being allowed to return to their home countries after war had broken out.


texts: Did German soldiers receive pay after the Allied invasion?

texts:
The German war machine was well organized, the logistics were quite accurate and I can only imagine that they also were quite on time with wages payment before the Allied invasion in France.

My question is: Did German soldiers receive pay after the Allied invasion of France in June 1944?

A deeper question is: Did German soldiers that survived the world war receive pay for their services and, if they did, what government payed them?


texts:
After the resolution of the Revolutionary War, John Adams and (later) Thomas Jefferson were diplomatic agents in London.  John Adams had been there a while and had previously met the King, apparently amiably.

I happen to be reading American Sphinx by Joseph Ellis, where on page 75 it is stated:

  When Jefferson visited Adams in England in the spring of 1786, the two former revolutionaries were presented at court and George III ostentatiously turned his back on the both.  Neither man ever forgot the insult or the friend standing next to him when it happened.

I recently read John Adams by David McCullough where the same incident is stated differently (on page 355):

  When Adams presented Jefferson at the King's levee at St. James's on March 15, George III could not have been "more ungracious" in his "notice of Mr. Adams and myself," according to an account later provided by Jefferson.  Later still a grandson of Adams's would take this to mean the King had turned his back on them, and the story would become rooted in history.  But almost certainly no such incident occurred.  Jefferson said nothing to the effect at the time.  Nor did any of the numerous ministers, courtiers, members of Parliament, and other diplomats present who were ever watchful for the slightest sign of royal disapproval or anything the least out of the ordinary.  Nothing untoward was reported or hinted at in the newspapers, and importantly, nothing was ever said or written by James Adams, who, of all men, would have been enraged by any disrespect shown a minister of the United States being presented under his sponsorship.

Ellis footnotes the version he reports rather extensively, including a letter from Adams to Jefferson not too long after the event and in their respective autobiographies.

So, any further insight on what happened?  Did it actually happen?  Did King George III turn his back on John Adams and Thomas Jefferson?


texts:
In this painting of Robert Walpole by John Theodore Heins Robert is painted with a crown on his right. Robert Walpole is according to Wikipedia "a British politician who is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain".

pictured above : Portrait of Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745) Earl of Orford, painted by John Theodore Heins (1697-1756) followed by a close-up of the crown. attributed to Norwich Castle / Public domain
When looking at a portrait of him I noticed a crown on his right which looked odd to me since Walpole certainly wasn't royalty and the way this portrait is painted reminded me of royal portraits, like for example the portraits of his contemporaries George I and George II which use many of the same elements:

George I and George II both monarchs during Walpole's time as Prime Minister displayed in a similar way. George I - Studio of Godfrey Kneller / Public domain. George II - Thomas Hudson / Public domain
So my question is : Why did Robert Walpole get painted with a crown on his right side?
I have searched a lot on the Internet but with no avail, am I missing something obvious here or is the answer a little more nuanced?


texts:
What would the options have been for a member of the Orthodox church have been for religious observations while travelling in Catholic countries during the middle-ages?

Presumably someone travelling with a large entourage could bring a priest along with them; but I'm more interested in people travelling alone or in small groups -- envoys, couriers, small merchants, etc.


texts: History of ways of choosing members of the electoral college

texts:
The Constitution of the United States Article II, Section 1, second paragraph, says:

  Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress

Thus the legislature

could choose the electors itself, or it
could require the governor to appoint them, or it
could do what 48 of the 50 states do and have the voters choose them in such a manner that all of the state's electors are committed to vote for the same candidate, or it
could do what Maine and Nebraska do, having two electors chosen state-wide and one in each congressional district, or it
could do what North Carolina did when John Adams ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 1800, dividing the states into a number of electoral districts equal to the number of electors and having the voters choose one elector in each district (thus there were two more such districts than the number of congressional districts), or it
could do what Maryland and some other states have recently done, saying the state's electors would be chosen according to the nation-wide popular vote, provided a certain number of other states adopt the same legislation, or it
could do something else.

My question is: Has the history of what the states have done about this been written?

(BTW, the term "electoral college" is unofficial, imported from Germany's First Reich, in which membership in the electoral college was hereditary.)


texts: What were the political and military constraints on Vercingetorix at Alesia?

texts:
I don't fully understand why Vercingetorix accepted a siege at Alesia (a fortified area), where he would be short of food instead of pursuing one or more of the alternatives below. The reason I'm puzzled is because (I believe that)  Vercingetorix' force was "small" relative to the ultimate relieving force, Given this fact, his alternatives were:

Rest and refit briefly at Alesia, and continue the flight further toward friendly Gallic territory.

A variation of 1) above. Leave half of the army at Alesia as a holding force, and continue the flight with the other half. The issue at Alesia was that there were more than enough men to hold the fortress, but too many to feed.

A variation of 2) above: Weeks after the siege began, some of the cavalry escaped to rally the relieving force. Why wasn't Vercingetorix among them?

I'm assuming that Vercingetorix made choices that were rational in the context of the political and military constraints of his time and place, but I don't fully understand them. What were these constraints? And was there a reason that Vercingetorix failed to evacuate the civilians before the Romans arrived to save food for his men?


texts: Why was Poland able to resist the Swedish invasion during the Deluge, but not during the time of Charles XII?

texts:
The Deluge, in the mid-17th century, was a particularly troubled time for Poland. The western part of the country was overrun by Sweden, and the eastern part was invaded by disgruntled Cossacks. The Poles were down to their last stronghold at Lvov. Yet, they managed to re-organize their armies, and drive back the overextended Swedes. This, despite the fact that the Swedes were allied with Brandenburg, the Cossacks, and Transylvanians, to Poland's north, east, and south.

In the early 18th century, Poland was again overrun by Swedish forces under Charles XII. Here, it was Poland who had allies in Denmark and Russia. Also, its king was Augustus the Strong of Saxony, who controlled both countries through a "personal union." Yet, despite this favorable line-up, Sweden was able to drive Augustus out of Poland, and in fact invade and occupy Saxony.

Of note is the fact that Polish cavalry played a leading part in winning the Battle of Vienna against the Turks in 1683. Yet, no Polish army rose up to defeat Charles XII, who lost to the Russians instead.

Why was Poland able to repel Sweden the first time around, and not the second time?


texts: When did the use of "Contact!" by soldiers emerge?

texts:
I was recently watching a World War One docudrama-esque show (Our World War (BBC)) and, while patrolling and fighting to control Trones Wood, some British troops unexpectedly encounter the German enemy. Instinctively, a rifleman calls "contact" as the engagement begins.

Rightly or wrongly, the use of the phrase contact took me by surprise. It's a well known phrase and part of many Immediate Action drills in modern warfare, but it didn't strike me as one that would be in use during World War I.

For example, an American Vietnam Era combat handbook states:

  This immediate action drill is used, defensively, to make and quickly
  break undesired but unavoidable contact (including ambush), and,
  offensively, to decisively engage the enemy (including ambush). When
  used in chance contact, men nearest the enemy open fire and shout,
  "Contact, Front (Right, Left, or Rear)." The patrol moves swiftly into
  line formation and assaults.

Source

So, my question is effectively twofold: When did the use of "Contact" begin and was the use in this context anachronistic?


texts: Why does the Great Wall of China follow such a bendy route?

texts: Why does the path of the Great Wall of China bend back and forth so much? Naïvely, it would have taken less material and guards to defend if it had taken a straighter path, so there must have been some reason. But what?


texts: Is there any documentation regarding the use of war elephants in battles?

texts: Does anyone know of any battles where war elephants played either a major or decisive part in the victory of whoever had them?  As far as I know, they were mostly used for the fear factor and were generally a liability rather than a benefit.


texts: Works of "Longue Durée" history in English

texts:
According to this article on Wikipedia, Longue Durée signifies as approach to writing history that looks at events over an extended period of time, focusing on issues like economics and climate, rather than on the short-term events that tend to accompany standard narrativisations of history. I'm curious as to how such a study might look, but can only find French-languages examples.

Can anybody recommend an English-language example of this style of history writing? I would be especially interested in something touching on mediaeval Europe or on the Ancient Near East, but would also be happy with material that concerns other cultures/regions.


texts:
I had always assumed that Aristotle titled his own works.  But under the Wikipedia article on Metaphysics, it gives an alternative explanation for the origin of the work's title:

  Subsequent to the arrangement of Aristotle's works by scholars at Alexandria in the first century CE, a number of his treatises were referred to as τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά (ta meta ta fysika; literally, "the [writings] after the Physics"). This is the origin of the title for collection of treatises now known as Aristotle's Metaphysics. Some have interpreted the expression "τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά" to imply that the subject of the work goes "beyond" that of Aristotle's Physics or that it is metatheoretical in relation to the Physics. But others believe that "τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά" referred simply to the work's place in the canonical arrangement of Aristotle's writings, which is at least as old as Andronicus of Rhodes or even Hermippus of Smyrna.

That whole passage has a citation to one book to which I don't have access:

W. D. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics (1953), vol. 1, p. xxxii.

It seems to be implied here that Aristotle didn't title Metaphysics himself, if the source is to be believed.  Does this mean that all the titles of Aristotle's works, Poetics, Metaphysics, Rhetoric, On the Soul, etc., were actually not titles explicitly denoted by Aristotle, but chosen by scholars arranging his work at the library of Alexandria?

To provide some context, this subject is of interest to a question on the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange: Why do the titles of scholarly works sometimes begin with the word “on”?


texts: What happened to copies of Holy Lance (Holy Roman Empire regalia)?

texts:
This question is only about copies of the spear that's kept in Vienna, not the Roman one or any other that are connected with "original" Holy Lance. I'm making this research for the story I'm in the middle of writing

I'll answer this question with what I've found out during my research up to this time, but first I'll wait for other responses (according to what I've understood from different meta topics, that's the way I should do, but maybe I'm wrong, I've got no experience with this site).

In 1000, Holy Roman Emperor Otto III and duke of Poland, Boleslaw I Chrobry, met at the Congress of Gniezno, which was the first capitol of Poland. During the meeting, Otto III gave Polish prince the copy of Holy Lance, which (so called "original one", even if it's from 8th century) is recently kept in Vienna, as a part of Imperial Regalia. It was one of symbols of his acceptance for creation of Kingdom of Poland, which was part of Otto's idea for expanding Empire's influence in Eastern Europe, through allies with Poland and Hungary. While the wooden staff didn't survive the millenium, it's spearhead is still kept at Krakow's Wawel Castle.

Unfortunately the reliquary with a fragment of nail (from Jesus' cross, according to legends) was stolen (with much more of Polish crown treasure) by king John Casimir II from Swedish dynasty of Vasa, when he decided to leave Polish throne. He took it to Paris, where he became an abbot of Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The relic finally vanished when the chapel was robbed during French Revolution, in 1793.

I know the story of Polish one well, the same with the one in Vienna and found some good Hungarian language sources on the St. Stephen's spear, at least until the 17th century. But there were few other copies and I would be very happy to receive any additional informations about them. To who they were gifted, by which of Holy Roman Empire rulers and what was the reason? What happened to them later?

Especially any informations about spear gifted to Gerard of Lorraine (I believe that's the "Gerhard of Alsace" mentioned in Polish sources).


texts: Was the Times of London available for sale in 19th century Singapore?

texts: Were copies of The Times of London generally available for sale in 19th century Singapore? If so, how much did a copy cost? And how many days would the newspaper take to arrive in Singapore?


texts: What was the economic impact of WW1 on USA's economy?

texts:
It's well known that WW2 had a greatly positive impact on American economy. Up to the point of certain historians being sure that, if not for WW2, FDR would have had a major economic problems on his hands in early 40s.

Is there good information/analysis of what the economic impact of WW1 was on American economy?


texts:
Total war requires mobilization of the economy.
The degree of a nation's mobilization can be quantified in two major ways:

Negatively: as, e.g., the reduction of "non-essential consumer production" --- describing the privations of the population.
Positively: as, e.g., the increase in "war production" (food and military heavy industrial equipment?) --- describing the increased fighting capability.

What was the degree of mobilization of major World War (1&2) combatants by year?

Motivation:

I have seen claims that the degree of "negative mobilization" of Germany was higher in WW1 than in WW2 because Hitler wanted to avoid the collapse of the home front that lead to the defeat in the WW1 (this claim seems to suggest that Hitler did not quite believe himself in the Stab-in-the-back myth).
The common theme in the Soviet propaganda is that USSR won the war because the Socialist Economy is best suitable to mobilization. Indeed, the "negative mobilization" was probably the highest in the USSR (of course, "positive mobilization" is more important to war fighting).

Complications:

It is probably impossible to find any reliable numbers about USSR.
Soviet economy has been always geared towards war production, so the changes due to war were not as dramatic as in other countries.
Similarly, German "positive mobilization" started way before 1939.


texts: Vatican hidden (secret) rooms and passages?

texts:
The Vatican is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population and at the same time is considered a place of many mysteries.

Many movies contain episodes of a Vatican containing secret (hidden or otherwise not freely disclosed) rooms or passages for one reason or another. Moreover, some formally secret passages and/or rooms are now known to exist.

  The Passetto is a passage that links the Vatican City with Castel Sant'Angelo. Pope Alexander VI crossed it in 1494 when Charles VIII invaded the city, and Pope Clement VII escaped to safety through it during the Sack of Rome, in 1527. - Secret passage (Wikipedia)

An example of one of the Vatican secret (private) rooms can be read about here:

  Denied at first, Perrottet pleaded his case, and a bishop re-juggled the pope's schedule so that Perrottet could be quickly snuck in for a brief visit.

  Perhaps the most intriguing secret of the Vatican is, surprisingly, a bathroom -- decorated in erotic frescoes -- in the papal apartments. According to Tony Perrottet, author of "A Journey Through the Historic Underbelly of Europe," this bathroom was painted in 1516 by the Renaissance master Raphael and is called the Stufetta Della Bibbiena, the "small heated room of Cardinal Bibbiena," the official who commissioned the work.

  "It had been painted over and then restored. Its existence was denied. Art historians had heard of it, but photos of it from the 1930s were murky and dark," said Perrottet. Gaining entry to this bathroom was Perrottet's greatest challenge while researching his book, he said.

  Denied at first, Perrottet pleaded his case, and a bishop re-uggled the pope's schedule so that Perrottet could be quickly snuck in for a brief visit.

  "It was very exciting," he said. "One of the clerics took me in for five minutes. The room was filled with erotic frescoes. I saw Venus naked doing her hair by the lake, her legs akimbo, and I had to get to the monsignor to step aside to see the most famous one -- Pan pleasuring himself." Perrottet was not allowed to take photographs but made a few drawings.

  But because access is only through the Vatican Secret Archives, very few outsiders get to set foot in there. - Secret Rooms, Passageways, Erotic Frescoes of the Vatican

I know other such passages and/or rooms within the Vatican do exist, but cannot find any references to them. In a biography of Pope Pius IX, I read (forgotten the title of the book, but it made reference to a secret passage), about how he wanted to avoid some visitors inside the Vatican and chose to go from one area and another within the Vatican by using a small, but secret passage to get from point A to point B. Unfortunately, he could not open the door from the inside and could only be let out with the aide of the Swiss Guards.

My question is quite simple: Are there any known references of other historically known hidden (secret or otherwise not freely disclosed) passages or rooms within the Vatican?


texts: Was the US debt free in 1776, as Thomas Paine claimed in “Common Sense”?

texts: In the pamphlet's fourth chapter “Of the Present Ability of America, with Some Miscellaneous Reflections” Paine wrote that the US had no debt. However, "Common Sense" was published in 1776, by which time the American Revolutionary War was going on. Was this debt-free situation then really the case? Although the USA funded themselves with selling ships and other natural resources like tar and timber, the Continental Congress often could not collect taxes from the states and war, in itself, is quite costly, hence my confusion.


texts: Did Hitler spare Dundee from bombing because it "rejected" Churchill as MP?

texts:
A persistent rumour in Dundee, Scotland holds that Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe not to bomb the city because of the fact that Dundee had "rejected" Churchill in the 1922 election, when Churchill lost his seat to the Prohibitionist candidate in a sensational upset which nearly derailed his political career. The theory holds that because of this, Hitler held some kind of affection for Dundee and therefore ordered that it not be bombed.

I have tried several times to research this, but have been unable to find any source which bears out this rumour.  I am inclined to dismiss it as a local urban legend.  However, it has to be said that it doesn't sound completely implausible, given Hitler's known tendency to make important military decisions based on personal whimsy, rather than sound strategic decision-making.  It is certainly a tantalising theory.  It is kind of strange that a ship-building and manufacturing town was not bombed, particularly since Glasgow (Clydebank) and Edinburgh both were (Glasgow extensively).

Does anyone know of any sources which can verify this rumour, or can I simply discard it as an unfounded rumour?

Should point out that there was actually one abortive Luftwaffe raid on Dundee during WW2.  However, the bombers apparently dropped their bombs in the River Tay, missing the city, and then turned for home almost immediately.  Some versions of the rumour hold that, rather than being military incompetence, this was intentional and thus proves the theory.


texts: In what sense was marriage in 19th century Europe "expensive"?

texts:
I am reading Ibsen's play "Ghosts" (for fun), written in 1881, and  in one of the scenes a conversation takes place between young Oswald, who had been living in Paris and Rome, and a conservative Pastor about the subject of marriage.

Oswald tells the shocked Pastor that he has seen family life up close by acquaintances who live with "their children and their children's mother",
out of wedlock. The pastor is scandalized, and Oswald explains that the reason
is partly because "Marriage is so expensive".

The implication is that providing for a family was practical, but actual marriage wasn't, where does the difference lie? Was there some legal hurdle for marriage by poor people? A proof of means of support required? Some kind of exorbitant marriage license fee?


texts: Did line infantry units have designated marksmen?

texts:
I've found the picture below on the TotalWar game series forum, but doing the reverse image search, shows that it is actually quite popular (however, I couldn't find the author or the title):

It depicts a Prussian line infantry unit marching towards enemy. My (actually pretty silly question) is: why is the soldier at the bottom left of the drawing shooting during the march without waiting for the command from the officer?
The Wikipedia article on line infantry says:

The soldiers were supposed to fire volleys at the command of officers, but in practice this happened only in the first minutes of the battle. After one or two volleys, each soldier charged a musket and fired at his own discretion, without hearing the commands of the officers.
Line tactics required a strict discipline and simple movements, practiced to the point where they became second-nature. During training, the drill and corporal punishments were widely used.

However, this scene takes place before the unit has "connected" with the enemy: the officer is in front of the soldiers and the front row is marching instead of kneeling. So why are the two soldiers on the bottom left already shooting/reloading after the shot?
Is it

Artistic licence - such thing would never happen in a disciplined Prussian army (at least not so early in the battle), but it shows nicely how the line infantry works?
Just two undisciplined soldiers that can't wait for the fight and shoot prematurely?
Some sort of marksmen expected to shoot from the greater distance?

If indeed the 3rd answer is correct - was it a common practice to have such snipers attached to a regular unit? Were they armed differently than the rest of the squad? While the smooth-bore muskets are horrible to be used in marksmanship, there were already in use proper rifles, such as the German Jager rifle or British Baker rifle. I know about designated UNITS of sharpshooters (like the British Green Jackets), but this doesn't seem the case.


texts: Did the founding members of the Black Panthers ever mention the role of Malcolm X in creating their group?

texts: I'm trying to find out if the Black Panther Party (BPP) ever said (preferably in an interview of some kind) whether Malcolm X or the Nation of Islam's more active approach to civil rights helped to inspire the creation of their party.


texts: Where was this destroyed bridge in South Vietnam?

texts: Can anyone provide the location of this destroyed bridge during the Vietnam War? I believe the sign at the end of the bridge refers to the Big Red One, 1st Infantry Division


texts: Were "hitmen" a real historical occupation?

texts:
The trained killer-for-hire is a fairly standard trope in all kinds of media about courtly intrigue. That way, the king's life can be in danger basically all the time. But did these people actually exist? Wikipedia has a list of assassinations, but all of them seem to have been carried out by secret police or regular people with a grudge like John Wilkes Booth or Gavrilo Princip.

I know about the hashashin, but they seem to be a militant religious order with their own agenda rather than a group of mercenaries that worked for the highest bidder.

I don't care if they were rare, I know that it's not exactly an occupation on the level of "blacksmith" or "hunter." I want to know if they existed at all prior to the modern age.

(I've tagged this middle-ages and renaissance because I wasn't sure what else to add, and these seem to fit the period when these sort of people could have appeared).


texts: Is there any transcript or recordings of Yasser Arafat's speech to Arab foreign ministers in 1996 (Stockholm)?

texts:
I am interested in a full transcript or original recording of a speech that Yasser Arafat delivered to 'Arab diplomats in Stockholm's [Grand Hotel in] January 1996'. The speech is referenced and is commentated on in these four links, which are the only ones I have been able to find that pertain to this particular speech:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-02-27-me-40531-story.html
https://iris.org.il/quotes/stockhlm.htm
https://www.geocities.ws/palestiniansarelies/YasserArafatDeclaration.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/04/world/in-the-words-of-arafat.html
It seems that the existence of this speech/its authenticity has been debated, as far as I can tell. The first link provides a direct quote to his speech, and cites the the Norwegian paper Dagen.
The second link provides context to the information from Dagen, but also discusses more detail on the debate of authenticity of the speech. Despite this contest, detailed direct quotes from his speech are sitll given.
The third also provides quotes to the speech and another newspaper, the Swedish weekly Magazine.
The last is likely the least related but a connection to other anti-peace remarks Arafat might have made.
Arafat's War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest by Efraim Karsh (Chapter 3, a Trojan Horse) seems to have provided more detail, but I couldn't find any footnotes with the online sample. I'm also still awaiting a copy of Henry Kissinger's "Does America Need a Foreign Policy?" on interlibrary loan- Page 178 seems to have detail, but no footnotes either. I can provide excerpts on Karsh's book if needed.
Anyone have any leads?


texts: In the 1980s, did any Western expert, scholar, official, or politician predict the impending collapse of the Soviet Union?

texts:
This claim was made by Foreign Policy in 2011:

  In the years leading up to 1991, virtually no Western expert, scholar, official, or politician foresaw the impending collapse of the Soviet Union

I was wondering if the above claim is true. Would the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 have been a huge surprise to Western intellectuals and politicians in, say, 1985 (before Gorbachev)?


texts: How should a Westerner visualise Chinese civilisation under the various dynasties?

texts:
I have a decent knowledge of European history (if I say so myself!) but, like many Englishmen, my grasp of Chinese history is very poor, and, over the past few months, I've taken some modest steps towards putting that right.
It's been said many times that Han Dynasty China is roughly equivalent to the Roman Empire, and, indeed, the parallels between those two contemporaneous superstates are fascinating. Extending that idea a bit, I've drawn up the following aide-memoire to Chinese history:

The Han Dynasty corresponds to the Roman Empire;
The Tang Dynasty corresponds to the Byzantine Empire;
The Song Dynasty corresponds to the Plantagenets;
The Ming Dynasty corresponds to the Tudors and Stuarts;
The Qing Dynasty corresponds to the Hanoverians.

The above is very useful for giving me an intuitive feel for when each dynasty was in power, but it doesn't help me to visualise how each dynasty looked. Comparing, for example, the Roman Empire to the Tudors: the Roman elite wore togas, and their soldiers wore the famous lorica segmentata and carried short swords and large shields; whereas the Tudor elite wore ruffs (sometimes of hilarious proportions) and their soldiers carried rapiers, halberds and primitive firearms. But how would I visualise the difference between, say, a Han and a Ming nobleman? I know it's just a mark of my own ignorance, but Chinese history for me, visually, is just an undifferentiated mass of silks, fireworks and long fingernails. How should I visualise it?


texts: How devoted to Tengrism was Genghis Khan?

texts:
We first hear about Tengrism around the 6th Century as forming amongst the Turkic people of the central Asian steppe, spreading west for a bit with Attila and his crew, then getting mostly overrun by Uighur Manichaeists. What's left gets muddled around with Buryat mythology and a little bit of Buddhist flavor and turned into some elitist thing of a bunch of 'Tngris': some self-made gods and children of gods, of which Genghis Khan's father was said to be one years after he died.

One of the big things we know about Genghis Khan's conquering of Asia and eastern Europe was its religious tolerance; his exemption of Daoists, Buddhists, Christians and Muslims from taxes is sometimes cited as a factor in the downfall of Tengrism. But what I can't find any evidence of is how devoted* to a religion Genghis actually was. Much of the Tngri stuff seems to have been cited by his children as proof of 'divine rule', but I can't find word on whether the man himself believed any of it, whether he went along with it for political/cultural convenience, or if he felt in his marrow that Tengrism was the way to go and the religious tolerance was either a byproduct of that devotion or of a man separating work and pleasure.

By devotion, I am using the Dictionary.com definition, stating:

  adjective: Zealous or ardent in attachment, loyalty, or affection.

I'm not asking if he was a "good Tengrist" (as modern-day understanding of the actual tenets seems murky at best), but if he had strong attachment, loyalty or affection for it, and if so, to which version? Did Genghis Khan believe in the old Mongolian Tengrism with animist sky-worship to any significant degree? Did he believe in the Tngri mini-gods thing that came later? Or was he truly a secular individual?


texts: What sort of temples existed in small Greek villages?

texts:
Context: I am going to be starting a D&D campaign in a world based on ancient Greece, rather than your classic western european medieval fantasy land. This will probably not be the only question regarding everyday life in that place and period, as I am no historian.

We are all familiar with the massive, imposing image of ancient Greek temples, with huge colonnades and beautiful statues. However, I doubt that your average Greek farmer had access to such grandiose temples on a regular basis. I would like to know what a local temple for a village of simple peasants would resemble, if they even had dedicated temples in small gatherings.

What size would it have been? How many priests would have worked (lived?) there? Would it have been dedicated to just a single god, or would each god have a shrine to them inside one temple?


texts: Do we have any surviving remnants or written accounts of pre-Roman buildings in Northern Europe?


texts: State changing its name within the United States

texts: In 1989 there was an initiative in North Dakota to change the state's name to simply "Dakota". Is this first time an initiative was taken for a state to change its name after becoming a state within the Union.  Did a state ever actually change its name after admission? Is there a federal process for changing a state's name?


texts: Was Jud Suss a veiled criticism of Hitler?

texts:
In 1940, Veit Harlan directed his most controversial movie: Jud Suss. The film takes various historical liberties, but otherwise depicts the life and death of Joseph Suss Oppenheimer, Court Jew to Karl Alexander, the 18th century Duke of Württemberg. Subjectively speaking, it's a very well made film, but its content is quite striking: the Jewish characters are depicted as conniving, power-hungry and lascivious (although the duke himself doesn't come off much better), and various members of the cast and crew found difficulty getting work again after the war was over.

In attempting to mitigate their role in the production, I have heard (although I have no source beyond Wikipedia) that some of the people involved claimed to have been operating under duress. Josef Goebbels, the Reichsminister of Propaganda, was himself very involved in the production of the movie, so the claim is not so unbelievable. My question concerns a feature of the film, and how it may have been analysed critically at the time:

Karl Alexander (played by Heinrich George) is depicted as greedy and lecherous, and it is his moral depravity that causes him to invite Jews back to Stuttgart in order to finance his various entertainments. To do so, he needs to overrule the interests of his advisors, and to their chagrin he amends the constitution in order to deprive them of a voice within his cabinet and to grant sole, unmitigated rule to himself.

When I was watching this, I couldn't help but wonder whether or not the Duke's seizure of power might have been interpreted at the time as a veiled criticism of the Fuhrer. The historical circumstances are quite different, but he too entered office as one of several people who held the reigns, and he too found ways of abrogating the constitution, terminating the republic and becoming the sole power. In the movie, it is "the Jew" who is behind the rise of the Duke, and the film positions the audience in such a way that the abrogation of a constitution and the dissolution of his council are seen as heinous acts.

I was wondering if there are any sources that show that Germans at the time might have felt that this was treading a little too closely to what Hitler himself had done? Furthermore, is there any indication that members of the crew may have used it in their defense after the war? In other words, to suggest that the portrayal of the Duke was a deliberate criticism of the leader of Reich?


texts: What happened in Rome, when the western empire "fell"?

texts: I mean everybody knows that the western Roman Empire fell about 476 A.D. But what happened in Rome itself then? Did Romans keep living their day to day lives? Were there riots? I find it hard to find out anything about it.


texts: Who should be the king/queen of England?

texts:
If you start from 1066, the last direct line legitimate monarch was Richard III.

Then you have the Tudors with a fairly weak claim, then they handed it on to the Stuarts with an even weaker claim. Then it was swapped around a bunch of European families whose only real claim to the throne was that they weren't Catholics.

Since the Plantagenets' male line died out with Richard III in 1485, who would be the legitimate monarch if religion/politics hadn't gotten in the way?


texts: Did books from classical times delay scientific progress in the middle ages?

texts:
When seeing some documentary about the history of medical science in the middle ages, I got the impression that many doctors were happy to merely study the works of Galen, rather than do their own research, and that that was detrimental in the long run to medical science. Was this the case?

Were there any other cases where books from classical times were detrimental to either the knowledge held in the middle ages, or to the rate of acquiring new knowledge?

For the purposes of this question, don't regard religious texts (for example, the Bible) as delaying scientific progress.


texts: On the eve of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's independence, the country had virtually zero doctors, or any other intellectuals?

texts:
Even Patrice Lumumba was educated at the level of a clerk. So why did the pioneers of the independence movement think that the newly independent country would succeed?

Follow up: Is this trend common with other Africa countries, like Nigeria and Kenya?


texts: Does anyone know of a good source on French folk customs?

texts: I have been looking into French culture and was wondering if anyone knows of a book or collection of documents, etc... That contain prayers, customs, etc... That the French practiced. Kinda like a French version of the Carmina Gadelica. Does anyone know if something like this exists or a comparable source? (Middle Ages)


texts: Largest congressional letter writing campaign in US history?

texts:
In the United States, there is a system where folks can write letters to their representative and senators in congress to bring attention to a particular issue, sometimes as a timely event or a hot-topic issue that is getting a lot of attention; in an attempt to sway an upcoming congressional vote.

What magnitude have been the largest letter writing campaigns in history been? 10,000 letters? 100,000? I'm asking particularly about events where there has been a letter-writing push centered around a particular event - not just gradual annual totals. Particularly interested in physical letter drives. This question is not about petitions or email drives.


texts: During the Second World War, did the Germans expect that Japan would declare war on Russia?

texts:
As I understand it, Germany did not make war with America on the condition that Japan joined the war against Russia.

Was this because they thought that Japan would attack Russia anyway? If so, what basis did they have for thinking that? Or did they think they didn't need Japan to defeat Moscow?


texts: How long did it take biologists to adopt the theory of evolution?

texts:
My textbook (Freeman, S. and Herron, J.C., 2007. Evolutionary analysis p. 66)
says

  Before Charles Darwin published on the origin of Species in 1859, special creation was the leading explanation for where Earth's organisms came from. ... within a decade the fact of evolution had achieved general acceptance among biologists.

I find this rather surprising. I would have thought that "special creation" would remain a leading theory, even among scientists, for much longer than that.

How long did it take scientists to fully (or almost fully) accept evolution as the explanation for the origin of all species on earth?


texts: Landing strip in a besieged town on the eastern front

texts:
A rather vague question, but I seem to recall a documentary mentioning the construction of a landing strip in a besieged town. More specifically, located in a town occupied by the Axis powers and surrounded by Soviet troops. Apparently the strip was constructed for the escape of an officer at the costs of thousands of lives. In the end it was never used.
Was such a landing strip ever constructed?


texts: Information about the Kingdom of Raja Dahir of Sindh?

texts: I am trying to find some information about the Kingdom of Raja Dahir of Sindh. For example, how much area did his empire constitute and where was it generally located? If anyone could also provide a map that might indicate some of this information, that would be particularly helpful.


texts: Why did so many ruling European families hold on to Catholicism during the Reformation?

texts: If Protestantism favored secular power over religious authority, why did the Habsburgs, the Valois, and other secular ruling families hold on to Catholicism? Was it a matter of faith?


texts: How did Alexander III of Macedon get the title "the Great"?

texts: Alexander III of Macedon is referred to as Alexander "the great", but who gave him this title? At what point in history was he acknowledged as such and why is he considered so great?


texts: Is there any short summary of John Rowe's theory of horizons about the Incas?

texts:
This topic often gets me confused as I have not found much information about John Rowe's chronology of the origins of the Inca's empire. All that I know is that he divided the history of ancient Peru into different stages called periods and horizons, but I don't know which is which and what made each culture which appeared in those special.

Other than the article in Wikipedia which mentions them to be as

First early horizon
First early intermediate period
Second horizon
Second late intermediate period
Third late horizon

The names sound repetitive and confusing at some point. But it regards Chavin  as the earliest known culture at the time this system was devised and the Incas to be the last who appeared in the Third late horizon.

Overall, is there anyone who can help me to better understand this?


texts: Has there ever been an instance of a business attempting or succeed a coup? If not then are there any instances of business supporting ''rebel'' forces?


texts: Was the London Blitz accidentally started by lost pilots?

texts:
In Connie Willis's All Clear, one of the characters makes reference to the Blitz thus:

  ... the German pilots who got lost didn't mean to start the London Blitz

The universe this series is set in is meant to match ours, at least as far as the 20th century, and as one of the themes of the novel is whether or not the events in it are happening as they were meant to have happened historically (and this doesn't read as an example of something that is different) I expected this to be based on a real-life occurrence that I wasn't aware of.

However, I can't find any reference to lost German pilots somehow causing the Blitz in real life.

Is there any historical fact behind this?


texts: How was Abd al-Rahman I recognized when he arrived in Islamic Hispania?

texts:
Abd al-Rahman I was the founder of the Umayyad dynasty in Hispania, and he was one of the last Umayyad survivors when the Abbasid overthrew the Umayyad caliphate in Damascus. According to what I read, he fled Damascus, travelled west on low profile, and finally arrived in Hispania after 6 years missing. In Hispania he quickly amassed support, defeated the local Muslim ruler and installed himself as Emir. According to Wikipedia:

  Abd-ar-Rahman I became Emir of Córdoba in 756; fleeing for six years
  after the Umayyads had lost the position of Caliph held in Damascus in
  750. Intent on regaining a position of power, he defeated the existing Islamic rulers of the area who defied Umayyad rule and united various
  local fiefdoms into an emirate.

I'm curious how the people in Hispania verified that he was in fact Abd al-Rahman, the Umayyad prince, because:

He travelled on low profile, so I guess this also mean without strong
troops or obvious indicator of being a royal
Hispania was pretty far from Damascus, so probably Hispanic peoples have less idea about how Umayyad princes look or how to verify them
He didn't seem to be an important prince, like the heir to the throne, he just happened to be one of the survivor.
Yet enough people in Hispania believed him to allow him to take over.


texts: Did the Mapuche conquer other non-Mapuche tribes?

texts:
The story of the Mapuche, as I learnt in school, was that the Mapuche were (and are) a rather homogeneous group, settled in a given area, which was attacked first by the Incas, then by the Spanish conquistadors and then by the Chilean and Argentine Governments (as legal inheritors of the territory, following their independence from Spain). But the story in Wikipedia is not so clear. Some quotes:

  Archaeological finds have shown the existence of a Mapuche culture in Chile as early as 600 to 500 BC.1 Genetically Mapuches differ from the adjacent indigenous peoples of Patagonia.[2] This is interpreted as suggesting either a "different origin or long lasting separation of Mapuche and Patagonian populations".

Then, regarding potential movements across areas, the article says:

  A hypothesis put forward by Ricardo E. Latcham, and later expanded by Francisco Antonio Encina, theorizes that the Mapuche migrated to present-day Chile from the Pampas east of the Andes.1 The hypothesis further claims that previous to the Mapuche, there was a "Chincha-Diaguita" culture, which was geographically cut in half by the Mapuche penetrating from mountain passes around the head of the Cautín River.1[4] Albeit the Latcham hypothesis is consistent with linguistic evidence[4] it is rejected by modern scholars due to the lack of conclusive evidence, and the possibility of alternative hypotheses.1

  Tomás Guevara has postulated another unproven hypothesis claiming that early Mapuches dwelled at the coast due to abundant marine resources and did only later moved inland following large rivers.[5] Guevara adds that Mapuches would be descendants of northern Changos, a poorly known coastal people, who moved southwards.[6] This hypothesis is supported by tenuous linguistic evidence linking a language of 19th century Changos (called Chilueno or Arauco) with Mapudungun.[7]

Furthermore (and what started my interest on the issue), this entry regarding Patagonia says:

  Towards the end of the 16th century, Mapuche-speaking agriculturalists penetrated the western Andes and from there across into the eastern plains and down to the far south. Through confrontation and technological ability, they came to dominate the other peoples of the region in a short period of time, and are the principal indigenous community today.[10] The Mapuche model of domination through technological superiority and armed confrontation was later repeated as Europeans implemented a succeeding but conceptually identical cycle, essentially replacing the position of the former dominators with a new, albeit predominately European class.

This is a strange claim, specially given its date (late 16th century), a time in which the Mapuches were already fighting the Spaniards. There is no mention of this movement in the article about the history of the Mapuches (see first link), neither have I heard of it.

Is this story about Mapuches conquering other tribes true? Most of the quotes in the articles are rather old. Has anyone found texts with new evidence on these issues?


texts: When did Warren Harding say "I am not fit to be president." Why?

texts:
I have looked for the context of this quote, but have only found it in articles where it is used to support the author's point that Harding was just generally a terrible president.

When did Harding make the remark, "I am not fit for this office and should never have been here”? The fact that he says "This office" and "here" and the fact that he died in office suggest that this statement was made while he was president. But it feels very out of place, especially given the modern standard held by most presidents, where they and their aides would rather be caught dead than undermine the credibility of the president. Why would he say this?


texts: Identify the cover model from an issue of Life Magazine

texts:
Could someone identify the cover model for the Life Magazine issue dated August 22, 1969:

https://twitter.com/historylvrsclub/status/1050574006632570880/photo/1

The issue itself is silent on this fact. The article referred to is titled: "That young New York look".


texts: Post-war indictment of ex-Confederates in the Confederate States of America

texts: Why was the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, or any other Confederate soldier, not tried for high treason?


texts: Has a small group ever made or attempted a false flag against a government?

texts:
I think it's common for governments to make false flags against small groups, but has it ever happened the other way?

Has some small militia or some other civilian group made some attack and attributed it to the government that was in power at the time?

I know that pirates used to use the flags of countries on their ship, and that can make it look like the country was the one doing the pirating, but now it is more common for governments to attack civilian targets and blame it on people (for example from the middle east).

But I wonder whether there is an example of a small militia that has attacked civilians and made it look like the government did it, as a way to step up and take over the government.


texts: Were "Little Ship" owners and crew compensated for evacuating Dunkirk?

texts: Were Little Boat owners and civilian crew given monetary incentives or compensation beforehand and afterward. This is not to question their bravery and selflessness. It is to provide historical context for a discussion that I'm involved with on whether it is moral and effective to provide incentives to encourage owner/operators to put their lives at risk in a large scale crisis.


texts: Tarim Mummies origins and theories separating fact from fiction

texts:
Is there any conclusive evidence of where the Tarim Mummies originate from?
What were these "westerners" doing in China?

The theories I have heard are that they are the forebearers of the Kazaks or the Khazars. Is there any good conclusive evidence for either of these claims?


texts:
According to the Wikipedia article on Calvinism:

  Although much of Calvin's work was in Geneva, his publications spread his ideas of a "correctly" reformed church to many parts of Europe. [...] It was influential in France, Lithuania and Poland.

Today, the vast majority of Lithuania and Poland's religious population is Roman Catholic. The protestant minority is, surprisingly, mostly Lutheranism.

The relative insignificance of Calvinist Church in Poland do not appear to be related to the recent atrocities of World War II, as it is clear in the 1931 Polish Census (espcially page 15) that:

The protestant were already in minority representing a small percentage of Poland's population
The German speaking population was overrepresented in the Protestant population (about 2/3 of Protestants were Germans, only 1/3 were Poles), which explains why Protestantism lost even more influence in Poland after WWII and the expulsions of Germans (and that in addition to the atrocities targeting specifically Poles's upper class, including of course clerics).
The vast majority of protestants were Lutherans, including in the Polish-speaking population. It appears that unfortunately the census is particularly confusing among difference trends within Protestantism, but here within protestant only 39% of ethnic Poles and 49% of population declared themselves as other than "Lutheran". So unsurprisingly Germans were mostly Lutherans, what is more surprising is that Poles were also mostly Lutheran.

Going further in the past, back in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, it appears that Protestantism had a much greater influence than today, as it had 8% of the population, and probably a much greater percentage among the nobles (a situation very similar to France at the time, before persecutions against the Huguenots began).

However, since Poland had a long tradition of Religious tolerance, I don't see any sign of significant discrimination against protestants by other non-protestant Poles. My question is: When and why did the influence of Calvinism decrease in Poland?


texts: Which country traces its roots back to the oldest civilization?

texts: Which country is recognized or documented as having the first prominent civilization? After reading so many articles, I couldn't determine which country should be acknowledged as having the oldest civilization. According to Puranas of India, it seems to be the oldest country with a prominent civilization. However, while searching Google, I found that Egyptians existed at the same time as the earliest Indian civilization. Can anybody clarify this?


texts: Imposition of property taxes in California

texts:
After California became a U.S. state in 1850, land taxation was one of the factors that bankrupted the Californio ranchers. Apparently, it had not existed in the native, Spanish, nor Mexican periods.

When were property taxes first assessed in California and what was the rate? Did each county or municipality introduce their own tax policy?


texts: What is the other ancient Indian magic trick described by Adi Shankaracharya?

texts:
It is well-known that the so-called Indian rope trick is alluded to by the ancient Hindu philosopher Adi Shankaracharya in this section of his commentary on a Hindu scripture called the Mandukya Upanishad:

  The juggler throws the thread up in the sky, climbs by it with his arms, disappears from the sight (of the spectators), engages himself in a fight (in the sky) in which his limbs, having been severed, fall to the ground and he rises up again. The on-looker, though witnessing the performance, does not evince any interest in the thought in regard to the reality of the jugglery performed by the juggler. Similarly there is a real juggler who is other than the rope and the one that climbs up the rope. The manifestation of deep sleep, dream and waking is analogous to the throwing up of the rope by the juggler (in the above illustration) and the (empirical selves known as) Prājña, Viśva and Taijasa, related to the three states, are similar to the juggler, who appears to have climbed up the rope. As he, the juggler, remains on the ground unseen (by the on-lookers) having veiled himself, as it were, by his illusion, so also is the truth about the Highest Reality known as Turīya.

But in another section of Adi Shankaracharya's commentary, I just found an allusion to what appears to be another magic trick:

  As the illusion conjured up by the juggler makes the very clear sky appear covered with trees blooming with flowers and leaves, so does this luminous Ātman become deluded, as it were, by his own Māyā.

Now there has been voluminous literature on the history and methods of the Indian rope trick.  But my question, has there been any scholarship on the second trick described by Adi Shankaracharya?  For instance, have there been any attempts to surmise how the sky would appear to be filled with trees?

By the way, insofar as both tricks involve the sky and a "juggler", it's possible that the second trick is just another aspect of the Indian rope trick; when the boy appears to goes up the rope to the sky, the sky could fill up with trees.

EDIT: It occurs to me that "juggler" may just be how the Sanskrit word for magician is being translated.


texts: Where are the agrarian reforms of Basil II codified?

texts: I am interested in Byzantine law, especially under Basil II. Much weight is always attached to his agrarian reforms. I would like to read some of his laws in the original. I guess these reforms were codified in the Νόμος Γεωργικός/Nomos Georgikos/Lex Rustica? I have not been able to find even pieces of it.  Does it survive? We have much older laws, such as the Corpus Iuris Civilis after all!


texts: Do any of the commercially produced Hinton cubes still exist?

texts:
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, British mathematician Charles Howard Hinton developed a system for visualizing the fourth dimension in his books “A New Era of Thought” and “The Fourth Dimension”.  It involved manipulating a set of colored cubes, known as Hinton cubes, in order to simulate the rotations of a four-dimensional hypercube.  Now in his (similarly titled) book “The Fourth Dimension”, Rudy Rucker says that the publisher of “A New Era of Thought” used to sell sets of Hinton cubes:

It was at one time possible to purchase sets of Hinton cubes from his publisher.

Page 122 of this book provides more details about Hinton’s publisher Swan Sonnenschein & Co.’s making and selling sets of Hinton cubes.
My question, do any of these commercially produced sets of Hinton cubes still exist?  Or if a complete set doesn’t exist, do some cubes from a set at least exist?
If there are no extant cubes made by the publisher, what is the most recent record of them being extant?


texts: Trying to identify this sword. Think early 20th century. Maybe ceremonial

texts: .  Scabbard and handle are wood. Scabbard has2of 3 bands possibly brass. Blade has markings in 2 locations, designs are similar. Has hallmark design on bottom of guard, which may be brass, also. Seems more ceremonial. Thinking maybe n. African, or maybe middle eastern. Possibly mossback or Mongolian? Any help greatly appreciated.


texts: Did Napoleon write an elegy to Imam Hussain?

texts:
In this YouTube video, noted Pakistani scholar, Allama Zamir Akhtar Naqvi claims (in Urdu) that Napoleon wrote a letter or poem in honour of the historical figure Imam Hussain, during a war between the French and the English.
This claim is explained in English on this Facebook page:

On the eve of the war with the British, Napoleon wrote an elegy to Imam Hussain (a.s.) seeking his help which is beautifully translated into Urdu by Allama Zameer Akhtar Naqvi

This is used as evidence that Napoleon embraced Islam, and based his laws upon it.
A comment on that video claims

it can be easily googled and more over it is preserved till now in the great French museum

The Facebook page provides the following references:

Vide, Bonaparte et l'Islam by Cherfils from the Bibliotheque National De France, we find on pages 105 - 125; Vide, David Pidcock to The Sunday Telegraph, contrasting the French hysteric phobia of late with Napoleon Bonaparte's admiration for Islam; Vide, Lincoln: Money Martyred; Omni Publications 1935); Vide, Translations of French Poem by Allama Zameer Akhtar Naqvi

Is this true?
I cannot find any evidence.
I have made a detailed translation of that Urdu poem translated by Allama Zamir Akhtar Naqvi into English and it is over here


texts: Why was there a fierce resistance to Axis occupation in Yugoslavia during World War II?

texts:
First of all the resistance against Germans and Italians erupts straight after the conquering of the country, whereas per example at nearby Greece the guerrilla groups become numerous only at 1943.
And it is from the very beginning also a civil war.
Why was there a civil war and was there a connection between this and the strong resistance to occupation by the Germans/Italians?


texts: What was the context behind Felix Frankfurter's quote?

texts:
Some internet sites, including those of a more dubious and conspiratorial nature, have been posting this rather ominous quote:

  The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.

They attribute it to Felix Frankfurter, a US supreme court judge in the early 20th century. A quick search on Wikiquote gives the following information:

  The earliest source for this quote was published 20 years after
  Frankfurter died, by Ratibor-Ray M. Jurjevich, The War on Christ in
  America: Christian Fortress in America Under Siege--Christophobes of
  the Media and of the Supreme Court in Action (1985), p. 296,
  attributing it to Felix Frankfurter as "an agent of the anti-American
  conspiracy". There is no earlier attribution to anything remotely this
  quote, even in equally conspiratorial and antisemetic works, marking
  this as the date when this quote was manufactured

--BD2412

My question therefore is: did Felix Frankfurter actually say this quote, or was it manufactured? If he did say it, what was the context behind it?


texts: Did the military industrial complex play a role in LBJ's decision to increase America's involvement in Vietnam?

texts:
Path to War (2002) starts with LBJ's election victory in 1964 and shows him making somewhat irrational decisions, against the well-argued advice of some of his advisers, leading to the War in Vietnam.

In particular, he was told early on that the North could commit enough soldiers to make the war unwinnable for the U.S. He still persisted with bombing the North, and sending ever more Americans to Vietnam.

The president's decision to escalate America's involvement in Vietnam is therefore portrayed as resulting from miscalculation rather than corruption.

Is there any evidence showing that the military industrial complex swayed LBJ's decisions?

Update: As @BenCrowell points out, JFK seemed to know that war would be unwinnable and wasn't interested in a pull-out either. Whether LBJ's policy views were different from JFK's is important, of course, but is secondary to whether the MIC was pulling the strings during LBJ's term. I'd like to know the answer to that as definitively as public records allow us to know.


texts: What language was the Charter of Liberties written in?

texts:
While researching my answer for the What was the official language used across European monarchies in the XII century? question I came upon the Charter of Liberties, or Coronation Charter, issued by Henry I of England in 1100. Although in my answer I claim it was written in English, I wasn't able to find a reliable source. Help?

And if the document was in fact written in English, was it Old English or Middle English?


texts: References to Aspirin in the "Chicago" musical

texts:
In the musical "Chicago", in the song "All That Jazz", there are references to Aspirin that I don't understand.  I was hoping that someone would be able to provide some historical context.

The specific lines are:

  Velma: Hold on, hon
  We're gonna bunny hug
  I bought some Aspirin
  Down at United Drug

  In case you shake apart
  And want a brand-new start
  To do that -

  Velma & Company: Jazz!

The most I've been able to find from searching google is information about the "Chicago Tylenol Murders", but this doesn't seem to fit the timeline of the musical, nor the context of the song.


texts:
During the colonial era, Christian missionaries on remote frontiers around the world chose new Christian names for the natives they baptized.

Apparently the monks who missionized Kamchatka also assigned surnames. A librarian told me that S. I. Vahrin's Secrets of the Kamchatka Names says many Volkovs still lived in areas where Filip Volkov had baptized in the mid-1700s. Volkov is a very common Russian surname, but the librarian made the association with the monk unambiguous. Filip, unable to pass on his name through church-sanctioned parenthood, was able to name thousands of people after himself nonetheless.

In Russia or elsewhere, was it normal to get a surname at baptism? Did any rules guide selection of the surnames? What sorts of surnames were used other than the officiator's own?


texts: Why did Churchill become the PM of Britain during WWII instead of Lord Halifax?

texts:
It looks as though both Churchill and Lord Halifax were considered for the top job in 1940, but Halifax turned it down and Churchill took it.
History is not my area of specialization, so I cannot dig up resources to read up about this matter in-depth. Why did Lord Halifax turn it down? It looks to me like there was widespread antagonism towards Churchill from the 20s on: Commons was distrustful of him, etc. But then why was the way cleared for him?


texts: What words were obliterated from the Great Colonnade at Palmyra?

texts:
One of the columns at the Great Colonnade at Palmyra features a dedicatory inscription to Zenobia and Odaenathus.  It is bilingual, recording the same text in Greek and Palmyrenean:

(Image credit: MyOlmec at en.wikipedia / CC BY-SA 3.0)

It appears that one or more words near the end of both texts have been obliterated.  Was this deliberate?  If so, what words are missing, and why have they been erased?  Is this an instance of damnatio memoriae?


texts: What factors enabled or motivated the Age of Exploration?

texts:
I am teaching an upcoming lesson on Columbus.
I want to provide background for what conditions enabled the crossing, along with other similar expeditions in the early stages of the Age of Exploration. This means both motivating forces and changes to society that made these journeys feasible.
So far I have these items:

Previously, Europe was divided into many poor kingdoms. The kingdoms began to merge, so they had more capital pooled together necessary to fund risky and costly expeditions.
New sailing technologies made the journey possible. This meant they could return back home without being lost. This includes the cross staff, planisphere, astrolabe, compass, triangular sails, and rudder.
The Crusades and Marco Polo's book resulted in increased interest in buying Eastern goods.
Overland routes to the East took a long time and controlled by groups that charged tariffs.

Have I missed any element?


texts: What was the average size of French families during the Middle Ages?

texts:
My question takes place in at the beginning of the middle-ages in France.
Let's focus on small villages and ordinary people (peasants, craftsmen, etc.).

I would like to know how many people used to share the same house ?

I'm looking for an average estimation but I'm also curious about the variation of this number. Did people used to live alone or in couple? Did most of people lived with their family (all generation)?

Edit: I updated the localization and set it to France only. If it's still too broad let's say it's the south of the France.


texts: Was there a King of England, or an heir to the throne, in 1831 who idolized Michael Faraday?

texts:
I know this question seems a bit absurd, so let me preface this by saying that it stems from a 1994 history-based edutainment game titled Mario's Time Machine in which the main character travels back in time to various historical periods. While it's obviously not the most reliable source, it is supposed to be an educational game, and I've yet to see the game get something completely and utterly incorrect (though it occasionally mixes up when certain events happened for the purposes of relaying information to the player).

This is an in-game image of the character who claims to be the King of England (without providing a name), as well as the relevant line of dialogue below. This is the full script between the main character and the self-purported king. To sum up the script, he is in attendance of one of Michael Faraday's Christmas lectures, and he makes special note of the fact that it's for "juveniles", indicating he is some sort of youth (at the bare minimum, I would consider that to be someone younger than 19, which is probably too generous). He also idolizes Faraday to the point where he is more interested in being a scientist than the king. As the player can only travel back in time to 1831, this year is certain. These all seem like really specific details that would easily narrow down the king's identity, but I've come up with nothing.

The then-reigning king at the time was William IV of the United Kingdom, who took the throne when he was 64 in 1830. His brothers include George IV of the United Kingdom, who was the previous king until he died in 1830, and Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover, who was born in 1771 and thus far too old. The same story goes for all of the children of George III of the United Kingdom (William IV's father): either they had already passed away or they were too old to apply. Even William IV's children would be just too old to qualify. The royal family trees that I've looked at have given me no help.

If I attacked this issue from the opposite direction and looked at any kings or heirs around this time period who were connected to Michael Faraday or science in general. I've thrown every combination of "king", "england", "science" and "faraday" into Google and hoping for the best, and I cannot find anything that's relevant to what I'm looking for, let alone anything that directly answers my question.

Ignoring the time-traveling premise, this game is supposed to help its players learn about history. Either it somehow got this fact completely wrong or it intentionally lied, and both possibilities seem rather odd. At this point, I'm morbidly curious about this more so than anything else. Is there a kernel of truth anywhere to this?


texts: Was there a time when it was easier for slaves than citizens to access state-sponsored medical facilities in Ancient Rome?

texts:
The Wikipedia article Medicine in Ancient Rome has this to say on the first hospitals in Rome:

  The Roman medical system saw the establishment of the first hospitals;
  these were reserved for slaves and soldiers… Medical care for the
  poor was almost non-existent, so the poor had to resort to spiritual
  aid.

It is unclear what period this statement refers to (and there is no citation), but in the next paragraph it says

  The earliest known Roman hospitals of the Roman Empire were built in
  the 1st and 2nd centuries AD

If the first statement is referring to the Aesculapium on Tiber Island, then the second statement doesn't make much sense as the Aesculapium was built in 293 BC, and it appears that others soon followed.

Concerning medical facilities for Roman citizens (and others?), it was not until 219 BC that the state seems to have done anything in the way of funding (though that is not to say that medical care was not available to those who could afford it):

  … a vulnerarius, or surgeon,
  Archagathus, visited Rome from the Peloponnesus and was asked to stay.
  The state conferred citizenship on him and purchased him a taberna, or
  shop, near the compitium Acilii (a crossroads), which became the first
  officina medica

Other internet sources I’ve checked are also vague on dates (although I could of course have missed something). A potentially more authoritative source, Sandra R. Joshel’s Slavery in the Roman World does not seem to mention anything related to medical care or facilities for slaves.

In short, my question boils down to the one in the title:

Did slaves (and soldiers) at some time in the 3rd century BC have access to state-sponsored medical facilities which others did not? If so, in case of slaves, do we know why? (for soldiers the explanation seems obvious enough)


texts: Did West Russia really have a rock shortage in WW2? And if so, what was the cause?

texts:
I have a previous question that led to this one. There is an article talking about German rail activities in Russia during WW2, and it also talks about the state of the Russian rail network to begin with.

Near the end of that article, it says:

  Whereas German and most western rail bed construction methods contained a multi-tiered rock and gravel foundations - Soviet rails were almost always sitting only on a bed of sand covered occasionally with rocks to minimize the inevitable dust clouds. The western regions of the Soviet Union suffered a great rock shortage. Deutsche Reichsbahn - The German State Railway

I did not see a source for this or anything else in the article. I bolded the last part because I'm interested in it.

"Rock shortage" means a shortage of crushed rock ballast that's put underneath railroad tracks. These crushed rocks serve as a foundation.

I am not an expert on geology, but I have the read a little about these kinds of things and am led to believe that Limestone and Dolomite are basically "everywhere". I do not see how West Russia could have a shortage of them.

This could lead me to guess that the rock shortage, if it really existed, was artificial in nature. By that I mean that the industries in Russia were focusing on other things besides improving the rail network. But this would not be my first guess because Russia is an "Empire of Land" for lack of a better term, so you might tend to think the railways were prioritized.

I also note that the article explicitly said West Russia without further explanation. So I could guess that Siberia had all the rock, or I could guess that it's only West Russia because Germany never made it beyond West Russia... The article also does not put a date on the rock shortage, so it's hard to guess if it was 1920's, 30's, 40's, or maybe all that time.

So you can see I have many questions about this article, primarily because it doesn't have enough detail. What was the exact nature of this rock shortage, if it really existed? I suppose you could say that I'm also asking for an alternate/corroborating source.


texts: Did the rebels in the American War of Independence acknowledge English Civil War rebel groups as an influence on their thinking?

texts: I asked before about Cromwell, who it seems was viewed negatively. What about the ideas of people like the Levellers, or more general republican ideas that existed in England at that time?


texts: Why was the movement for Austro-German unity less successful than that of Italian unity?

texts:
Primarily, I am looking at the differences between say, the movements for German unity and that of Italian nationalists.

The record shows that the people of Austria had accepted without much resistance their unification with Nazi Germany during the "Anschluss" (closing) of 1938. Yet other unification efforts before and after the Anschluss failed.

Considering the fact that almost all countries of Europe are organized on a linguistic basis, why did the movements for Austro-German unity fail?


texts: How was the Roman Princeps Senatus appointed?

texts:
In Republican Rome, the princeps senatus (~head of the senate) was supposed to have been nominated by the censors, who were elected every 5 years for 1 and a half years.

What happened when the censors disagreed on the candidates?
Did one censor get to choose first (patrician censor, censor elected with more votes...), or did the senate make a choice and ask the censors to follow?

What happened if a princeps senatus died while there were no censors? Did the consuls choose the new princeps senatus, did the senate do it, or did they have to wait until new censors are elected?


texts: Was the Roman Empire based on a 'plunder economy'?

texts:
It has been stated by Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke that:

  The economy of the Empire was a Raubwirtschaft or plunder economy
  based on looting existing resources rather than producing anything
  new. The Empire relied on booty from conquered territories (this
  source of revenue ending, of course, with the end of Roman territorial
  expansion) or on a pattern of tax collection that drove small-scale
  farmers into destitution (and onto a dole that required even more
  exactions upon those who could not escape taxation), or into
  dependency upon a landed élite exempt from taxation. With the
  cessation of tribute from conquered territories, the full cost of
  their military machine had to be borne by the citizenry.

To what extent is this true and the dominant economic force in the Empire? That is, were there other powerful economic influences or was the plunder economy dominant?


texts: During/After the Napoleonic occupation of the Germanic Rhinelands, what happened to the currency in the area?

texts: Did Napoleon bring the French Francs over, or did the (many) local currencies remain in use? I understood that the area's tolls on the river were unified, but have a hard time imagining how exactly that happened


texts: How is it possible that the Basque language survived until today?

texts:
The mysterious Basque is the mother tongue of only few people, spoken in Vizcaya, a northern province in Spain. It is not similar to any major European language in use today and its origins are unknown (some theories exist). As far as I remember it arrived or developed already around 4,000 years ago (correct me if I'm wrong) and unlike other languages at that time it survived until today.
What is the reason for this? Why is Basque still alive? Has it something to do with the remoteness of the Pyrenees?


texts: Were any works completely lost during the Nazi book burnings?

texts: When the Nazis rose to power, they began a campaign of burning books deemed incompatible with the Nazi ideology. During these book burnings, were there any works that were completely lost? By "completely lost", I mean "Every single copy of that work was destroyed".


texts: Could the Russian fleet go via northern route to Port Arthur instead of via Cape of Good Hope?

texts: Was there a route via the north of Russia that Admiral Rozhestvensky could have passed (maybe during the summer months) instead of the seven month odyssey of going through Cape of Good Hope around Africa and then through Indian Ocean and South China Sea to reach Vladivostok and eventually Port Arthur.


texts: How old was the Pripyat hospital МСЧ-126 at the time of Chernobyl disaster?

texts:
After seeing praises (both in general and about the historically accurate display of Soviet Union) on the Chernobyl series, I decided to watch it.

In the first episode we see a hospital. What striked me as probably inaccurate is the condition of the hospital. Look at the window and the window sill - it looks like it's been there for a generation. But it doesn't seem that plausible as the city itself was very new back then.

How old was the hospital at the time?

As far as I can find, the hospital is called MSCh-126 (МСЧ-126, Medical-Sanitary Unit No 126). I can't find the construction dates, but some images from recent years seem to show that the window sills couldn't be in such bad condition 30 years ago.


texts: Did the Buyids emerge as allies of the Abbasid Caliphate?

texts:
The Buyid dynasty were Shia sympathizers. However, I might have read somewhere that the Buyids came to power as allies of the Abbasids. This would have been as an anti Tabaristan or anti Ziyarid policy. In other words, the Buyid ancestry
would have been pitted against the Ziyarids. This would have been a temporary stop gap measure of dealing with the Persians.

I haven't exhausted wikipedia articles on Ziyards yet. Its possible that I'm confusing it with a Buyid-Samanid alliance. I may just be completely wrong by confusing it with another period of history.


texts: At the end of WW2, multiple German leaders either committed suicide or made preparations to do so -- was this unprecedented?

texts:
I have read nothing of German officers and/or political leaders committing suicide after WWI and it is my sense that WW2 might have been the first time that so many people planned or actually went through with suicide.
Why was this and was it unprecedented?
Edit to add:
According to this list, there were about 175-180 suicides of leading Nazis between 11.9.1944 (Allies enter Germany) and 20.11.1945 (start of the Nürnberger Prozesse).


texts: What did the nobles do after the French Revolution?

texts: After the French Revolution, the privileges of the aristocracy were abolished. Some nobles were executed, others migrated, but what happened to those who stayed in France? Did they live off what remained of their patrimony? Did they start working? If so, what kind of work did they do? Are there any records or statistics for where the French nobility ended up?


texts: What role did 17th c. luxury manufacturing play in the industrialization?

texts:
The luxury industry boomed with Louis XIV and his heirs. He made it mandatory for the nobles to invest their fortunes in the French luxury industry by following the latest fashion that the king indicated. And manufacturing exquisite clothes, metal and glass objects, fountains, fireworks, perfumes, palaces with outstanding perfection and finish requires precision and new engineering methods, chemical experimentation, search for new materials, better tools.

Versailles created a mass market for textiles since people took after the nobles. Lots of second hand was available to inspire it. Even a beggar could wear a very fanciful hat if it were torn.

Did Versailles hasten the industrial revolution in Europe? France was indeed ahead during the early industrialization. Are there any specific examples of luxury manufacturing that evolved into e.g. mechanized textile mass production?


texts: Was Roosevelt the "biggest slave trader in recorded history"?

texts:
In the introduction to The Liberation of the Serfs, Jürgen Georg Backhaus writes:

  The largest transaction in unfree labour ever recorded occurred in Yalta;
  more than 6.5 million prisoners of war were handed over to Russia and France,
  making Roosevelt the biggest slave trader in recorded history. (Google Books.)

My guess is that the above author is talking about the Yalta Conference, but I could find nothing when I googled "Yalta conference 6.5 million prisoners of war". So what on earth is the above author talking about? Did Roosevelt hand over 6.5m POWs to Russia and France?


texts:
I find it quite diffucult to find reviews of academic books on various subjects, especially for books in the english language.
In Denmark we have a service where we can search almost any book academic or regular and get references to reviews. No such thing seems to exist internationally, which I find weird.

For example the book "Civilization in the west" by Mark Kishlansky and others I got from my university but I can't find a single review in any journals. And therefore cant really get any perspective on it's validity (even though I'm sure it's fine).

I have searched the databases: JSTOR, Web of Knowledge, Historical Abstracts, American historical review, English historical review and off course Google, to no avail.
The same is true with the book "The Greeks: History, Culture, And Society" by Ian Morris and others. Where I can only find one review.

Am I doing something wrong, or are reviews this sparse? I find it weird because both books are published by Pearson, which I guess means they have a substantial audience.
Many thanks in advance.


texts:
From various reading through the years I understand that up to this day, the Caspian sea is often named "the Khazar sea" in some languages and maps: Persian, Azerbiajani, Turkmen and Turkish.
The very coinage of such a term, would imply, in my humble opinion, that the Khazars were a naval power inhabiting the northwestern, northcentral and northeastern part of that sea.
Is there evidence for the Khazars as a naval nation? Where Khazars, which where known as seasoned merchants, held and operated numerous trade ships? Perhaps some ships they might have built are still sunk in the bottom of the Caspian/Khazar sea to this day.