texts: Were the ancestors of Malays originally from Yunnan, China?

texts:
Referring to the post here.

  The research discovered that the Malays in these sub-ethnic groups
  were genetically composed of some Proto-Malay (orang asli Melayu),
  Semang and Indian DNA, with at least 20 per cent Malay and and 52 per
  cent Chinese DNA.

  "This finding corresponds with a theory that these Malays originated
  from Austronesia in Yunnan, China," Professor Zilfalil said, " with
  the first wave of migration from Austronesia to Southeast Asia
  occurring in 25, 000 BC and the second one in 1, 500 BC".

  The professor added that "the Malay language used in the Malay
  Peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak also belongs to the Austronesian stock".

Is there corroborating historical evidence that the Malays of Malaysia and Indonesia are actually descendants from residents of Yunnan, China?


texts: How did physical exercise (stretching) originate in the Western world?

texts:
This is a list of mentions I found with my short googling:

The yoga exercise technics were well-known in Asia as a both physical and mental health cure for a long time.

According to Wikipedia, Cicero said:

  It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor

I know about youth movements such as Sokol in the second half of the 19. century. Namely Sokol originated in the Bohemia under the inspiration of the antic athlets and the club was combining the psychological and the physical advantages of exercise.

Eastern psycho-somatic thoughts got to the Western world at the end of the 19th century with the rise of esoterism etc.

But when did physical exercise such as regular stretching technics actually get into the Western world - when it became to be "normal" to stretch?

(I don't ask about the exercise in sense of physical training - that seems to be rooted much deeper in our culture like in the training for hunt, I ask about stretching we do before physically exhausting sport today and I wonder especially, wheter it's rooted rather in science than in culture or philosophy)


texts: What was the role of Nigeria in Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

texts:
I'm required to present a report on the role and position of Nigeria on the Soviet  invasion of Afghanistan. But as far as I know , Nigeria had a civil war raging inside the country.

I've scanned through hundreds of website & articles but none of them provided solid evidence that Nigeria did play an important role in the invasion

My question is , did Nigeria in any affected the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan  , what were its effects & how it came about

Also , who were the allies of Nigeria during period of 1969-1970 and how did the allies support them and vice versa

Thanks a lot in advance


texts:
What would have been the breed and name of Charles Darwin's dog at Down House in 1858?
The black and white retriever (Bob) which appears in a photo dated 1863, the Pomeranian (Snow) or someone else?


texts: What specifically did Caesar believe he would be charged with had he disbanded his army?

texts:
In Plutarch's Caesar he quotes Caesar as saying "They made this happen. They drove me to it. If I had dismissed my army, I Julius Caesar, after all my victories, would have been condemned in their law courts."

What specifically did Caesar think he would be charged with.  Was it for killing the supposedly allied Germans, the one which Cato put a motion forward to turn him over to the Germans? Was it mismanagement of his province?  Or was it just simply that he felt his rivals would trump up some charges on him?


texts:
My grandmother used to tell me about the life of field workers in her (and her grandmother's) time, going from the 1950s backwards to the 19th century (in Portugal). This often included baking bread at home in a large batch which the men would take with them as they spent a week away from home, working in the fields.

This bread would become stale and hard, but it was always edible and wouldn't get moldy in those five days [unlike modern bread, which she complained about and which brought on the memories].

My grandmother further explained that making bread was a morose task. You would never do it daily (unless you were a baker, naturally), but about two or three times a week.

While researching (online) the diet of plain farmers in Canada in the 19th century, I expected to find a similar pattern of baking bread once or twice a week. Unfortunately, I have found no reference either to daily or weekly bread baking.

Does anyone have any references concerning how often bread was baked?


texts:
I've just asked a question where Tyler Durden wrote in his answer that paper was expensive at Euclids time.

So I wanted to ask the question:

  How did the price of paper / papyrus develop over time?

But then I realized that it might be impossible to answer it with a simple time-price chart, even if one had all information.

So the question is: How do historians evaluate if something is "expensive"? How are prices of goods compared over the regions / times? Do already build "comparison tables" exist?

What I thought of

First try: Comparision with other goods

There are certainly goods that still exist in comparable quality (I could think of gold, sheep, cows, stone or ground), the ratio might be different. So simply calculating

n = number of grams of gold one had to pay for 100 papyrus scrolls
w = price of gold in Euro / gram
price of papyrus in todays values = n*w

is too simple. But eventually one could give multiple prices like that to give a meaningful impressing?

Second try: Work force

As soon as we have coins, we can probably compare what people have for a living (per month). One could sort those incomes and trim the top/bottom 25% to get an average income. Then one could calculate

s = income of the region we want something to be compared with the method described above in [old currency / month]
x = value of the good from region / time of s in [old currency]
t = todays average income (calculated the same way) in [new currency/month]
price of papyrus in todays values = (x/s)*t


texts: Why were Greek philosophy and sciences taken up by medieval Muslim civilizations, but not contemporary Western Europe?

texts:
Greek-based philosophy and sciences were taken up in the medieval Islamic world. A lot of these works were translated into Arabic, and were later developed further and these contributed to the flourishing of the sciences and the culture in the Islamic world (e.g. the "Islamic Golden Age"). Many notable Muslim philosophers from this time built on the classical Greek tradition, e.g. in the West, Ibn Bajja and Ibn Rushd from Spain, and in the East Ibn Sina in the Middle East.

There was a lack of similar development in Medieval Western Europe, except in Muslim-held areas like Spain. Why is it so? Culturally, geographically and linguistically, Western Europe seemed to be the more suited successor to the Greco-Roman tradition.


texts: What did the end of the western front look like at the Swiss Border?

texts:
After the German advance was stopped at the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, the race to the sea (and also to the swiss border) began with both sides trying to take as much ground as they could.

So what did the end of the Western Front look like next to the Swiss border? I have found details and images of the northern end of the line in Nieuwpoort Belgium but can't help wondering what it might have looked like with an armed neutral country (Switzerland) in the way.


texts: Has any culture primarily worshipped an evil deity?

texts:
I was recently re-watching the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Masks, (because I'm not a nerd even a little bit), and an interesting thought struck me: the culture portrayed in that episode seems to have had a pantheon centered around an incredibly cruel, if not outright evil, torturer-Queen deity named Masaka.  The other gods from her pantheon seem to either be hiding from her, fearing her, or trying to counter her influence.  This is not unlike the episode Devil's Due, in which another society seems to hold the negative deity, a devil-figure named Ardra, above all others.

It made me wonder, have any historical cultures revered a negative or evil deity as their primary or most-powerful figure?  Obviously plenty of primary deities (such as Zeus or Odin or even the Old Testament Yahweh) have been shown to be cruel, callous, or capricious at times, but these gods are also heavily tied to ideas like justice, courage, or mercy.  They are, ultimately, positive forces in the universe and toward humanity.

Have any societies held a strictly evil or malevolent deity above all others?

EDIT: In response to several commenters, I thought I'd clarify: I'm talking about gods whose own worshippers considered the god a force of evil, not those who are interpreted as such by outsiders, and certainly not a discussion of whether religion itself is positive.  I'm saying that Zeus, Odin, and the Judeochristian God are all viewed by their followers as "good."  Were any pantheon-topping gods seen by their own worshippers as primarily malevolent, rather than benevolent?


texts: What do the letters "L" and "G" mean on the coat of arms of the city of Liège?

texts:
The coat of arms of Liège consists of a column (called a Perron) with lions at the base. The column is flanked by the letters L and G:

What do the letters L and G stand for? My guess is a Latin phrase but I cannot think of what phrase relates to Liège.


texts: What was the tactical benefit of using flamethrowers as weapons?

texts:
I often hear stories of flamethrower troops storming the beaches of Iwo Jima and burning bunkers full of troops.

But isn't it more risky to carry a tank of flammable liquid with limited fuel and range when chucking a few grenades into a bunker could suffice? Wouldn't you just become a bigger target for the enemy?


texts: What do Marxists mean by "class basis of law"? As seen in linked article

texts:
R. Judson Mitchell's article The Brezhnev Doctrine and Communist Ideology uses the term "class basis of law".
I'm not sure but I think:
Because this concept almost always appears hand in hand with "duality of systems (because 2 camps)", class basis of law means law has different meanings/content under different classes? As in the dominant class in the system (e.g. in capitalism this would be the bourgeoise)
In the article it mentioned under some Soviet ideological theory:

Bourgeoise Law represented the norms of a dying class, while socialist law was the manifestation of the underlying laws of history which contained existential, rather than normative, judgements.

But

I'm not sure if I'm right

Even if I am I'm not really getting the stuff I'm saying

Edit: Here is some of the text of the linked article, which speaks of the class basis of law.

Kovalev's Pravda argument in support of Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia was organized around four basic concepts: (1) the class basis of law
Kovalev argued: charges that the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia had been violated were based upon an abstract, classless approach to questions of sovereignty and self-determination.  In a class society there is no such thing as nonclass law and legal norms must be subordinated to the laws of class struggle and social development. To emphasize "legalistic considerations" at the expense of the socialist viewpoint is to use bourgeois law as a "measuring stick."


texts: Why did the the East-Pakistanis oppose Urdu as their national language while Indians accepted Hindi as theirs?

texts:
In 1947, Both India and Pakistan were given independence from Britain. India was able to establish Hindi as its national language with minimal problems. Pakistan on the other hand, was created with mutual understanding between East and West, (Muhammad Ali Jinnah was from West Pakistan (today's Pakistan) and Sir Nawab Salimullah, the founder of Muslim League was from East Pakistan (today's Bangladesh)). However, in 1952, when Pakistan declared Urdu its national language, it was hugely opposed by the people of East Pakistan (the Bangladeshi).

Language Distribution of Modern-day Pakistan.

This map shows that Urdu is not spoken by people of any specific area in Pakistan (the former West Pakistan). This is like a Lingua franca in Pakistan, so as Hindi in India.

My question is, why did the people of East Pakistan (Bangladesh) decide to revolt so early (only within 5 years of the formation of the Dominion of Pakistan) while Indian people successfully embraced Hindi after some protests in Tamil Nadu and some insignificant protests in Barak Valley, Assam?

Was it an Indian conspiracy to agitate the people of East Pakistan or was it the East Pakistani population failing to understand the value of keeping the country united?

Please just be confined with the "Language Movement" of 1952, not the "Liberation War" of 1971. Just stick to the matter of "Language".


texts: Was the European slave market in the East during the colonial era similar to the transatlantic slave market? If not (less brutal, etc), why?

texts:
As far as I understand it, European colonialist powers did have a slave market in the East, in the Indian Ocean. That is, there was this market as well as the Transatlantic slave market[1-3].

What I would like to know is whether this eastern slave market, especially the experiences of the slaves themselves, was similar to the Transatlantic slave market? If it was not, I would like to know the reasons for this difference please.

The reason for this question is because it appears to my untrained eyes that there was a lot less slavery going on in the East, or that it was a lot less brutal.

Is this true? If it was, was it due to the greater distance between the east to the colonising country? Was it the political structure of the Eastern 'nations' that were colonised (perhaps in the east there were intact and relatively strong kingdoms (or other political entities) vs those in Africa)? Was it because the eastern slaves were more expensive? less hardy/able to work? Was it due to the different nature of the products being produced by the slaves (cotton in the Transatlantic market)?

Or to put it another way, why was the transatlantic slave market (seemingly) so much more brutal/violent than those of other places at approximately similar time frames?.

Notes:
[1] http://theconversation.com/the-story-of-east-africas-role-in-the-transatlantic-slave-trade-43194
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_India. Please refer to the subsection on 18th to 20th Century.
[3] https://www.quora.com/Did-the-British-ever-actually-enslave-any-Indians-during-or-before-the-British-Raj


texts: Did the Central Powers during World War 1 try to sue for peace before the Armistice?

texts: Given their limited offensive actions during the trench warfare, the Austro-Hungarians were surely considering this was as far as they could actually advance. Didn't they put up negotiation positions through third parties before Versailles?


texts: Why weren't Baden, Würtemberg and Bavaria independent states ever restored, unlike Austria?

texts:
The southern german states of Baden, Würtemberg and Bavaria were independent states until 1871. Their historical background is quite different from the northern Germany which was dominated by Prussia at that time. The southern states have always been on the side of Austria and France rather than Prussia, mostly because of their predominantly catholic culture.

Otto Von Bismarck, which was often described as having very strong imperialistic, military and expansionism policy, wanted to annex those states, but the monarchs of the southern states were hostile to that idea. He tricked the southern states to help to defend Prussia against France (that he is accused to have himself provoked on purpose) in 1871, and used their victory to proclaim the German Empire.

Charles the 1st of Würtemberg and Frederick the 1st of Baden were hostile to Prussia's imperialist policy, and Ludwig II of Bavaria was so much opposed that he boycotted the proclamation of the Empire. Which is to say how unified Germany can be seen as an illegitimate state from the very start.

From any time past this unification, it would have been easy for those states to claim they were victims of Prussian imperialism and ask for independence on historical grounds. For example:

After Germany's defeat in 1918, many new independent states, that either disappeared a long time ago or never existed, were (re-)created (for example, Poland after 123 years of political non-existance). It would have made perfect sense for southern German states, which were forcefully unified only 47 years ago, to claim their independence.
After WWII, Germany was completely defeated and ceased to exist politically. The allies re-created the FRG, the GDR and Austria a couple of years later, but were careful that the state of Prussia was dismantled, as Prussia is what united Germany, and is associated with strong military and nationalist culture (and thus, the rise of Nazism). It would have made perfect sense for the allies to split the former 3rd Reich into more sovereign states, based on the fact that Prussian unification is the root of German nationalism and two world wars.
During the cold war, since the United Nations were created, small independent states have almost as much political power in international relations than bigger states, because they have a seat, no matter what their area and population is. Having more than 2 German speaking states on the capitalist sides could have been a good way for the western allies to have more influence against the communist block and in particular the GDR.

Since the territories of the former third Reich were doomed to be split in multiple states anyway (nobody knew that the GDR was going to disappear, and Austrian Anschluss is reminiscent of Nazism), it would have made as much sense to make it split in an historically justified way. What made the Allies separate Austria from Germany, and split off East Germany (mostly the former Prussia) from the rest of Germany, without doing the same to Bavaria, Wurtemburg and Baden?


texts: Who deposited German fuel drums on a Japanese air base in the Kuril Islands in 1943?

texts:
The Imperial Japanese Navy operated two all-weather, heated, lit runways on Matsuwa Island in the Kuril island chain.

This island is littered with German fuel drums manufactured in 1943. It also has a 200W transformer on the Island which was manufactured in Opole Silesia, 1939, which was a part of Germany.

For the sake of clarity allow me to mention Evgeniy ("Eugene") Vereshchaga has led many investigative expeditions to the island. He takes tours there every year to view the many WW2 Japanese tanks and guns on the island.

According to Eugene's many blogs on the island (in Russian), there is a Soviet era fuel dump on the island, but all the drums from that fuel dump are tightly packed together and are not dispersed amongst the German fuel drums which are scattered randomly.

The runways had hot geothermal water ducted under them to keep them ice free year around. The heat of the island's Sarachev Volcano keeps the island unusually fog free too. In addition during WW2 the IJN kept the runways lit for night operations.

Access to the island from the sea is impeded by an escarpment with only one narrow concreted landing. Whilst some have suggested the German fuel drums arrived there because of the Soviets, none of the Soviet era airstrips at Sakhalin or other Kurile Islands have German fuel drums. It is something unique to this one island.

I can find no record of German vessels in that area during 1943, or 1944.Please can anybody explain how they got there and provide a source to their explanation?


texts: What are the modern roles of brigadier generals and commodores?

texts:
It has been said that the hardest jump in the military is between colonel and general. That's because a colonel is a "specialist" who commands troops of only one type (infantry, cavalry or artillery), while a "general" (short for general officer) commands "combined" troops of different types. It was this fact, not the number of men, that made e.g. George Washington a four star "general." (At times, he commanded only 3,000-4,000 men, about the same as a colonel's modern regiment, and other "generals" of the time commanded around 1,000 men, about the same as a modern battalion commanded by a major or lieutenant colonel.

Likewise, a Navy "captain" (the equivalent of an army colonel) commands a single ship, by definition, of one "type."

The level between captain and admiral is called a commodore, who is the equivalent of a brigadier general. Does a commodore command multiple ships of the same type or different types? (A rear admiral commands the rear of a fleet, a vice admiral the front, and a full admiral a whole fleet, as a full general commands an army).

A"brigadier" general used to command a (combined arms) "brigade, when there were four regiments to a division, meaning two to a brigade, and two brigades to a division. Now that there are three regiments in a division, a "brigadier" has lost his original function.

Are brigadier generals and commodores TODAY "general" officers with independent commands as the term was originally understood? Or are they "training" positions for major generals and rear admirals to bridge the gaps between colonel and general, captain and admiral?


texts: When was the idea of a unified India conceived?

texts:
At multiple times, during multiple periods, India (as in, the Indian Subcontinent) was fractured with multiple kingdoms, principalities etc. It usually came after the fall (or withdrawal) of empires(as happens many a times around the world).
India was united (but still colonised) under the British (and there were still autonomous princely states). India was also (sort of) unified under the Mauryas, Alauddin Khalji and The Mughal empire (under Aurangzeb). So my question stands:-

When was the idea of a unified India first conceived?


texts: Did the Babylonians know the Pythagorean Theorem before Pythagoras formulated it?

texts:
Came across a clip on TV from an (unidentified) BBC documentary showcasing the Plimpton 322 tablet, written in cuneiform c.1800 BC (1200 years before Pythagoras).

The narrator says the tablet was likely created by a scribe for teaching purposes (kind of implying that it was in common use), with some errors.

Is there any other evidence of this mathematical concept existing in Babylon before Pythagoras?

Any evidence of Pythagoras deriving his work from Babylonian mathematics?


texts: Who was the first to point out that transmutation of gold would be mostly useless, since it would simply lead to inflation?

texts:
For millenia it was a goal of princes and alchemists to produce the Philosopher's Stone, a device by which common metals could be transmuted into gold. To modern people who know about economics, it seems a waste of time -- though gold does have some intrinsic use, most of its value is due to its scarcity and use as a means of exchange. If some medieval genius somehow did contrive to make such a Stone, it would give far less wealth to its creator than might be naively expected, because prices would soon rise to match the increased supply of specie. People with savings would also be ruined by the inflation.

However, I understand that this conception of money and value is quite new in historical terms, and was not commonly known in ages past. People knew that debasing coinage led to inflation, but that isn't quite the same as this, since someone might still naively think that a pure gold coinage would retain its value forever. Who was the first person to point out to the alchemists this specific aspect of their folly?


texts: How common is "decades ahead of his time" in real history?

texts:
The idea of a super-scientist who invents things that no contemporary is able to equal because he's just that smart is a common trope in works of fiction, especially of the sci-fi or superhero variety.  I know that there is at least one precedent, a brilliant mind who was demonstrably several decades ahead of his time: James Maxwell.  Analysis of his work shows that, if he had not tragically died young, (of cancer,) he was on a course that would have almost certainly led him directly to the Theory of Relativity, almost half a century before Einstein.  It was decades before anyone managed to catch up to Maxwell, and the guy who accomplished it was so brilliant that his name has entered the modern lexicon as essentially synonymous with "genius".

The thing is, Maxwell is the only example I'm familiar with of such a super-scientist in real life.  Do we have any examples of this being in any way a common thing, of a single person figuring out something that none of his contemporaries were able to duplicate until significantly later?

Note: Three people who might quickly come to mind but are not valid examples are Nikola Tesla, (who has had many amazing inventions apocryphally attributed to him but somehow no one else has ever demonstrated that they actually worked, and the things he came up with that did actually work, his contemporaries were able to duplicate,) Leonardo da Vinci (who came up with some very interesting designs for a flying machine, but it was nothing at all like any successful heavier-than-air flying machine that's actually been built since the Wright Brothers first figured out how to make it work,) and Charles Babbage (who came up with the idea of a computing machine, but failed to build a working model mostly due to the poor quality of materials science in his day.  The limiting factor here was not intelligence and comprehension, but the inability to obtain the necessary mechanical precision.)  To be a valid example, their work has to be independently proven valid at a much later date.


texts: Did families heading west ever settle along the Oregon Trail (instead of at the final destination)?

texts:
The history of the Oregon Trail is well known, in that thousands of people used the trail (and other similar routes) to emigrate to western areas of the United States. What isn't clear to me, however, is how many people, if any, ever stopped before reaching the final destination(s) of the trail and permanently settled along it. How frequently did this happen?

There are plenty of stories of people who died along the way or turned back, but I'm referring to people and families who founded farms or settlements midway along the trail in areas that had little previous American settlement.


texts: Historical drivers behind demographics of Indigenous populations in American countries

texts:
Today I run into this picture (shown below) that shows what seems to be a stark difference in the percentage of indigenous populations in Spanish speaking countries vs other countries in the Americas (e.g. the US & Brazil).

Were there fundamental differences in the way Spanish vs non-Spanish speaking  countries were colonized that would specifically explain this difference?


texts: Can anyone find the letter of Tsar Alexander II to Rostovtsev dated October / December 25th, 1859?

texts:
I don't know Russian so this is exceedingly hard for me. I am trying to find the beautiful original Russian letter of Tsar Alexander II Liberator (Алекса́ндр II Освободи́тель) to Iakov Ivanovich Rostovtsev (Яков Иванович Ростовцев) regarding their campaign to liberate the serfs. I first came across it here in an English PDF:

From here I tried to locate the Osvobozhdenie Krest'ian book and found this Internet Archive book. But I was unable to find after combing through hundreds of pages and using various search filters. So I tried looking at another Internet Archive book, and I managed to come across this on the footnote on page 125:

^) цКромФ Шидловскаго^ висалъ Ллексавдръ II Ростовцеву 25-го де- кабря 1859 г.. Я еще получилъ два адреса отъ 18 и отъ 5 еловИгь (см. выше). Посл*ди1й въ особенности ьи съ ч)ьмъ несообразенъ и дер зокъ до крайности,.. Не унывайте, кавъ Я не унываю, хотя часто при- ходится переносить много горя, и удемъ вм^ст^ молить Бога, чтобъ. Онъ наставплъ и укрфпилъ". (См. н. сб. Семенова, II, 128).

This is indeed the end of the same letter, but unfortunately it is not the whole letter. Is anyone able to find the full letter?  (I tried to ask on the Russian Stack Exchange but questions in English are not allowed)


texts:
How much popular support was there in the Soviet Union? How did this popular support increase and decrease with time?

Here is an infographic that sort of summarizes my question. It shows that even at the point of collapse, some 70% of Soviet citizens supported the continued governance by the communist party within the Soviet Union. However, I have doubts about the validity of this information. Also, this only shows a single year, not how popular attitudes increased and decreased as the years passed.

What does scholarly research say about this?

Background:

When I was a US 3rd grader (1983?), my social studies class informed me that "nobody" in the Soviet Union liked their government. This was obviously false information; at the very least, at least one person would like it, right?

As a 7th grader, my history class talked about how the party members were rich and liked to be in power, but everyone else hated the government. How could such a small group hold so much power? The incorrect answer that my classmates came up with was that all Russians were cowards who hated freedom. This is obviously wrong; WWII and the Sputnik were great refutations.

Later in life(~2010), I had a Russian friend whose old mother had come to live with him in the US. She was a diehard anti-American; she loved the Soviet Union her whole life, and had always been poor. So at least one non-powerful non-party member supported the government.

From my reading of how the communist party and government was structured, and how reforms were implemented, it appears that many people - above 60% - supported the revolution and subsequent economic organization. However, I'd love to see some peer-reviewed data.

Please note, this question asks for historical truth and not repetition of the ugly cold war propaganda some of us grew up with.

Some possible sources:

Is there a peer reviewed publication where scholars have attempted to
make an objective estimate?
Did the CIA or British Intelligence declassify their factual
estimates? What about other military intelligence?
Did the Communist leadership factually study this? If so, has this
data been released?
Marketing Estimates by McDonalds, Coca-Cola and other companies?

Instead of the "popular" vs "not popular" dichotomy, the question asks "how popular." I am also interested in how much support existed as the years passed.

(Edit: It has been noted that it will be impossible to produce exact, perfect numbers. )


texts: Was there any restriction on private citizens owning cannons and other large weaponry in 17th, 18th and 19th century Europe?

texts: Were there laws limiting what kind of guns a private citizen in Europe could own? Could John Doe go to a shop and commission a cannon to be made for his own personal use?


texts:
What is the oldest debt that any country is paying right now, and to whom? To another country, an institution like World Bank, or to private entities?

What were the historic causes for the debt?
What are its present day figures : repayments, sources, % interest, etc?

Reference links:

Global Wealth Inequality  Relevance: Sharing about the fact that there is a transfer of wealth continuing today from developing to developed countries. Popular perception was that such transfers were stopped when the countries stopped being colonies.
Debt: The First 5000 years, David Graeber Relevance: Importance of debt in shaping history (to answer the objection that debt doesn't have anything to do with history)


texts: History of terrorist organizations designations/undesignations by Israel

texts:
In 1948, Israel passed the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, which allows it to officially designate organizations as terrorists in the Official Gazette.

What organizations have been designated this way and why?
What organizations have been "unlisted" from it and why?

(My goal is to complete the Wikipedia article about organizations officially designated as terrorists)


texts: When the Portuguese began the exploration of the West African Coast, did they believe the Indian Ocean was an enclosed sea?

texts:
The Ptolemy map shows the Indian Ocean as an enclosed sea separated from the Atlantic by land extending from Africa to Malaya. Therefore, it suggests it is impossible to reach the Indian Ocean from Europe by sailing anticlockwise around the African continent. I believe the Ptolemy map was reconstructed in Europe at or before 1410 via thirteenth-century Byzantium whilst the Portuguese began their southern exploration of the West African coast in 1421 under Henry the Navigator.
I would like to know the extent to which Ptolemy influenced the Portuguese explorations. Did they reject Ptolemy from the outset or did they only realise he was wrong at a later date?


texts: Who was the first US president to graduate from a public university?

texts: I know that most of the presidents went to college and a major portion of those presidents were awarded degrees. Who was the first president to be a graduate of a public university?


texts: What is the real origin of the stereotype that associates fried chickens with African Americans?

texts:
I knew for a long time very vaguely that there were some connections between fried  chickens and African Americans.
And it started by listening this product of the celebrity Key & Peele.

And he ( who grew up in Texas ) is singing a song including a word "deep fried chicken" ( from around 1:46～ )

And I found an interesting video

I think the African American in blue textile says ( I apologize if I picked his voice wrongly )

Around from 0:51

"F** I don't eat fried chicken food".

And I googled more, and I find an article.

But it seems he didn't give me the final conclusion why fried chickens are associated with African Americans.

Does anybody know?


texts: What is the source of the story from the Battle of the Nile?

texts:
Here is a creepy story from history. As I remember the story, after The Battle of the Nile 1 August 1798 or the Battle of Trafalger 21 October 1805 someone on a British ship saw a boy sitting on a cannon very still, and when touched, the boy fell to the deck dead, without any visible wounds.  The story was that the boy had somehow been killed by concussion from the British cannons being fired or maybe a French shell exploding nearby.  Believe it or not.

So I wonder if anyone remembers reading that story and can find a source for it.


texts:
Yesterday's [23rd May 2013's] IHT had this interesting historical news clip in its 100, 75, 50 years ago section. It refers to a British colony in Berlin in 1913 of which Mr. J. W. Louth was apparently the dean.

  Before breakfast their Majesties received a deputation from the
  British colony in Berlin, which presented a loyal address.

Google and Wikipedia aren't much help here.

What British colony are they referring to?


texts: Was Islam really responsible for the Italian Renaissance?

texts:
I recently heard a big claim from a Muslim, that the Italian Renaissance was largely caused by the positive Islamic influence on Europe via Spain or Al Andalus.

I have my doubts about this claim, traditionally historians give most credit to the Greco-Roman past of Europe as the inspiration for the age.

Can someone elaborate on this topic because the Renaissance is pretty much the catalyst for the modern world.

I have heard the claim from my Muslim friends and most recently on a YouTube video called "The iphone 6 and the prophet Muhammad".


texts: Why were there so many Japanese Prime Ministers before and during WW2?

texts:
I had been reading about Tojo's history and was surprised that he was not Prime minister at the start of the war (Looking at other European Authoritarians and how they saw things through from start to end).
I do not understand why there were so many different people that held the office around the time.
I am making the assumption that Japan's participation in WW2 started with the Marco Polo bridge incident and subsequent invasion of China rather than Pearl Habour.
I have only been reading from Wikipedia, and no books specifically. I am rather new to having a more detailed interest in History.


texts: What were contemporary Japanese views on the Taiping Rebellion and Heavenly Kingdom?

texts:
In the 1850's and 60's, the Taiping Rebellion broke out in China, observed by both the Tokugawa Bakufu and subsequently the Meiji Imperial government. Some 200 years earlier, Japan had suffered its own rebellion (at Shimabara) with some similar characteristics: e.g., began in the far south of the country, its leaders were supposedly children of prophecy (or sons of God), both were inspired (or at least heavily influenced by) Christian or pseudo-Christian theologies, both were extremely bloody, etc.

Given all this, did contemporary (or even current) Japanese draw parallels between this and their own experiences? What did Japanese writers, thinkers, media, actually think of the rebellion and its implications?


texts: How did people say “I have to go to the bathroom” before the bathroom and pipes were common?

texts:
I am writing a story in a medieval world of fantasy, and today a little girl is trapped next to her brother in a hole.

The girl has to go to the bathroom, but I do not know how to be someone that age and at that time I would tell a rescuer that she needs to go to the bathroom.

Is there any difference to how it is today? Is there something I should avoid?


texts: Were sailing ships of the line understaffed with gunnery crews so that there were not enough for 2 broadsides?

texts:
Is there any data to support or refute the hypothesis that sailing ships of the line were only complemented with enough gunnery crews to simultaneously fire 1 broadside but not 2?

If it matters for precision, let's assume British ships of 1700s.


texts: How many people watched the moon landings after Apollo 11?

texts:
I'm currently writing an essay on the history of Spaceflight. I remember hearing before that interest in the Apollo program waned after Apollo 11, that TV ratings of the moon missions gradually dwindled from public apathy, with the exception of Apollo 13. However, I can't find any contemporary evidence which shows that public interest in Apollo's subsequent missions to the moon faded. I'm having such a hard time proving this in my essay. I know that the Apollo 11 mission had around 600 million viewers when Armstrong and Aldrin touched down. That data is out there and is easy enough to find. And it seems pretty obvious to me that people stopped caring shortly thereafter. But what I'm really interested in is some kind of hard proof which shows that people stopped caring about the moon missions.

So far, my googling hasn't helped, though I've found a number of cool sources. None of the following solved my problem:

A website devoted to classic TV ratings: http://www.classictvhits.com/tvratings/
Various television ratings archives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_U.S._television_ratings_archives
Apollo by the Numbers - a super cool site showing all kinds of useful stats pertaining to the Apollo missions: https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_00a_Cover.htm
Historical Nielson TV ratings: https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/nielsen/historical

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


texts:
In Viktor Suvorov's books, most notably The Liberators, Inside The Soviet Army, Inside Soviet Military Intelligence, a bleak picture is painted of a system where official figures were exaggerated or fabricated, corruption was widespread because no one of importance believed in the system, and that the economy's primary purpose was to supply the Red Army.  In this context he argues that the entire system was given pretence only to confuse people at home and abroad.

For example: At one point Suvorov alleges that the entire civilian shipbuilding budget for the USSR was spent on military craft, and that civilians vessels were acquired overseas by other means.  The budget was faked in order to pretend that the USSR wasn't just a military-industrial complex.

How accurate is this assessment?  How widespread was the fabrication of Soviet records?  Is it fair to say that the USSR's economy was dedicated to supporting its military, and that economic measures often used to compare with the USA are thus meaningless?  Is there any investigation or evidence to justify this opinion?

As kubanczyk pointed out, Suvorov's premise was that the USSR mirrored Thomas Moore's book Utopia: where the society which attempted to create equality ended up enslaving its own people, and thus had to enforce that upon everyone else by being in a constant state of war.  In strategic terms, the USSR needed to prepare for a war of global liberation, and thus their economy's only real purpose was to provide the means to achieve this.


texts: How old were the youngest employees of the Russian-American Company?

texts:
The Russian-American Company, founded 1799, employed some real lowlifes. Golovnin about 1810 found them "composed for the most part of dissolute persons, many of whom have been flogged with the knout and wear the brands of their misdeeds on their faces and nostrils." According to Langsdorff about 1805 their sailors were "adventurers, drunks, bankrupt merchants, and bunglers and even pardoned criminals, of whom some had torn nostrils." Rezanov around the same time recorded "violent people, drunkards and so depraved that any community must be considered fortunate to have gotten rid of them".

The company had to hire these men because of a long-term shortage of promyshlenniki, workers that weren't administrators or native forced laborers. They could be petty burghers, peasants, criminal exiles, natives, creoles, or foreigners. Most often they were recruited and/or impressed in Okhotsk.

A bit later, the promyshlenniki's own sons became a labor resource. The company's creole estate was created in 1821 and I get the vague impression that staffing pressures diminished afterwards.

In its early desperation to recruit, how young a promyshlennik would the Company hire? Was there an Imperial minimum employment age that it would have followed?


texts: What was the most significant change Americans experienced during the 1830s?

texts:
What would you say was the most striking or best-remembered change for people living in the United States were experiencing during the 1830s, that were different from those of most other eras? I'm not really sure what kinds of changes (political, religious, etc.) were going on at this time, and would like to know more about these changes and how they affected Americans during this time.

This was a time of upheaval that was unusual in America. Why would that have been the case?


texts: How useful were Chinese contributions to the defeat of Japan in WWII?

texts: While there is no doubt China contributed a lot of blood and treasure in the War with Japan, how useful were those contributions given that Japan was strangled by a the navy, bombed by the air force and finally hit with nuclear weapons all of which were delivered from the Pacific? It has been said that China tied down a lot of Japanese troops, but would those troops have made much difference given that you can only pack so many defenders onto an island and you have to have ships to move the men around? If China had fought twice as effectively or half as effectively how much difference would it have made to the outcome of the war and to the military expenditures of America and other western allies in the Pacific?


texts: Was California's request for a Mexico border fence from the Pacific Ocean to the Colorado River acted upon?

texts:
In the 1965 California legislative session, a joint resolution (chapter 132, No. 44) was passed imploring the president and congress to build an:

  animal-proof fence from the Pacific Ocean to the Colorado River along the international boundary

(Pacific Ocean to the Colorado River is the entire California-Mexico border)

and insisting that:

  There is existing legislation to authorize these agencies to erect fences along the United States-Mexican border

(There is also another joint resolution at chapter 27, number 5, asking for the fence, and specifying that the INS and Department of Agriculture have authority to build it.)

How did the president and congress respond to California's request for a border fence?


texts: When did Australia declare war on Germany in WWII

texts:
In 1939, Australia had not ratified the 1931 Westminster Statute, and so lacked an independent foreign policy.  Menzies recognised this by saying in 1939, that as Britain was at war with Germany, so Australia was at war with Germany.

In 1942, after a change of government, Australia ratified the statute, backdated to 1939.

While Australia was obviously at war with Germany from 1939, "declaration of war" implies a formality and legality: when should we consider this formal and legal process to have happened?  In 1939?  In 1942?


texts: Why wasn't Angelica Schuyler in danger in London despite supporting revolution?

texts:
I recently became fascinated by the musical "Hamilton". I heard that it's mostly historically accurate, but there's something that doesn't sound right to me. In the musical, it is suggested that King George III threatened supporters of the revolution with corruption of blood and that Angelica Schuyler supported the revolution. Assuming that both statements are true, I cannot understand how could she be safe after travelling to London.

Why did George III not decide to revenge on her, given that she was already in his country?


texts: Does the Catholic church have a long history of child abuse, or is it something that started in our time?

texts:
There has been a debate on the causes of clerical child abuse is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding Catholic sex abuse cases. However, I wonder what is the history of child abuse in the Catholic Church.

Some Catholics, such as correspondent John Daniel Davidson, have claimed that the sexual revolution and a rise in moral relativism contributed to the problem of child abuse.

Others have argued that child abuse in the Catholic church predates these changes. A report done as part of the Australian government's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that "the most notorious cases of sexual abuse in the Australian church occurred in institutional settings in the 1940s–60s by men (and sometimes women) who were thoroughly trained in the strict morality and rigorous piety of the pre-Vatican II church," noting that "the ranks of abusers cuts right across the lines of conservatives and liberals, with both sides having their fair share of abusive clergy."

Philip Jenkins claims that the Roman Catholic Church is being unfairly singled out by secular media which he claims fails to highlight similar sexual accusations in other religious groups, such as the Anglican Communion, Islam and Judaism, and various Protestant church communities. Jenkins later authored the book The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice in 2003, touching on some of the same issues. Other organisations which have seen comparable large-scale sexual abuse scandals include the Boy Scouts of America and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Writing in The Washington Post in 2010, David Gibson calls the idea of an anti-Catholic media bias a "myth", saying "The annual survey of religion in the news conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life showed that in 2008 ─ the year Benedict traveled to Washington and New York ─ coverage of the pope and of the Catholic Church accounted for more than half of all news stories about religion, and the majority were positive or explanatory."


texts: Why have some territorial annexations been rejected by the international community?

texts:
The annexation of Kuwait by Iraq, the annexation of the Golan Heights by Israel, and the annexation of Crimea by Russia are examples of recent territorial annexations that have been rejected by the international community. Under what circumstances has the international community historically accepted or rejected territorial annexations, and what were the reasons?

Have the reasons remained consistent throughout history, or have they evolved after, say, the Peace of Westphalia and other international territorial agreements? How has "rejection" been handled (i.e. Iraq was invaded by the West but Israel and Russia were not), and has that been consistent? What generally has to happen for an annexation to be accepted? Has annexation against the will of the people living in the disputed territory ever been historically accepted, and what percentage of the population accepting the annexation is generally regarded as being enough? How can such will even be expressed or measured?


texts: Was any object from Anza's expeditions conserved?

texts:
In the 1770s, Juan Bautista de Anza led two overland expeditions from Sinaloa to Alta California. The first was for reconnaissance and the second, larger and better known, for the purpose of colonization. Most of Spanish California's founding families came with him on the second expedition, which included chaplain Pedro Font, about 260 settlers and attendant livestock. Today Anza's endeavor is remembered through the Anza National Historic Trail.

Was any object carried on either of Anza's expeditions conserved?


texts: How long did it take to make a woolen sweater?

texts:
In premodern times, in temperate or colder climates, clothing was orders of magnitude more expensive than today and textile production made up a large percentage of total economic activity. I'm interested in getting a feel for the actual numbers involved.
To take something concrete: in the Middle Ages, how many hours of labor did it take to make a woolen sweater?
But I don't mean starting with a ball of wool. I mean starting with a sheep. I'm interested in the total labor cost.
As I understand it, there were several steps: shearing the sheep, cleaning the wool, spinning it into thread, then weaving or knitting the thread into clothing, but they were not equally time-consuming; spinning thread, took considerably more time than all the other steps put together.
The spinning wheel improved things significantly, but the Middle Ages was before that, when distaff and spindle were the relevant tools. (And as I understand it, would have been substantially unchanged since at least the Bronze Age.)
A good starting point, then, would be if there are figures available for how long it took to spin a certain amount of thread with distaff and spindle, given an experienced worker.


texts: Why was slavery profitable in the Southern colonies and not New England?

texts: Why didn't Colonists in New England import massive numbers of Slaves?


texts: Why did the Soviet Union name their strongest bomb Tsar Bomba?

texts:
The Soviet Union has/had the most powerful (Hydrogen) Bomb ever, the Tsar Bomb.

Why did they name it Tsar Bomb, when they had freed themself from the Tsars before, and even executed Tsar Nicholas II?


texts: Did Lincoln ever publicly blame James Buchanan?

texts:
Background
Several modern presidents have publicly blamed their predecessor for at least one issue that occurred during their presidency: Trump, Obama, and Reagan are some examples. I am unsure of how historians view this behavior...but it does not elicit a positive response from contemporaries.
Likewise, is there any recorded documents of Lincoln publicly blaming Buchanan for any of the issues he faced?
Why Lincoln: He is consistently ranked among the greatest presidents of all time by historians. I was just curious if him blaming others added to or subtracted from his greatness from a historical perspective.
Why Buchanan: In the examples of Trump, Obama, and Reagan that I cited, the first two frequently blamed directly, or implied, that the problems they faced were their predecessors doing, the third (Reagan) had only one example I could find, but had an apparent way of styling himself in stark contrast to his predecessor. It is this pattern of contrasting/blaming the immediate predecessor that I applied to Lincoln.


texts: When did the Running of the Bulls begin?

texts: Earliest reference I can find is 1878 on Wikipedia. This article, Deathwish as lifestyle: why people run with the bulls | Miguel-Anxo Murado, says it’s a “a relatively recent creation”. So do we have a historical basis for when it began?


texts:
I found this medal in UK. As far as I know the medal is from CCCP. I am living in Latvia and it used to be CCCP as well. On the medal you can see LIEPAJ and if there is missing letter then that must be A because my city is named Liepāja.

Could anyone help me out with this? Thank you.


texts: What sort of cold weather clothing did they wear on the Ross expedition to the Antarctic?

texts:
James Ross led an early expedition to the Antarctic from 1839 to 1843, aboard the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.  After his voyage, nearly thirty years passed before the next Antarctic expedition.

I've been able to find plenty of information about the clothing worn by the late 1800s and early 1900s explorers, but I haven't been able to find anything about the clothing on the Ross expedition.

What sort of cold weather clothing did they wear on the Ross expedition?


texts: When did passenger ships first have an on board duty-free shop?

texts:
According to several sites, the first duty-free shop opened at Shannon Airport in Ireland in 1947, since when duty-free shopping has become an enormous international business even though some airlines have discontinued sales on flights.

Finding any references to duty-free shops on passenger ships has proved much more difficult, though. According to these (un-referenced) Quora posts, there was no duty-free shop on the Titanic (but one of the answers gets the date and place of the first duty-free shop wrong).

The only other information I have is from childhood: I remember duty-free shops on the DFDS ships MS Winston Churchill and MS England on the Harwich (England) - Esbjerg (Denmark) route in the early 1970s. While I was plundering the liquorice supplies, my parents were stocking up on more 'standard' duty-free items (alcohol, cigars / cigarettes, perfume). MS England's last round trip on this route was in July 1974, but I can't say how long before that there was a duty-free shop.

This article, 70 years of achievement in duty free and travel retail, provides some interesting background information about duty-free sales before the jet age, stating that

  personal hygiene requirements in the crowded space of a small ship or
  horse-drawn coach were probably the origin of today’s allowances for
  perfume. But even when duty free sales started to become more formal,
  the progress from “sustenance” towards the idea of “personal export”
  was a slow one.

To clarify, I'm not interested in diplomatic or military special privileges mentioned in the article above, but in duty-free shops for ordinary people looking for some of the aforementioned "personal export" while en route from one country to another.

In anticipation that the line between "sustenance" and "personal export" might be a little blurred, information on the former would also be of interest.


texts: Did 20th century militaries have their own fire-fighter units?

texts:
I tried googling this but fire-fighter is too similar to fire-fight (as in gun fight or shootout) so I keep getting the wrong results. I'm asking about fire-fighting as in containing and extinguishing fires.

I know that there are fire-fighters on military bases who serve the base similar to how a municipal fire department serves a town. I'm not asking about that.

I'm looking for examples of fire-fighters who were part of the military and traveled with the army to fight fires they needed put out on the front lines.

I've seen in movies and games from WW1 and WW2 that firebombs and flamethrowers and even normal munitions could start fires that lit up whole forests or city blocks. I've seen soldiers running from out of control fires or even try to advance through rubble that is still smoldering. How did armies deal with all these fires everywhere? What if there was a fire in the way of their advance? What if there was a fire spreading toward their position and it was important that they not give up their position? I'm assuming local fire departments weren't reliable in a war-zone, so did armies have fire-fighting units in their ranks? How close to combat would such units have been deployed?


texts: How common was smoking in first half of the 20th century?

texts:
When watching movies that were made in first half of the 20th century, one can see many people are smoking (cigarettes), but it is not they smoke all time long. I refer to the movies, because they show the era's fashion and habits.

Cigarettes are shown, because they were part of lives, but they are not much common, that everybody smokes every time. They play important role eg. no-one could imagine Humphrey Bogart or James Bond without it in some scenes, but they are not existing the entire movie.

In "Mad Men" series, which was made a few years ago, but action takes place in 1950s., the people smoke everywhere. We see a pregnant woman smoking, even a gynecologist smoking by his patient. I understand that people did not know everything about health problems caused by smoking, but I am not sure if this is not exaggerated, as compared to movies from that time. I've spoken to some older people and they say it was not true, but it could have been in the USA. From remembrances they say, yes everybody did smoke, it was common to smoke at home by children, at office, but it was not allowable (both by law or habits) in other public places hospital, cinema etc.

Do "Mad Men" show truth about people habits and are intended to shock the viewer how common it was? The movies from the era could have been somehow censored or directors did not show cigarettes because it didn't add anything to action or they had theater habits, where it was forbidden to smoke on stage because of fire-security reasons.

Or maybe the authors of "Mad Men" wanted to show something shocking, but unfortunately they exaggerated it?

PS. A loosely related blog post


texts: When were soldiers compensated with land grants?

texts:
In what times and places was it common to give land to soldiers, as a form of payment for their army service?

I have learned in school that this was common in Rome. However, in the wikipedia article about Tiberius Gracchus, around 140 BC, they say that "Since legionaries were required to serve in a complete campaign, no matter how long it was, soldiers often left their farms in the hands of wives and children. Small farms in this situation often went bankrupt and were bought up by the wealthy upper class, forming huge private estates". It seems that these legionaries didn't get land as compensation for their service. Did this practice begin later on?


texts: Are there post-1700 examples of large scale long term reductions in living standards?

texts:
I am looking for examples where an old person could talk of the 'good old times' and these were objectively better than the current times. Large scale meaning it affected not just individuals or a group but, at least a large socially significant population of an entire region and long term means a scale of at least 50 years or so.
I believe this did happen between 1500 and 1650 in North and Central America. A significant proportion of the population died to infectious diseases from the Europeans, often well before the Europeans showed up in person. This lead to a general collapse of societies followed by significant reductions in living standards.
The fall of the Roman Empire, around 400 to 500 in Western Europe is probably another example.
Are there examples of this that happened after the industrial revolution?
It seems to me that since the industrial revolution the major catastrophes were either overcome relatively quickly (say WW II, by 1955 living standards in Europe were much higher than ever before) or were merely phases or slower growth (during the cold war, communist countries grew much slower than capitalist ones but living standards were still ever increasing).


texts: Identification of type of aircraft and time period

texts: Identification of aircraft NC31602 and year or decade of photo


texts: What was the attitude towards Martin Luther among early non-Catholic Christians in Britain?

texts: Were his writings and example praised, ignored, or shunned? Britain was abuzz with political and religious printed works at least by the time of the Civil War, so he must have been known about.


texts: In medieval Europe, were children born in an annulled marriage automatically illegitimate?

texts:
I know that under modern laws (even within the Catholic Church), children born in a marriage that is later annulled are still considered legitimate, because they were born of a putative marriage. Was that also true in the Middle Ages?

"Bloody" Mary and Elizabeth were both declared illegitimate and then legitimate several times, if I understand correctly, but was that the necessary result of annulment, or just their father's decree so he could choose his successor?


texts: Why was the "Cave of the Patriarchs" forbidden to Jews?

texts:
I just found out a tweet of Ben Shapiro stating the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron was closed to Jews for 700 years. I searched and didn't find any name but this article mentions that

  In the late 14th century, the Muslim rulers forbade Jews from entering
  the site, but they were allowed to approach as close as the fifth step
  on a staircase at the southeast. At some point, this was changed to
  the seventh step.

As I understand, Muslims ruled Palestine from about 7th century (except about a century of crusader rules). Some Jews lived in this area for thousands of years. If this was the case then which ruler imposed this ban only in the 14th century? and why?


texts: Did 17th Cent. French Gentlemen Necessarily Use a Scabbard for Dress Swords?

texts: I'm costuming a show that takes place in the 17th century, Paris, "Cavalier" period, as far as costumes go.  I can't seem to find a conclusive answer regarding whether the gentlemen need to have a scabbard, or whether a sword belt alone will do.  It seems as though a man be injured carrying a sword without a scabbard, but I'm finding most belt/frogs come without them.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!


texts:
So I’ve been trying to find the technical term for these headpieces usually worn during Venetian Carnevale. I’m unsure if they are medieval in origin or a type of turban. What is the difference between the two?
Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance.


texts: When is the first recorded instance of the lo-shu square?

texts:
The lo-shu square (洛書) is a 3×3 grid of numbers, usually written as dots:

Legend traces its origin to the legendary Yu the Great (大禹) or Fu-hi (伏羲) ~3000 years ago, but I'm interested in historically verifiable sources.

There is apparently a reference to the square in Dai Sheng's Book of Rites (小戴禮記) c. AD 60. Was this the first or are there older mentions?


texts: When did "&" stop being taught alongside the alphabet?

texts:
I've recently discovered that "&" was taught alongside the alphabet letters. While not being considered a letter per se, many students must have seen '&' as effectively the 27th letter of the alphabet (at least the vast majority of websites I came across nowadays stated it was the 27th letter of the alphabet).

After reading “A Was an Apple Pie” Lyrics, which ends with

"W wanted it,
X, Y, Z and ampersand
All wished for a piece in hand."

I came across more detailed information on the website Fast Company, but that same information is repeated on many other websites. The story of the symbol is pretty clear and it is easy to follow. However, I'd like to know when the '&' stopped being taught alongside the alphabet.

I have come across a few comments referring someone's parents or grandparents being taught the alphabet with the ampersand until as late as the 1920s but I have no idea if such comments pertain to the US or the UK nor if the practice continued until later.


texts: Historical accuracy of gulag archipelago

texts: How empirically and historically accurate is The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?


texts: What were the FBI's motives for wanting to discredit MLK?

texts:
J. Edgar Hoover's FBI had a vendetta against Martin Luther King, Jr. They wiretapped him, threatened to expose his sexual misconduct, accused him of Communist sympathies, and even went so far as to send him a letter encouraging him to commit suicide (though some maintain it was just telling him to step down from leadership). It's easy to think that the FBI was just trying to discredit the civil rights movement as a whole, and that one of their castration strategies was removing the figurehead or fracturing the movement. But the account of William Sullivan, the author of the threatening letter, tells a different story, namely that he hoped they could bring Samuel Pierce to the forefront of the movement to minimize the shock of the removal of King. According to his autobiography, he wrote the following in a letter to Hoover:

  It should be clear to all of us that Martin Luther King must, at some
  propitious point in the future, be revealed to the people of this
  country and to his Negro followers as being what he actually is – a
  fraud, demagogue and scoundrel. When the true facts concerning his
  activities are presented, such should be enough, if handled properly,
  to take him off his pedestal and to reduce him completely in
  influence. When this is done, and it can be and will be done,
  obviously much confusion will reign, particularly among the Negro
  people... The Negroes will be left without a national leader of
  sufficiently compelling personality to steer them in the proper
  direction. This is what could happen, but need not happen if the right
  kind of a national Negro leader could at this time be gradually
  developed so as to overshadow Dr. King and be in the position to
  assume the role of the leadership of the Negro people when King has
  been completely discredited.

  For some months I have been thinking about this matter. One day I had
  an opportunity to explore this from a philosophical and sociological
  standpoint with an acquaintance whom I have known for some years.... I
  asked him to give the matter some attention and if he knew any Negro
  of outstanding intelligence and ability to let me know and we would
  have a discussion. He has submitted to me the name of the
  above-captioned person. Enclosed with this memorandum is an outline of
  (the person's) biography which is truly remarkable for a man so young.
  On scanning this biography, it will be seen that (Samuel Pierce) does
  have all the qualifications of the kind of a Negro I have in mind to
  advance to positions of national leadership....

  If this thing can be set up properly without the Bureau in any way
  becoming directly involved, I think it would be not only a great help
  to the FBI but would be a fine thing for the country at large. While I
  am not specifying at this moment, there are various ways in which the
  FBI could give this entire matter the proper direction and
  development. There are highly placed contacts of the FBI who might be
  very helpful to further such a step. These can be discussed in detail
  later when I have probed more fully into the possibilities.

So which is it? Were they trying to bolster the movement by replacing King with a better leader (untainted by infidelities and Communism), or destroy it by removing King and leaving the movement headless (or at least without such a charismatic leader)? Or perhaps there's a third option.

Obviously the "motives" of an entire institution are nigh impossible to pin down, but for the purposes of this question I'm interested in the motives of Hoover, Clyde Tolson, and Sullivan, as well as can be ascertained from the historical record. Anyone else you think would be relevant would also be welcome.


texts: Was Brown v Board of Education the only major decision that changed educational choice in America?

texts:
Brown v Board of Education was the landmark Supreme Court case in America that was supposed to allow more educational choice for all Americans, basically stopping segregational policies and on a legal level schools were to be integrated.  While the results did not go as planned the case itself was an amalgamation of other legal cases that made their way through the courts in the early/mid 20th century.

Were there others that happened before this time in either the early 20thC or in the 19thC that might have been lost before this decision?  Typcially it takes years and multiple tries to get a case to the Supreme Court so it seems that these cases can't be the only ones and so far I haven't found many more that might have been tried.

More on Brown v Board of Education can be found here if needed.


texts: Are there factors which caused the printing revolution to begin in Europe in 1450 and not some other place some other time?

texts:
The printing press was a big deal. It brought a communication revolution and led to the development of larger collective consciousnesses.

What I am refering to the printing revolution  is the widespread dissemination of written content by publishing, widespread creation of content to be printed and widespread consumption of printed material.

Gutenberg was a spark which lit the fire of the printing revolution. But how widespread or rare was the....fuel and the oxygen?

Two parts

Could it have been occurred as readily in any year before 1450?
Could it have been occurred as readily in any sedentary civilization other than Europe?

I understand that it is broad, and borders opinion based, but, indulge me?


texts:
Jesus does not have a brother in some Christian traditions, his mother Mary is a perpetual virgin. For instance the Catholic church holds this theory as a theologoumenon, namely a theological affirmation presented as historical fact of reality perceptible only in faith. Insofar as it intrigues my experience as a paramedic I was wondering what was the point of view of historians as far as I don't have much sources but :

Pierre-Antoine Bernheim who points out in James, Brother of Jesus that moreover, Paul never qualifies Peter or John as brother of the Lord.
The Gospels and the Pauline writings always use the Greek word adelphos, "brother", and not anepsios, "cousin" which seems to be the point of the historian  Fr John P. Meier in A Marginal Jew. According to the language teacher Meha the fact that Greek distinguishes the term brother (adelphos) from the term cousin (anepsios), while Hebrew does not do so, in no way speaks to the question of extending the use of this term of brother to the time.
Some excerpts of the Bible one can read in epistle to the Galatians (1, 19), Paul calls James "the brother of the Lord". In the first letter to the Corinthians (9: 4-5), he mentions other brothers of the Lord who have the right to take their wives during their apostolic mission. It is clear in Paul's formulation that compares his rights with "other apostles and the Lord’s brothers, and Cephas (that is, the apostle Peter)," that he does not attribute the qualifier of brother of the Lord only to a few specific individuals.

Do historians support the existence of brothers to Jesus? And, maybe the perpetual virginity of Mary, mother of Jesus? With what methods or support?


texts: What does "the purpose of history is ideological" mean?

texts: I have this question which states "How does the story of Columbus illustrate that the purpose of history is ideological?" Unfortunately, I am having trouble understanding what exactly the question is trying to ask. Can someone elaborate for me?


texts: Who was Jack Hagler? As amended by chapter 87-24, Laws of Florida, this section shall be known and may be cited as the “Jack Hagler Self Defense Act.”

texts:
Who is Jack Hagler? Why is he mentioned in this law, the Jack Hagler Self Defense Act?

I tried to find out information but nothing relevant came up.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Jack+Hagler&ia=web


texts: What happened to the missiles of Tipu Sultan?

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Why didn't anyone develop the missiles of Tipu Sultan further?

Neither British nor Marathas?


texts: Why did Bayer lose aspirin and heroin trademarks under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles?

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As read in the article Heroin by Wikipedia:

  Bayer lost some of its trademark rights to heroin (as well as aspirin) under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles following the German defeat in World War I. 83 84

The second reference is of The Guardian's Happy birthday to the wonder drug that changed our lives we can read:

  Aspirin and Heroin were registered trademarks of the Bayer pharmaceutical company in Germany until the end of the first world war. Under the Treaty of Versailles, however, both trademarks were given up to England, France and Russia and later to the United States as part of Germany's war reparations. Bayer had to supply a quarter of all the aspirin it produced to the allies.

If I don't get it wrong, Bayer was a private company back then. How could the allies seize goods from private companies in a Treaty between countries? To what extend this trademarks added value to the war reparations and how were they calculated?


texts: What evidence is there for the severity of Roman scourging before crucifixion?

texts:
Something I'm curious about is the severity of scourging ancient Romans inflicted on their victims before crucifixion.
Numerous religious/Christian websites suggest that it was quite severe, and involved an instrument in which metal or bones were embedded in the lashes.  For example:

renner.org paragraphs 4-12
catholicinsights on the Shroud of Turin
jesus-story
a scary-looking "flagrum": ,

But many of these online sites don't really reference, in my view, a reliable account, primary source, or any extant "flagra" from the ancient Roman era.
In fact, according to this article by Dr. Andrea Berlin and Dr. Jodi Magness Two Archeologists Comment on The Passion of the Christ, the scourging was just done with a reed.
What reliable evidence is there that scourging before crucifixion was as severe as most online website describe them to be?


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As far as I am aware, assassin comes from the Arabic حشاشين (Ḥashshāshīn).  Clearly, the concept of murdering someone for either political or religious reasons was not invented by the Ḥashshāshīn. So, prior to the first crusade, what were assassins called in Latin/Greek?

The Oxford dictionary defines assassin as the action of assassinating someone and to assassinate as [To] murder (an important person) for political or religious reasons.


texts: Are parts of the Sphinx older than 5000 years?

texts: Are parts of the Great Sphinx of Giza more than 5000 years old? There was a controversy about this question 15 years ago on which I didn't find anything to conclusively prove or debunk it.


texts: From which Russian-American Company ship did Osip Volkov defect to Mexico?

texts: Several books and articles indicate that Osip Volkov defected from a Russian ship at Monterey around 1815, midway through the Mexican War of Independence. Naturalized as Jose Antonio Bolcof, he served as alcalde of Branciforte. The Russian-American Company had a royal monopoly on the fur trade in America. What was the ship on which Volkov arrived in California?


texts: What is the source of the Senate-as-saucer story?

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A famous (though perhaps fictional) simile often quoted to point out
  the differences between the House and Senate involves an argument
  between George Washington, who favored having two chambers of Congress
  and Thomas Jefferson, who believed a second chamber to be unnecessary.
  The story goes that the two Founders were arguing the issue while
  drinking coffee. Suddenly, Washington asked Jefferson, "Why did you
  pour that coffee into your saucer?" "To cool it," replied Jefferson.
  "Even so," said Washington, "we pour legislation into the senatorial
  saucer to cool it."

(from here)

What is the source for this? The official page offers the same tale and a general reference to a book I don't have. Does anyone know more?


texts: Is it true that Proto-Ukrainians conquered Europe and India?

texts:
I am a Ukrainian high school student. Recently we were told by a teacher that Proto-Ukrainians, the people who lived in the modern territory of Ukraine and ancestors of modern Ukrainians, once conquered a lot of territory. This included most of Europe and much of Asia, including Turkey, India and Iran.

She even claimed that the names of European gods like Zeus and Jupiter came from the name of the gods venerated formerly in the territory of modern-day Ukraine.

I wonder to what extent it is true?


texts: How did recognition by Morocco influence the history of the USA?

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In my personal experience when having studied the early history of the American Republic, I learned about The Treaty of Marrakech in my U.S. Diplomatic History Graduate course.  Prior to that time, there was hardly any mentions of The Treaty of Marrakech and Morocco's role for having been the first county to  diplomatically recognize the United States.

And it wasn't until a few years ago that I learned about The U.S Embassy in Tangier which was built in the early 1800's and how this particular Embassy, was one of the earliest Ambassadorial missions in U.S. History-(Today it is called, "The American Legation Museum" and it is the oldest U.S. National Landmark which exists outside the continental United States). In addition to its early history, this particular U.S. Embassy was also of important strategic value during the Second World War.

How did that treaty, and recognition by Morocco, influence early U.S. history?


texts: How good were Confederate resupply capabilities during the Gettysburg campaign?

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At dinner, the other night, I discussed the battle of Gettysburg with a foreign-born friend, who observed: "The way you describe the battle of Gettysburg, if Pickett's charge had succeeded on the third day and the Confederates had won the battle, they would still have lost the war, because they would have run out of ammunition, and been sitting ducks for enemy attack. They needed to win the battle of the first day" (when they could have chased  one-third of the Union army off Cemetery Ridge, with most of their ammunition left).

I know a couple things about the campaign, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Campaign, first that both Confederate and Union soldiers used the bayonet during Pickett's charge because they were low on ammunition, and second, that the Confederate line of communications was a precarious one extending to Virginia through Winchester and Harper's Ferry, and hostile Union territory in West Virginia and western Maryland.

How robust were the Confederates' resupply capabilities, especially for ammunition, while in Pennsylvania? My guess is that they could "commandeer" all the food and clothing they needed. If they were low on ammunition, could they send what they needed from Virginia? If not, could they reasonably expect to capture sufficient supplies from the enemy?  Or was my friend right when he said that they would have lost the war by "default" if they had run low on ammunition deep in enemy territory?


texts: Medieval infantry deployed in ranks of #(?) men (formation depth)?

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We know quite a lot about Greek phalanx, its deployment and depth and, I believe, about Roman legions as well.

But do we know anything about Western European infantry formations of high/late middle ages? How wide and deep were its infantry ranks? Are there any contemporary accounts or at least rough estimates that could shed some light on this matter?


texts: What can I learn from these WW1 shell cases?

texts: We found these two shell cases in my parents garage. They were allegedly brought back from France by my great grandfather, but that’s all we know and we’d really like to know more about them and wondering if anyone can help please? The larger shell has a diameter of 85mm and the smaller shell is 62 mm.  I hope the extra photos help. Thank you.


texts: Why did Fakhr-al-Din seek a treaty with Tuscany, of all places?

texts:
In an interesting vignette, it turns out that the Druze emir of Lebanon, Fakhr-al-Din, had traveled in the early 17th century to Florence and tried to conclude a military alliance with the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Why, of all places, Tuscany? This raises some questions and conjectures:

Presumably this was based on previous contact between Fakhr-al-Din and Tuscan traders. Are there records of Tuscan traders in Lebanon in the 17th century?
This (abortive) alliance seems to me to be a pale mirror image of the earlier, much more significant Franco-Ottoman alliance. Was the Franco-Ottoman alliance still in operation in Fakhr's time? If yes, then was perhaps Fakhr trying to use Tuscany as a conduit to get in touch with the King of Spain or the Emperor, the Sultan's enemies? (wikipedia says he got so far as the Duke of Osuna - good for Fakhr, but hardly enough).


texts: Did Spanish missions block exploration of South America?

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According to The river sea : the Amazon in history, myth, and legend, page 112,

In any study of these wild regions [of South America], one is constantly astounded, even moved, regardless of one's religion or lack of it, by the dedication and bravery of the Spanish friars who established missions in some of the most isolated and inhospitable spots on earth. There was an obverse side to their ministrations, however. They controlled the only viable routes into the interior of South America and for three centuries were able to block exploration.

One is not used to thinking of friars as being armed, let alone having enough military force to be able to sink any ship attempting to sail up a miles-wide river, which is what would seem to be required to block exploration up the Amazon and its major tributaries. So how exactly did they do such controlling and blocking?


texts: Was there an occasion when nazis turned their backs on a national anthem?

texts:
Brexit party members today turned their backs during the playing of the EU anthem at the opening of the EU parliament. This was commented on in the newspapers. A below-the-line commenter there, thelastnumber wrote

The brexit party aren't the first to protest an anthem by turning their backs.
The nazis did it first.

Was there a noted occasion when nazis turned their backs on a national anthem in contempt?


texts: When did Emperor Hirohito gave an address about suicides and non-productive jobs?

texts:
I heard in a conversation I got with a friend of a friend before, that during World War II apparently Emperor Hirohito of Japan, gave an address to his people after a long time in which talked about permissions for suicide and measures taken for non-productive jobs. I don't remember very well actually, that's why I'm asking.

Can someone tell me when was this, and what was exactly this about?


texts: If I was to be more specific, can anyone name the largest ancient Greco-Roman theater-(excluding the Roman amphitheaters, such as the Coliseum in Rome and Verona, as well as the amphitheater in Pompeii).  For example, the Ancient theater in Ephesus, as well as the ancient theater in Epidaurus holds up to 15,000 people, though the ancient theaters in Aspendos, Turkey, as well as Orange, France and Merida, Spain appear to be larger in size.  A precise or nearly precise answer would be welcomed.


texts: What was the custom/consensus regarding irregular combatants 19th century?

texts:
Immediately prior to the battle of Sedan, the German soldiers who captured the town of Bazeilles executed a number of armed civilians who had been firing on German troops that day.  This happened in the context of the more long running bands of the Francs-tireurs, who had been harrying German movement during the Franco-Prussian war.

What was the standard of the law of war regarding irregular combatants, with or without device, with or without military discipline, at this time

a. In the Germanies

b. In France

c. In neighbouring European countries?
What cultural phenomena governed the morality of lawful and unlawful warfare in Europe amongst Europeans in the late 19th century?
How did German and French states and cultures

a. Characterise the actions of their armed forces, armed civilians and opponents forces in cultural terms?

b. Produce or justify these characterisations to the satisfaction of a large body of their citizen or subject population in Europe?


texts:
Did any age of sail ship have a "back-bone cannon"? What I mean by "backbone-cannon" is a cannon too large/heavy to be carried other than by having the ship being essentially built around it. This would keep the cannon from being aimed (or at least aimed a lot) without turning the whole ship.

Modern "backbone" cannons include the cannon on the A-10, MI-24 (some variants), and the Swedish S-tank (Stridsvagn 103 - you aim it by turning the tank or raising the suspension).

The benefits to these are "obvious" - you would carry a heavier/longer-ranged cannons than any of the ships of the same size. The downsides are aiming, rate of fire, recoil management, etc.

So, was an something like this ever built?


texts: When did people stop translating their names when moving from one country to another?

texts:
I was interested in the process of people changing their names from one language to another. Most monarchs have a different given name in different languages. However, this phenomenon also applied to ordinary people who either moved from one country to another and had their name changed, or to ordinary people who became famous during their lives and  somehow ended up with their names being translated. This practice seems to have been more common before the 20th century than it is today.

In order to reduce the scope of the question, I am excluding all transliterations from other writing systems. Names from non-Latin writing languages obviously have to be transliterated into the Latin alphabet and the rules for doing so are heavily language-dependant, so those cases are ruled out. I am also excluding monarchs and popes who had Latin-derived names that are translated by tradition.

What I am interested in is the translation of names between two languages using the Latin alphabet and for ordinary people.

Examples of ordinary people changing their names or having them changed:

Immanuel Kant's father changed the spelling of the Cant Scottish family he descends from. Even though he never went to France, he is known as Emmanuel Kant in France.
Henri Nestlé founder of the namesake company was born in Germany as Heinrich Nestle.
Jean Ziegler swiss writer has been born in the German-speaking part of Switzerland as Hans Ziegler.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon french politician, descended from a Spanish Melanchón family.
Nicolas Sarkozy another french politician, descended from a Hungarian Sárközy family. It's not surprising the diacritics were dropped since they don't exist in french language – however, what is more interesting is that he's known in Hungary as Sarkozy and not his original Hungarian name, leading to neither the original Hungarian pronunciation, nor to the modern French pronunciation.
My great-great-grandparents were born in Germany and named Oskar & Johanna Heftle but were known in french speaking Switzerland as Oscar & Jeanne Heftlé, even though they still both had German citizenship when they married here.

Example of people not changing their names:

A good friend of mine – whose name I'll obviously not spell out here – comes from the German speaking part of Switzerland. His name is a name that has a direct French equivalent and could be easily translated, but I don't think anybody ever had that idea.
Many immigrants came from former Yugoslavia in the 90s, having names ending in -ic.  Those should really be respelled -itch (french) or -itsch (german) for people to pronounce them correctly. However as far I know such a spelling change was never done.

I could go on like that forever, but you get the idea. Nowadays people do not change the spelling of their names when going from a country to another country using the Latin alphabet. This results in major pronunciation errors, confusion, and exclusion of people with those weird names even many generations after they fully assimilated to their new country.

My questions is:

Were those changes in names voluntary in the past, or where they imposed on people moving to a country speaking a foreign language?
At which point in history did the bureaucracy stop people from altering their names when emigrating from a country to another so that they had to keep the spelling in their original language?


texts: How did Jean Parisot de Valette, 49th Grand Master of the Order of Malta, die?

texts:
I've just finished reading Sword and Scimitar by Simon Scarrow and wanted to know more about the non-fictional characters in the Siege of Malta. Jean Parisot de La Valette was the Grand Master and he survived all hardships of the siege. He died in 1568, but I'm not sure how.

The Wikipedia article Jean Parisot de Valette says he had a stroke while praying in a chapel and then died a few days later on August 21. I was also reading the Great Siege of Malta article and it says something different – he died in a hunting accident. I also saw another article on de Valette at http://josfamilyhistory.com which just says he died peacefully (in his sleep?).

How did he die?


texts: What is the earliest map of Washington, D.C.?

texts: What is the earliest official map of Washington, D.C. and where can it be found in the digital form and highest possible resolution? Googling didn't yield a credible answer.


texts: How were Patrician families determined during the Roman Kingdom/Republic?

texts:
I'm looking for some clarification on how patrician families were determined considering their outsized influence on Roman history. I read some sources state that a patrician family is a family that could trace its lineage to one of the original 100 founding families when Romulus established Rome, but I'm unsure because other families from rival Italian neighbors also joined.
Some notable examples would be the Julia gens (Caesar's origins) who emigrated from Alba Longa before Tullus Hostilius destroyed it and the Furia gens (Marcus Camillus' origins) who came from Tusculum.
I find it strange how these rich families were inserted not only into Roman society, but granted special status whereas, to my knowledge, no Etruscan family integrated (e.g. Under Camillus, Rome obliterated their chief Etruscan rival, Veii). Why didn't Romans allow Etruscan noble families to join? They allowed families from other rival city-states but not them. I can maybe understand why they didn't bother integrating a noble Volscian or Aequian family (correct me if I'm wrong and a patrician family did come from one of those tribes) because these tribes were nomadic herdsman.
The whole selection criteria is ambiguous and I'm looking for clarification even though I understand details on Roman history can be murky dating before the 389 BC Sack of Rome.


texts: Have there been any major disagreements between historians over what sources should be used to interpret an event?

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The sources of interest I have in mind are primary and secondary sources. The disagreement over sources should be due to disagreements over reliability of sources.

Edit: made the question clearer


texts: How can I authenticate this presumably ancient Narino/Carchi pedestal bowl?

texts:
So I'm attempting to verify that this bowl is authentic Pre-Columbian Narino but I have no idea how to. I thought the hard part was getting it cheap at an estate auction but it turns out this is the hard part lol

Based on the examples I see it looks authentic but I'd like to hire someone to authenticate it. Is there a good way to do this for ancient pottery? Do colleges or museums offer services for this?

more images here


texts: Patriotism and how it contributed to the recruitment process in WW1

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I know that a lot of people joined the army (and the navy) in World War 1 due to patriotism – the will to fight for your country. This shows that a lot of people, even those who were unemployed or starving, were really proud to be part of the British Empire. But, there are some areas where I have some confusion:

Does patriotism link in with other factors such as propaganda and
peer-pressure?
Approximately what fraction population enlisting in the army joined due to patriotism, is it larger or smaller than the number of people joining for Wages or for an adventure?
Was in just Britain that had success in recruitment due to patriotism? Or did other countries in the Empire also join due to patriotism for the empire?

BTW: I would also appreciate some historical sources.


texts:
Edited question:

At the time of Cleopatra, were common rites and practises like for example the mummification of emperors, polytheism, the Pharaoh having the position of a living god present like they used to be in ancient Egypt, or is the typical picture of how for example documentaries often depict everyday life in ancient Egypt mostly attributed to a time much longer ago, say, for example, when the Pyramids of Giza were constructed?


texts: What is the source of this image of Miles Morgan's "mark"?

texts: Miles Morgan, one of the founders of Springfield, MA made a 'mark' which resembled an anchor (more than anything), though I read it was also compared to a pickaxe.  Sometime in the past few months I took a screen shot of this mark - and I have no record of where I found it? Can anyone point me in the right direction? I need to offer documentation of the image in a book I'm compiling.


texts: Who made this violent speech in the documentary De Nuremberg à Nuremberg?

texts:
In F. Rossif's documentary De Nuremberg à Nuremberg at some point you can hear a pretty violent and aggressive speech (begins at 25:19 and ends up at 25:44) from which I could hardly understand things like:

  wir holen den Teufel aus der Hölle...
  und Stalin und London und Moskow und Washington...
  der Juda wir fallen...
  der Deutsche mag den Jude nicht - der Jude den Deutsche nicht...
  Feudalismus der Juden weg !

These words and same images are displayed twice throughout the documentary. The second instance is to be found in the second part of that documentary  (Starts at 20:04).

I've been wondering for long who made this speech: someone has an idea ? And about the date of the recording ?


texts: Were ancient people interested in archaeology?

texts:
Before the establishment of the field of archaeology, which is said here to have originated in 15th and 16th century Europe, surely ancient peoples were also curious about those who came before them as modern humans have been around for about 200,000 years.
A specific example is when the Romans arrived in Egypt, the Pyramids of Giza were already thousands of years old. Did they not excavate/study the ruins there and elsewhere throughout their Empire? And if so, are there archaeological finds we credit the discovery of to not just the Romans but other ancient peoples?


texts: Why is it "an interesting commentary on the quality of Jefferson's democracy that he chose Madison as his successor"?

texts: I'm reading The Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, by Charles Beard, and I came across this quote on page 52: "It is an interesting commentary on the quality of Jefferson's democracy that he chose Madison as his successor." What is it referring to and is it true?


texts: Did the Southern States make any attempt to secede from the Union through an act of Congress?

texts: I have read the answers about the legality of southern secession - very helpful; thank you. In light of those, I have another question: Did the Southern States make any attempt to secede from the Union, prior to 1861, through an act of Congress? If not, what diplomatic/peaceful means were attempted?


texts: What did Cosima Wagner mean by coating music?

texts:
I am reading the diary of Cosima Wagner (Piper, München, 1976) where she often writes: Die Noten überzogen. That means she has coated the music written by Richard Wagner. I cannot find an explanation what she used to coat the sheets. Today we would perhaps shrink wrap them in order to protect the sheets. But that cannot be meant in 1869. Any idea what she did?

There is no context. I read several times: Abends wieder Noten überzogen.

One example:

  26ten Donnerstag
  Sehr freundlicher Brief des Professor Nietzsche welcher uns einen Vortrag über Homer zuschickt. Wiederum Kindertag mit Partitur-Überziehung, R. instrumentierend. Nichts von außen Gott sei Dank, als einige Aufsätze von Judith Mendes über die Ausstellung über einen Brief G. Herwegh's, welcher R. deshalb frappiert, weil [er] in diesen Tagen daran gedacht hatte, diesem armen Verkommenen ein Lebenszeichen [zu] geben.
  src


texts: Why did Native Americans die from European diseases while Europeans didn't catch serious diseases from the New World?

texts:
Why did Native Americans die of European diseases while Europeans didn't have serious diseases from the New World?

I read that most Native American victims of colonization in the new world died of European diseases and not by battles. But why didn't European people catch some deadly disease from Native Americans?
Was it because of better European immunity?
Was it because Europe had better experience handling diseases?
Or what factors played major roles in this historical exchange of bacterias and viruses?