I'm reading about the Battle of Gettysburg where several dozen regiments suffered over 70% casualties out of ~400 men. How did losses like this impact the communities these regiments were recruited from?

I'm interested on reading more into how concepts of sexuality and gender have changed over time. The only work of this kind that I'm currently familiar with is Foucault's history of sexuality, but I'd be interested to hear more perspectives

Why was a royal marrying a divorcee so taboo in 20th century Britain? Edward the 8th had to abdicate because he wanted to marry Wallis Simpson. King Charles wasn’t initially allowed to marry Camilla even though they where romantically involved before and during his marriage to Diana. Also they’re was controversy over the divorce of Queen Elizabeth’s other children Anne and Andrews divorce.

Like was there a universal explanation for why this happened, did different cultures have different explanations, or did nobody care?

I am teaching Homer's Odyssey and one of my students asked a question I had never been asked and have been unable to find an answer to. I assume Odysseus would still have a legal claim to the throne and to Penelope, but how would that play out legally? Would the suitor be forced to step down and would the marriage be annulled, or would it be... messier?

Seems like instead of laying siege to one of their big cities, the best way to quickly bring them to their knees would be to cut off, or significantly reduce their fresh water.

And if the Romans DID defend these points, how many soldiers would be there? I assume not very many... So why weren't there more stories about enemies of Rome destroying their water wheels/ aqueducts?

I took a course on historiography in college and it covered the Annales school developed by the French historians. I found it quite interesting, but after an extremely brief internet search it doesn't seem to be very popular these days. Is it just a case of ideas being subsumed into a different paradigm, or was there some fundamental flaw in that school of thought which led to its decline?

I am currently writing a seminar paper on the perception of the second-hand trade in the early modern period, in literary sources of the time.

While working on my paper, I have however become intrigued by the question If and how flea markets (and other avenues of second-hand trade) were portrayed in paintings. 

Were they portrayed as dirty and places for the poor, or for fine people interested in antiquarian culture?

Would the vendors be depicted as upright businesspeople or as untrustworthy?

And would something as mundane as a flea market find itself into artworks of the time at all?

I'm trying to work out which gates / entrances the old Roman road the Fosse Way entered Leicester. Eg was it via the north Gate, East gate, West Gate, South Gate? I'm assuming it passed through the city so maybe went through two gates. Moreover, I doubt it makes a difference, was this also the case in medieval times (in case it was redirected or something). Any info you have would be great.

Many thanks!

This is a question that can apply to almost every army in almost every time period, and to many different unit levels, but to keep it more specific I’d like to know about the US Army’s decision to do it during WWII.

I’ve noticed that the army skipped over many division numbers during WWII. For the infantry divisions this was:

• 12
• 14-16
• 18-22 (and 23 if the Americal Division is taken into account)
• 39
• 46-62
• 64
• 67-68
• 72-74
• 105

(The above does not include the 10th Mountain Division, and the 11th, 13th, 17th, 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, which I counted as infantry divisions).

For the armored divisions this was:

• 15
• 17-19

Why was this so? I thought it would have been easier to raise divisions in sequential order. Was it due to historical or cultural reasons? Maybe for ease of administration, or for OPSEC? Or perhaps something else?

I keep seeing arguments about whether or not Churchill was responsible for the famine. What really happened?

Kind of random but I see in a lot of ancient war movies the guy in charge will usually make comments or pep talks before the first wave of battle hits and most of the time they either make a joke about death or mention somebody about how your probably going to die. For example, in the movie Gladiator Maximus jokes about Elysium or something right before the first barbarian battle they go into and makes a comment, and all the troops laugh.

Did stuff like this really happen in a sense to relax their troops or unite them somehow?

It's my understanding that mountainous regions tend towards significant linguistic diversity, due to the barrier to travel and intermingling that mountains pose. Southern China, where the geography is quite mountainous, is extremely linguistically diverse, while Northern China (which is much flatter) is not. The Caucasus displays extreme linguistic diversity as one would expect from its topography. And yet, Norway, despite being extremely mountainous, displays comparatively little linguistoc variety --- various dialects of Norwegian, as well as the Sami dialect continuum, are the only languages represented.

What historical factors have contributed to this unusual disparity?

More specifically: To what extent was there a standardized curriculum? What comprised the curriculum, other than English and Latin literacy and arithmetic? How well were teachers trained? How many texts per classroom were there? How much did it change over the Elizabethan period, and how different was it from what came before and what came after? When we picture an average Elizabethan grammar school, should we picture a rigorous, well-funded institution, or an inept one?

Wikipedia lists the entire population of Pripyat at 49,000 residents. When I look at the footprint of the city, though, it's smaller than my small midwestern town of 5,000 residents.