The assumption of a no first use nuclear strategy during the cold war, with the caveat that NATO would use nuclear weapons in WW3 in order to scare soviet planners into leaving the west alone, seems to have arisen after the 1950s. However, nuclear escalation was present as a strategy by policy planners in the US during the Korean war and calmer heads prevailed. Did the fear of either side pushing their luck prevent open conflict with the west from China and to a lesser extant the Soviet Union after this conflict?

I know that a lot of the time, minorities couldn't afford to fly, so segregation wasn't that big of a problem. But those who could fly, how did it work? Was there a separate section in the plane and airport? If they were separated, how did it work on International flights, where racial segregation wasn't inplace in one of the countries?

I don’t have much knowledge on medieval war but when I see movies or re-enactment shows, many of the soldiers are dressed in peasant clothes with no clear identifying uniforms or colors being worn. Is this accurate? Did the common foot soldier not wear a uniform and if so, how could they tell who the enemy was if there were hundreds or thousands of people in close quarters combat on the battlefield?

Is it generally seen as good revisionist scholarship?

Has his argument effected the how we understand the British blockade?

Is the book worth reading?

Why did everyone used to wear hats?? I’m watching a video about events in the late 1800’s, there was a huge crowd shot and EVERY man had the same hat on. Must have been thousands of people.

Why did everyone wear hats? When did it stop? What were some things you could tell about a person by their hat choice?

It's a quote from a movie 'Jarhead': 'We expect as many as 30'000 casualties the first day'. Was that really the case or just 'inspiring' pep-talk from the sergeant?

I’m watching a movie about ancient Egypt and one of the characters says I can read and write ancient Egyptian, which begs the question for me, how do we know pronunciation for any ancient/dead languages? Seeing as we had to use the Rosetta Stone to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics how would it be possible to figure out what the hieroglyphs themselves sounded like or are we just kind of guessing?

Specifically thinking about the UK in the early 19th C and the years before Sir Robert Peel established the "first police force"?

It seems they all prefer the napoleonic uniforms. Why is this the preferred military dress? Like why not from another time period? When was this decided?

I’m a US citizen living in Denmark and during a walk today a group of soldiers in dark blue traditional dress matched past me and got me wondering.

Thanks.

I've been on off looking for that info for a while and been unsuccessful, so hopefully someone here knows how far the landing craft had to travel from their launch ships to the beaches and the time it took to reach them. Movies and video games always make it seem like a very fast affair, like max 90 seconds but that seems unrealistic, so hopefully someone here knows this

The Confederados fled to Brazil, invited by the Brazilian emperor who had v supported the south during the war. He offered them tax breaks and quick citizenship. Some numbers go as high as 20 000 ex-confederates arriving in Brazil from 1865 to to 1885, although it is unsure how many people went back to the states again.

But it did make me wonder, since the major reason for the war was slavery - do we know if any of these ex-confederates brought their supposed-to-be-free-by-now slaves? Do we know anything at all about what happened to them?

I understand the concept of a state was not fully developed during this period, but how did Rome hold itself together?

From my naive point of view it seems that wealthy individuals were often able to raise armies and initiate civil war. Were Roman soldiers just more loyal to the men who paid them? Also was there any wide spread effort to ensure loyalty to Rome through propaganda?

My question is very simple.

Did Scandinavians, the descendants of vikings, simply forget there was a weird "race" of people living in Greenland? What about Icelanders? Did they know about the Inuit in Greenland? Why did this not lead them to realize there was a whole other continent of peoples?

The question pretty much says it all. The American history i was taught (I'm American, by the way), teaches exclusively the former, but it seems unlikely that there weren't at least a couple other reasons that played a role to some degree.

I just read Peter Green's book about Alexander and in that book he says that Alexander crossed the granicus river in the middle of the night with the fires still lit at the camp. He did that according to Green so that the persiens didn't notice the crossing. So according to Green Alexander crossed the river at night and than fought the battle on flat terrain against the Persians. However almost all other sources like wikipedia says that Alexander charged them head on and attacking them while crossing the river.

My question is which one is correct. Green's battle seem a lot more like something Alexander would do. He was considered to be the best commander who ever lived by a lot of famous commanders like Napoleon, Caesar, Hannibal etc. Which make me think that green's version is a lot more accurate for a commander with that reputation. Which one is correct? What do the original sources about the battle say?

In both world wars who had the biggest guns on a ship was insanely important, it was a race to make the biggest battleship with the most, biggest guns,

Nowadays basically no navy has battleships in active service, what happened that made everyone ditch the idea of big gun on big ship = good?

I've been reading the book The Exploration of Space by Arthur C. Clarke and as he was talking about types of fuels, he mentioned atomic powered rockets. And now I'm wondering why we don't have atomic rockets and other transportation? Is it impossible to scale down a nuclear reactor to a usable size? Was there too much stigma against atomic power after events like 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl? I'd be curious to know. Thanks all.

The planes didn't have on board radar to confuse. The planes could collide with the baloons or their tethers (but either seems rather unlikely), so what exactlly was their role? As they can't have been cheap to make and maintain. So they must have had a significant role that I cannot see.

Asking after watching the BBC documentary series - Blitz: The Bombs that Changed Britain.

Facinating series, single bombs (among the thousands and thousands dropped) had a massive impact on Britain, well beyound the local damage - changes to social support / welfare etc. that can be tracked back to the influence resulting from a single bomb.