This is for pure curiosity. But the Dresden Bombing seems like in todays law of not aiming civilian structures (font: ICRC Site). Soo if Dresden vialotes one of the war laws shouldnt it be considered a war crime nowadays? Thank you :)

I was casually browsing wikipedia the other day and I came across a page called "Kingdom of Germany", and by the looks of it the Kingdom of Germany is an actual nation. However, that page did make note that the Kingdom of Germany was inside the Holy Roman Empire, so this is where it gets confusing for me personally. The Holy Roman Empire (was considered) as a nation right? But the Kingdom of Germany is also a nation, which nation did the people live there identify with? In other words, did the concept of a unified Germany already exist in that time? (800s) Or is the Kingdom of Germany just another way of saying Holy Roman Empire and in reality they are the same thing?

In my book, there's this town in the Unorganized Territory above Texas. It has a sheriff. The MC (main character) has a bounty with him (really, they're just a captive/budding friend, but the MC lies and says they're a bounty). Now, this captive escapes, and steals a horse. The sheriff catches him and initiates a hanging immediately. The MC protests, saying that they can't just hang his bounty. Also, if they could do that, they'd need a judge.

Now, the sheriff's response to this will be that there is no law around here but him. That there is no overarching legal system demanding judges and whatnot. The only law is what the sheriff thinks, which is mostly derived from the larger U.S. law. Is this a realistic depiction? Was it really that lawless in the Unorganized Territory in the U.S.?

I was conflicted as to wether i should post this in this sub or r/books, but I hope that this question can be answered here. I just picked up a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy, but I’ve heard it is a satire and contains a lot of references to culture/politics at the time. I’m not familiar with what sort of references these would be, I would greatly appreciate if someone could give me some context in order to thoroughly enjoy this work!

Like other areas after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Italy came under the control of German tribes that soon set up their own kingdoms. What caused Italy to fragment politically? Why were city state republics set up there and not in other countries?

The current queen is Queen Elizabeth II, but there were other queens named Elizabeth other than Elizabeth I (Elizabeth of York, Elizabeth Woodville). So why is she only the second?

First post here, so I’m sorry if this isn’t the right place to ask

I was just came across a few of each and noticed how they still use the second person singular "thou" along with the verb conjugations.

For example:

19 And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

When English might have been spoken this way, we didn't even decide on how each word should be spelled either. So it's like they're using modern spellings with pre- and early-modern grammar.

As a side note: I believe works by Shakespeare are admissable in using older grammar because the original Shakespeare plays were written using this sort of English. The Bible, on the other hand, is being translated from Greek.

So I come from a small village called Öje in Dalecarlia, Sweden and I own this book called "Stories from Malung in local dialect and people from Öje with nicknames: Stories from the past about and in an old language" that deals with local history and local dialects, and on one page dealing with the history of my town it says:

"Stories concerning the medieval cross stored in Öje's chapel and the fact that the area was only Christianised sometime during the 1300s (?), indicates the area was already inhabited during the early medieval period."

I know Sweden was late to be Christianised but in an area close to Christian Norway, with strong language-ties and trade, and nominally inside the at the time most exploited mineral-rich part of Sweden, how would paganism, if it actually did, be able to survive into the 1300s? The book says the cross mentioned here replaced an earlier pagan idol that once stood where the modern chapel stands today, would a (originally) medieval church really have been built atop a pagan place of worship?

I’ve often heard that Japan’s objective in WW2 was securing resources by conquering Asian lands and setting up and their own colonial empire. Why did they feel it was necessary to declare war on America, of which several top Japanese military officials knew had an enormous industrial capacity, in 1941? Why not just attack the Western European countries colonies and colonial allies? If they believed the US would come to their defence, why would they think that considering Germany had been at war with the same western powers since 1939? Did they really think that the isolationist American people would go to war for European colonies?

Edit: Grammar

I just finished watching Waco on Netflix and I was wondering what happened to the ATF after the Waco Siege? I can’t find anything on Wikipedia, so I thought I’d ask here.

When the American civil war started in 1861, was there some sort of declaration or nation-wide announcement that would let everyone know the country was in the midst of a civil war? If not, would normal citizens have even known what was going on?

Along those same lines, is it possible we are already in what future historians will call a civil war? We've already had the battle of Portland, the battle of Kenosha, the battle of Minneapolis, etc. Everyone keeps saying we're "on the brink" of a civil war, but is it possible the civil war has already started but we just can't see it because we're in it?

I was doing my genealogy recently because of boredom and I was able to "trace" my ancestors to the 1200s in England using church parish documents on one of the many genealogy websites. How reliable are the records from churches in medieval England in presenting at least some history of common folk during that era and getting an understanding of their lives? Or at least their birth, marriage, and death.

From what I understand, hard delineations for archaeological eras (Bronze Age, Iron Age, Middle Ages) really only applies in specific circumstances. For instance, the Near East transitioned from Bronze Age to Iron Age around 1200 BC, but other cultures didn't even start the Bronze Age until much later, if at all. The Aboriginal Australians or Native Americans were still technically considered "Neolithic" well into the modern era, at least to the late 19th century AD.

But when it comes to the delineation between "Paleolithic" and Neolithic, the division seems to be much more harsh. In a single era, from roughly 12,000-8,000 BC, every single Paleolithic culture on earth seems to have totally disappeared without a remnant, and were entirely replaced with Neolithic culture. In fact, I find history or anthropology textbooks have a tendency to describe the Paleolithic era as a single block, without any differentiation between one part of the world or another.

So my question is this: Is there any Paleolithic culture that lasted long enough to be contemporary with historical records (post 3500 BC), or did they indeed all die out in a single period? What was the last region to hold a remnant of Paleolithic culture before becoming Neolithic? And finally, what caused the transition between these two eras to be so much more straight forward than other Archaeological periods, such as Neolithic cultures that lasted well into the Industrial Age?

The battle of Britain was a huge arial conflict but I can’t imagine what happened to Axis pilots who crashed over Britain, specifically cities like London. I mean, British pilots crash down, ask where the nearest air base was and get on their way, but when Hans landed in someone’s back yard, what was the common reaction? Did they face attacks from the citizenry? How were they tracked down and captured? Where they even captured?