Note: Not a gun/politics argument.

When did the US move away from militias (e.g. “hey there’s some trouble; everyone get your guns and meet over here!”) and more towards police/national guard/etc?

Watching the Ukraine conflict got me thinking, as there are pockets of civilians taking up arms and defending small towns/villages.

It seems like the US generally lacks the close-knit communities necessary to make this work.

I just remembered that in the TV show Band Of Brother, in the episode 2 there is a group of German POW and one of them says to be from Oregon and came back to the « Fatherland » to complete his duty as his family wanted him to do.

So i was genuinely asking myself how many of those German Americans went back to fight for the Nazis, if any of you do have an answer (maybe numbers etc) I would be really interested in it!

Thanks a lot.

I know this question might sound terribly racist, but i swear it's out of pure curiosity, after the abolition of slavery in the USA, why weren't they sent back ? African americans were extremely prejudiced against and unwanted by the european white majority of the american population at the time i suppose, if they were so hated, why didn't the USA didn't just send them back ?

Sorry for any spelling mistakes as i'm not a native english speaker, and thank you in advance for the answers !

As I said, a little confused about all these groups of people called Celts in different places. Any insight appreciated!

I read the other day how 2 thirds of American evangelicals don't believe in original sin, and a half don't believe in Jesus' divinity. This was used to support an argument that American evangelicalism isn't a set of religious beliefs, but a culture.

This got me thinking – this surely applies much more widely! I'd argue that actually a large majority of religious laypeople don't actually know what they believe. So how does this compare with years gone by?

I'm thinking about the 1300's – before the reformation, before bibles in native languages were used, how much did people actually know about their beliefs? Could a French serf take a break from his ploughing and explain to you the doctrine of original sin?

Basically the whole question. Right now I work on the specific novel idea, and I need some reference events, when government/state/police was accused in some crimes (by citizens or media), but it turned out that those accusations were false. Google can't help me with that.

Thank you

There was a strange “myth” that I kept running into that can be summarized as:

“If 2 nations go to war, Northland wins because they live in colder climates, and thus forced to develop better tech than Southland.”

First my high school history teacher explicitly told me this. Then my mother said that after we talked about visiting Gettysburg and The Civil War popped up. Then my AP Human Geography teacher mentioned this as to why Europe conquered everywhere. I even sometimes see it in YouTube comments as well.

Granted, both those teachers knew f*ck all about war, and my mom later realized that myth was wrong, but where did this notion come from? I couldn’t find anything.

I'm reading A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW right now and there is a scene near the end of the book when the narrator describes---confusingly, to me---a moment in which Admiral Lord Nelson raises his telescope to his "dead eye" in such a way that it signals . . . a refusal to surrender? And that it somehow enabled the British to keep fighting until the Danes "negotiated a truce."

Maybe I'm dense but I don't understand at all what the author is saying or alluding to regarding the telescope and how it is involved in the willingness of the Brits to keep fighting nor how it (I think?) countered a British commander's willingness to surrender?

Can someone help me understand what transpired there?

What possible gestural power can holding a telescope to a dead eye have? How did it influence the disposition of that engagement?

Since, this week's theme includes The Sea, I am interested in learning about the business finances of expeditions during the Age of Sail and Discovery. Lets take the voyage of Columbus as an example to illustrate the context.

My questions are:

• How much did Columbus's voyage cost?

• Why was it so expensive even for a country? This doesn't seem right. Even a small neighborhood today can finance such a voyage and we are talking about an entire nation/country. Back then the monarch's built large public works and had large armies. A voyage with a few wooden ships, sailors and food doesn't look like that costly.

I read she could do neither, how is this possible for someone so pro Manchu racial privilege?

I was listening to a podcast where they played a real recording from an Avro Lancaster during a night raid over Berlin in 1943, iirc, and one of the crew mentioned seeing the flash from a 4000lb bomb. Did the RAF not use the metric system at that time or is there another reason?

I’ve been assigned a School Project on Caesar’s 4 Triumphs and I am very curious where to find more knowledge about them. I’ve been listening to some podcasts, reading some books, and watching plenty of videos. I’d just like to know where to learn more, it’s a topic which intrigues me greatly.

In Greek statues in particular, otherwise perfectly accurate anatomically , this is a weird convention. Painted pottery is more stylized, but also has the same micro penises. Was this considered attractive, or why was it?

In a conversation about WW2+ Soviet commissars shooting conscripts that didn't attack. Someone whatabouted about the WW1 Allies having "Trench Wardens" in their own trenches to shoot troops that didn't leave them.

I googled WW1 "Trench Wardens" and found nothing, so not sure if a mythic role or a mistranslation?
Also what happened to WW1 troops that didn't leave their trench in an attack?

In particular the cooperative movement and peace movement used rainbow flags that would’ve been present in the US before 1978.

The International Co-operative Alliance flag 1921. The Pace/Peace flag 1961. The flag of Cusco 1973. Additionally rainbows were present in other early flags.

Hi, I'm working on a project and I am relatively new to finding and using contemporary sources, especially in this era. I was hoping someone might be able to guide me in the right direction for finding these kinds of sources. Currently, I'm specifically looking for any sources that could give me an idea of the economic state of London during King Athelstan's rule. I don't know if such documents would even be available, but if they are I am having a difficult time finding them.

Couldn’t we have just told Japanese diplomats what are had, nuked a rural area close to Tokyo to prove it and just show how destructive the weapons were?

Japanese is known to use Chinese characters. While Japanese is obviously its own language system, the letters were adopted from Chinese and remixed for their own purposes.

Korea, by comparison, originally used a similar system (adopting Chinese characters) but they later developed their own writing system called Hangul which superseded the old system.

Obviously, had Hangul not been popular, there is likely a scenario where Korean would look different than presented today.

My question is simple. Did anyone in Japan historically ever try to develop a Japanese created alphabet which was independent from Chinese influence? Did such an alphabet ever exist and simply not succeed like Hangul or was it simply never considered an issue that required adopting a new system?

In spring of 1552. begun a civil war between Oda Nobunaga and Oda of Kiyosu in Owari, so in 1554, the Imagawa clan came to the west and built the Muraki Castle in the southeast of Owari, besieging one of the Nobunaga's vassals, Mizuno Nobumoto (uncle of Tokugawa Ieyasu), in his castle of Ogawa, while another one was persuaded to surrender the castle of Terumoto, so that Ogawa was cut off from the rest of the Nobunaga's territory.

The, date of the battle, however, is said to have happened in late January. Did they build an entire castle in just a month?

I seem to remember a (probably mythological) story of Toyotomi Hideyoshi building a castle in a single night. While that probably didn't happen, he still built that castle pretty fast didn't he? How quickly could one build a castle at this time? And was it a big investment for the Imagawa or were they closer to forts?