When I think of warfare in Feudal Japan prior to the introduction of firearms, I think of Samurai charging into battle with their swords drawn. Is that accurate though? I imagine that sword-to-sword combat would be a little less common, and that cavalry with spears would have been more popular. Also, where would the archers have been placed? Would these battles have been similar to medieval European warfare? Finally, did Samurai really clash the way they are depicted in movies? Fast kills with the katana, swords clashing, etc?

Edit: I forgot to ask if Samurai would have been somewhat of a rarity in these battles. From what I recall of European warfare, not everyone who fought in battles were knights. I imagine this would be the case with Samurai, too. Would peasants and regular foot soldiers have joined in the battles?

I just finished watching Greyhound, the new movie with Tom Hanks. The German u-boats sent antagonistic messages twice essentially telling the Americans that they were going to die. Did this happen? Or was this just added drama for the movie?

Pretty much the title. I’ve heard both positions argued and I’m sure there’s more nuance, but generally speaking, which is most correct?

My grandfather served as Pharmacists Mate, 2nd Class, US Navy during WWII. The family story is that his entire high school class went to the Navy office together in 1942 (or '43, I can't remember) and enlisted upon graduating to enlist before they were drafted and told where to serve. He eventually wound up in Boston and was allegedly attached to a group of Marines to be deployed to Europe. His mother became very sick and he was issued a leave to attend to the farm. When he returned his group had deployed, at which point he remained in Boston. The family story continues that he was considered for the Pacific but instead remained in Boston, where he met Grandma, then was released after the war and returned home having never been deployed.

Is that a possibility? Any glaring holes in the story? Why would he have stayed in Boston without further assignment? Were there a lot of men that enlisted but never deployed in WWII or is that unusual? Any resources or additional information on where/what a western Tennessee man enlisted in the Navy would have gone/done is much appreciated. Thanks!

I would ask him for details but he was gone before I had the good sense to ask him about his life's story, which I will forever regret.

I have wondered for quite a while now, what the origins are of said man's racist beliefs.

He must have had quite the motivation, to see the mass slaughter of millions as the correct thing to do. Sure, you can call him a psychopath, sociopath or whatever, but to exterminate an entire race for no apparent reason doesn't seem like a calculated move.

If anyone could inform me on this, I would be very thankful.

Its surprising that there are so many islands in the Venetian lagoon that, after 1000 years, still lie untouched. Islands like Le Vignole, Certosa, Sant'Erasmo and many others, which have some development but nothing like the urbanization you'd expect.

So why is this the case?

To me its counter intuitive. For one, Historical Venice is full of narrow waterways and very crowded. As the Venetian population increased, I'd have expected the populace to seek out emptier islands to create a less chaotic living environment.

Secondly, I would've assumed that it was simply a given that richer Venetians would've built larger and larger Palazzi to show off their wealth, and this would've only been possible by building on the empty islands?

Thanks in advance for your answers!

I see a lot of people talk about this subject with a great deal of authority, but it’s often from outsider, non-academic sources. For example, the hip hop community treats it a known fact that the CIA flooded black communities with crack cocaine in the 80s. Yet, other people view these claims as highly conspiratorial, with little grounding in reality — if the claims are even addressed to begin with. Worst of all, most attempts at truth-seeking quickly devolve into political mudslinging

I would just like to know, from an objective, apolitical, and scholarly perspective, what is the connection (if any) between the CIA and the crack epidemic. Is it akin to saying “Bush did 9/11”? Or is it every bit as bad as some people have been claiming for years?

I would love comprehensive books but books that cover not just their upbringing but their times in office

A lot of the great books only cover their life and not their decisions in office and political views, etc...

One of the most interesting topics for me is the evolution of languages/cultures. I know that there is no specific date for this but it would be really interesting to know when this transition began, whether it happened after the fall of Rome or even before that, as well as when it kind of "ended". How different was (Western) Rome in 476 BC from Rome during its height? When was their language more Italian than Latin? How did the culture develop, also in the provinces/ former Roman colonies? When would people in Italy not refer to themselves as Roman anymore (in case they ever did)? I know these are a lot of (sometimes vague) questions, but I hope you see where I'm going here, answers do not have to strictly relate to them!

If it was commonly accepted that the Earth was flat in the Middle Ages, why were orbs (as in the orb and scepter) round?

Did the any of the navies or army AA guns have “aces”? Or did no one keep track of how many planes someone shot down, just making it an Air Force/Army Air Force thing?

Thanks

So in the inferno our good old pal satan has three heads and each head is chewing on a different person. The first head is chewing on Judas because he betrayed jesus at the last meal. The other two are brutus and Cassius who were two of the 3 main people involved in killing Julius Caesar. But Decimus (a distant cousin to brutus) who was just as instrumental to the assassination is not being chewed by Satan and I'm trying to figure out why?

The main theme of that circle of hell was for basically Traitors and studying the history right up to the assassination, I would think that at least decimus's betrayal was worse than Cassius's betrayal. Decimus had been with Caesar in the conquest of Gaul and all the way through the insueing civil war. He was in Caesar's inner circle and the night before the assassination he invited him round to a meal. (it was a big deal that he did this just before he planned to murder him) Cassius had really no person relationship with Caesar and it showed because he was basically gonna be ignored in the upcoming campaigns that never came to happen.

Maybe it's because Decimus died pretty quickly afterwards in the insuring chaos or maybe it's the reason why is lost to us but Dante writing 1000 years after the events seemed to view Cassius's betrayal worse than Decimus's betrayal and I was wondering if anyone knew why? Because it's bugging me.

Like I understand why ppl would consider brutus to be traitor especially to the very Italian and number 1 fan boy of the romans dante, but why did he value Cassius betrayal more than Decimus's.

On another note, I've been flicking through a couple subreddits trying to get this post on the right one. I did read the rules of the subreddit. If I did break any of the rules, I didn't mean too and I apologise :)

I always thought that Poland had survived the plague, but now I see some people saying that it did not, and that it was just communist propaganda. So which one is it? Thanks in advance

I recently saw a comparison between the wealth distribution of the US in recent history, and France's 1760-1790.

The poster was trying to imply that revolution is likely in the US because it happened in France with a similar income inequality.

But I'm curious - is the vanishing of the middle class, or rather, the "difference between the middle class and lower class becomes harder to distinguish vs. the nobility" a common theme we can observe in other countries or empires? For example, do we see this causing issues in the Imperial Rome? Is it actually a major contributing factor to the French Revolution?

Sorry for the broad scope of the question, but that's why I'm asking; it's too complicated for me to figure out how to search for an answer besides asking experts.

Thinking about the luxury that is refrigeration, I was struck by the above question. Considering how quickly butter goes off, did our butter eating ancestors not know any butter other than partially rancid?

Really struggling with sorta the modern internet and the creeping holocaust denial and revisionism of the last century. I'm looking for stuff that talks about historical truth, epistemology, narrative. In what sense is historical knowledge really knowledge any more than it is belief or faith?

On Earth. Is it something close to a trillion?

I know he was convicted of “corrupting the youth”. Was this an actual written law, and what did it entail? If not how did the legal system bring about such a charge? Finally, in what way were the youth corrupted? Was there a movement among his followers to rearrange the government into the structure he described in The Republic, or a fear that such a movement would arise?