I’m interested in hearing the thought of people who had seen ice for the first time or what they knew about it if they lived where Ice would never occur naturally.

I was just reading about the Battle of Midway, and it sounds like Japan lost all 4 of the aircraft carriers deployed in the battle. What did the airborne carrier pilots do after the battle was over and there was nowhere for them to land? Did they attempt to land on damaged carriers, ditch near friendly ships, parachute out, land at Midway, kamikaze? They all sound like pretty bad options for a Japanese pilot.

I have always wondered how we are able to know that what we download in PDF's nowadays really contains the full version of ''Republic'', for instance. For if you google the images for whats left of the original pieces, they have 20 or so distinguishable words if you're lucky. Do we gather the writings from copies of copies, or from many artifacts? How accurate are these books? Are they just in the ''ballpark'' of what was truly written, generally?

I am reading a short paper entitled "Mr. Truman's Degree" by G.E.M. Anscombe. In the opening paragraphs the author claims that "in 1945, when the Japanese enemy was known by him to have made two attempts toward a negotiated peace...". This is clarified later in the paper. "In 1945, at the Postdam conference in July, Stalin informed the American and British statesmen that he had recieved two requests from the Japansese to act as a mediator with a view to ending the war. He had refused."

How serious were the Japanese at reaching some sort of negotiated peace with the allies at that time? (before the atomic bombings)

Additionally, in the opening paragraphs the author claims "No ultimatum was delivered before the second bomb was dropped."

Is this a factual statement?

Also is the article I'm reading regarded highly by ww2 historians or not? My friend showed it to me to prove that dropping the bombs was an evil deed and that there were other ways to end the war with less casualties. (I disagreed)

Thanks.

I'm trying to get an image of the time period, and I run into seemingly conflicting information about horses. They were for elites, but they were also the dominant form of power in England for farm work/canal towing/etc. Did farmers ever ride the horses that plowed their fields? Who knew how to ride horses?

Thinking mainly about Glasnost and Perestroika - were these a last-ditch effort to rescue a sinking ship, or were they causes of it?

As tensions have risen with regards Taiwan, we have heard increasingly more about the island’s history. It is a common remark in newspapers that the nationalists, the KMT, fled the mainland in 1949 and took over Taiwan. What is always lacking is an explanation of how they did this.

I would be very interested to know: (i) how did the KMT actually flee the mainland - was this a Dunkirk-style evacuation or more of a steady trickle; (ii) how they went about taking over the government in Taiwan - was this already nationalist; and (iii) how these mainland interlopers were received on Taiwan - was there resistance?

Hadrian’s Wall runs from Bowness-on-Solway in the west to Wallsend in the east. Bowness-on-Solway makes sense to me as a place to start the wall. Since the wall begins at a tidal basin there’s no way around it (besides using ships, but that’s just a downside of walls in general I guess).

But why end the wall at Wallsend? They left a five mile gap between the end of the wall and the coast, couldn’t an invading army just… walk around? The river Tyne is there which would serve as a natural barrier to advancing further south, but it still seems like a massive vulnerability to potentially allow an invading army to get behind you and flank your defenders as they head towards the bridge in what is now Newcastle.

What was the logic behind ending the wall at Wallsend? Was it ever an issue for the Romans?

I know in the US prior to the Civil rights movement, Jim Crow laws were enacted as a form of racial segregation between African Americans and Caucasians in public spaces such as restrooms, water fountains, restaurants, schools, public transport, etc.

In comparison was there an equivalent of Jim Crow imposed by both Britain and France on Muslims? How were people from Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, etc. at the time treated by their colonizers?

I watched a documentary about his theory, which was provocative, and included scientists saying how unlikely his theory was. But it didn't go into much detail that I can recall. Would someone be willing to take the time to elaborate?

Some of the earliest histories of Western civilization feature an idealized past that was better than whatever time the historian lived in, most famously Hesiod and perhaps arguably Jewish authors of the Tanakh, who pined for the mostly righteous kingdom of Judea of yore. Piled onto these traditions, we have the more tangible fall(s) of the Roman Empire, Western and Eastern. Hardly a European-civ state didn’t look back to Rome as a sadly-gone model to be emulated—and hopefully recreated. Consider Washington D.C. and how far-removed that is from its inspiration!

But what about China? Japan? Korea? Do any of these venerable civilizations have any similar cultural recollections of a formerly great civilization? If so, have they tried to emulate or recreate it?

Hi all, I am wanting to learn about the Bronze age and Iron age and have been reading up a bit.

Google tells me the bronze age began in 3300 BC and ended in 1200 BC and during this period humans traded and worked with bronze.

Google tells me the iron age later took over at 1200BC and lasted until 600BC (however there's a debate about it still occuring right now) and during this period humans began making tools and weapons with iron and steel.

So, what I was wondering is how different were they did people who lived in both the bronze age and iron age (like people who were alive as the bronze age ended) wake up and find new ways to craft tools and build a more advanced society? Or were the tools the only difference? I was just wondering how different life would be then.

I was recently reading an article talking about Turkish may be a dying language. While that article was not supported by much of anything besides a few dialects that are difficult to maintain anyways, it got me curious as to why Turkish is not as popular of a language around the world compared to other nations, native tongues with their empires.