I understand that the permanent members of the UN Security Council are the "winners" of World War II; each contributed massively to the war effort. But even before WWII ended, the truce which halted the Chinese Civil War (so efforts could be focused against Japan) had largely fallen apart and the country was once again at war. This fighting would continue until 1949, when the Nationalist forces were forced to flee to Formosa and the Communists took power in the mainland. This concluded almost 40 years of conflict.

So why did France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States allow a country dealing with such dramatic internal turmoil join the Security Council? Were both the Western powers and the Soviet Union confident that "their guy" would emerge victorious and therefore banked on ending up with an additional ally on the council? (I know the Soviet Union would later boycott the Security Council based on other countries' refusal to recognize the PRC.) Did China's addition face any resistance from other future memebers of the Council?

A sub question (which perhaps deserves a separate post) to this: Were any other countries considered for Security Council inclusion?

So I'm thinking either they solely used mercenaries and just had a Carthaginian general and his retinue or the army was just mostly/largely mercenaries and there were some actual Carthaginian forces.

I would assume the navy is Carthaginian since because they controlled (most of) the Mediterranean, they would need well- trained salors, not rely on mercenaries (at least not for the bulk of the navy).

Where can i find factual history of the dark ages? Ive been very interested but have no idea where to even start looking. Thanks

Hello all, first, I just want to start out with, History is not my thing so this whole project I am working on is very hard for me. A little about me, I am a TV director in LA and I always thought I was the only Hollywood person in our family. That is until I found out about my Great-Great uncle (my Grandpa’s Uncle) was a man by the name of Bob Meltzer. My aunt started looking at everything she could find about this long lost relative and found out he has an award given away every year from the WGA in hollywood. Now I get intrigued.

This is what I know so far, but just found his daughter and am chatting tomorrow, will update.

He was born in 1914 in Oakland as 1 of 6. He then went to Berkeley college where he was the editor for the California Pelican, where he met Ted Key (creator of Peabody) and met his girl friend, Dorothy Commingore (Rosebud in Citizen Cane). After he graduated he went to Monterey/Carmel with Dorothy where at Ed Rickets Lab he met John Steinbeck. Him and Dorothy then were found by Charlie Chaplin and where convinced to move to LA where he became an assistant director for Charlie Chaplin on “the Great Dictator”. He actually was fired from the set when he said Charlie should not have done the final speech at the end of the movie.

While he was still dating Dorothy he was able to meet Orson Wells on the set of Citizen Cane and they became great friends. Bob went to Brazil to create an Orson Wells Documentary “It’s All True”. He then enlisted in the war as a 2nd Battalion Ranger and 26 days after D-day he is sent on a mission by Reeves Cullers and is gunned down by a machine gun. He was 30 years old. 6 years after this he was Blacklisted by Hollywood for being a communist.

Trying to find more information about him. Thanks.

In a lot of films, it is depicted that pioneers settling the American west (and other places in America) would start building using fresh cut logs. I know that wood needs to be seasoned and treated before being used for building otherwise it will rot away in a short time. I know that some forms of wood do not rot, like cedar. How would the early settlers deal with this issue?

Hello!

I know Descartes was a devout catholic and hated causing controversies so he substantially watered down the core message that could cause problems. I also know that this anonymity didn't last very long although he faced no consequences. I was wondering if the Church's sentiment on non-scholastic philosophy, emerging science and physics, and overall progressive ideas was also shared throughout the population. Obviously, a regular Joe in the 17th century couldn't have possibly read or understood Descartes' Discourse on the Method anyway, for material, financial and intellectual reasons - what about the more educated part of the population?

Stuff like grand wizard, grand dragon and imperial wizard makes it sound like a 4th grade dnd group whats the deal with the weird names

The Mongol Empire is famous for adopting and adapting technology from each region and culture they conquered so that they could better conquer more places and use their technology to conquer more places to get new technology to conquer more places...

When the Empire pushed against a new foe, how did they respond to the new technology the Mongols brought? Were some areas quicker to copy the new weapons arriving on their border? If so, did that make a significant difference in how well they held out? And how does a pre-modern society go about copying technology from an invading army? What kind of scholars and engineers were responsible? Was espionage a part of this process? Finally, what technologies the Mongols brought had the biggest effect on the overall technological development of the conquered territories?

Responses from anywhere in the Empire's path are welcome!

I was listening to the song last night by the band Tiger Lilies and it says at one point:

The socialists, the communist, the capitalist, they all agree that you don't exist

about the roma and I found myself wondering if this is true. Were the roma treated any different under communism than they are today or earlier? Was their marginalisation less and their integration any better? Had their living conditions improved? Their literacy rates affected? In a few words how was their situation affected?

I'm talking about both the countries were there are few roma as well as the ones where's there's a large population like bulgaria, romania and former yugoslavia.

Did the German populace know about the Holocaust? When/how did they find out about it?

The proliferation of nuclear weapons and the nuclear arms race has always fascinated me at a macabre level. What blows my mind is that politically, there were all these “rules” that were created to determine the potential end of the world. At some point the rule book was written, mutually assured destruction was a deterrent but it’s just so bizarre that these things were decided upon. At first it was bombers, then missile silos and submarines all at the ready to unleash a world ending strike. But how did we get to that point? How did the world leaders get to the point where nuclear strike was a option that was, at least logically at some level, “reasonable”? Big ticket incidents like the Cuban Missile Crisis are somewhat easy to understand, but what about Stanislav Petrov preventing a full scale war? Out of seeming nowhere the Soviets thought the US launched missiles and that it would just happen that particular day with no significant reason why, just that one day the US thought “well boys today is the day let’s go ahead and launch” and that seemed reasonable to the Soviets...it is just so unbelievable that this thinking was more or less normalized. So my long winded explanation done, is there a book, or multiple books, that investigates that concept? I’m not sure Command and Control delves into that aspect, I have a copy of that book but haven’t read it yet. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated, thank you!

Countries like Mexico, Cuba, and Brazil joined the war shortly after the United States did. Did they contribute a lot the allied cause or was their declaration of war more symbolic?

I'll explain: I recently read the physician by Noah Gordon where the main protagonist, Rob J. Cole, an Englishman from the 960s, travels to Persia to learn more about medicine and eventually ends up setting shop in the Scottish Highlands with his Scottish wife and her family.

Now when I finished the book, I realised that I had read somewhere that there are some families in the UK and that the Cole family is one of them. However, I don't know where I've heard that, and I wanted to know if such is true.

Thanks!