We’ve all heard about how the origins in tanks are in WWI. Mark 1, A7V, Little Willie, the infamous tsar stank, etc. these tanks are infamous as the first.

However, recently I’ve become interested in tanks before WWI. Did any exist? Even just blueprints, prototypes, concepts. Did anything like that exist before WWI? Any tanks made before WWI?

If there were concepts, blueprints, prototypes, why weren’t they rethought? Why weren’t they expanded on? Why weren’t they built? Why have they been forgotten from history?

Not sure how to ask this question without sounding overtly political, but I'm looking for a book that details the rise of neoliberalism in the US and the ascendancy of corporate power in US politics. Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy comes close, but from reading book reviews it sounds like the author slips more into advocacy than detailing history, and I'm looking more for the latter.

(I don't think this necessarily violates the rules of this sub since it's not just about current politics, but apologies in advance if it does. Thanks.)

I heard from a video by Voices of the Past about Ibn Fadlan seeing the Rus who apparently engaged in orgies quite alot.

Did the Norse do this as well?

I'm kinda curious if Christian Warriors ever took advantage of Rus or Norse doing this and managed to ambush them because their too busy getting busy.

I’ve always wondered this. It just seams so strange to me that he would cross the channel and risk losing his entire army on the sea. And even if he did cross the channel, he’s still in enemy territory on an island and cutoff from reinforcements. I mean did he really just hope that he would win the war on the first battle?

I have had interest for roman history for about two years now. All since I started reading about the romans, one question always remained in my head though; Where is the archeological evidence? Btw, I'm not some nutter who thinks it never existed or something like that. I simply find it strange that we only have some few scattered finds from different locations around Europe. We see The Lorica Hamata and Lorica Segmentata in numerous reliefs, we also know the roman army was HUGE for large periods of time, and a lot of times in history these armour types were quite standarised? Same thing also goes for helmets etc.

noting that ROC was semi-autocratic in the 80s, but actively democratising, whereas PRC has gone full autocratic after Tiananmen massacre - were there voices within UK to consider returning HK to an arguably legitimate and better pair of hands?

Salt is very important to us now, but it might be easy to forget that it may not have always been so cheap and available. Does salt have a dark history the way, let's say, some spices do?

I'm reading about Omar Khayaam, a famous poet from modern day Iran. According to Wikipedia, he "was born in 1048 in Nishapur, a leading metropolis in Khorasan", which is located in the northeast of Iran. And I read that his dad converted from Zoroastrianism to Islam and it seems like Omar was most likely Muslim as well (or at least he had to pretend to be one according to Wikipedia article about him). What confuses me is that he wrote a lot of poems about drinking wine and I wonder if he literally meant wine or maybe it's a metaphor for something else because as far as I know drinking is prohibited by Islam. Just to help my understanding, I wanted to find out what were the drinking laws in that area in the second part of 11th century. If you can point me out to some articles, that would be great as well, as I'm not very familiar with the history of this region.

Hello everyone,

Sorry if this isn't the right place for this. I have tried googling extensively but the answers for my questions aren't really appearing. What I'd like to know is:

Did Cinema Theatres exist in London in the 40s? Did they exist after the devastating WWII? If they didn't how soon afterwards were they built?

If they did: What were the bestselling films right after WWII? How much was one ticket? Did people buy snacks or is popcorn and soda...etc something that happened in later decades? Are there photos of said film theatres?

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Thanks.

Justinian’s attempts at restoring the Roman Empire left the empire at its greatest territorial extent but also consequently in debt, overstretched and vulnerable. Did this contribute to the Romans losing Egypt and Syria a century later?

During the third crusade it was determined that if Jerusalem was retaken it would be lost again shortly. In 1229 it was regained through negotiation but fell again 15 years later. But the Crusaders were able to hold other parts of the holy land. If they could hold Acre for 100 years straight why couldn't they hold Jerusalem?

Im watching a documentary about WWII and it mentions that when the 2 separated fighting forces of germans finally surrendered in Stalingrad, that 2/3 of the fighting force had died due to starvation or fighting.

Of the 91,000 soilders that were captured and held prisoner, it was estimated that only 5000 returned post war. It was quite a vague gloss over then they moved on. It was mentioned that a German newspaper ran the headline "they died so that Germany could live"

My question is, what happened to the other 86,000 pow's ? Did the Russians do them in, did they freeze to death or starve, or did the germans execute a majority of the captured as punishment for breaking hitlers ordersand surrendering? Could it gave been to cover up the loss so as to not lose face in front of the German citizens?

Thanks

So, Northern Italy and Southern Italy history diverged a lot since the destruction of the Lombard Kingdom. They were politically split since IX century to XIX century, more than a thousand years. Still, culturally, they didn't diverged a lot. While they have some minor differences, it's not the ones you expect in a place with that cultural influences. In the north, they were conquered by french, german and spanish mainly, in the south you have arab, greek, norman, spanish (both aragonese and castilian), german and french rules. Also, for long periods, they remained as free minor states. And, after all of that, they were all considered italians. You have examples of countries that started with some culture but split, like the slavs on the former Yugoslavia who at the VIII century were all just slavs. But that didn't happened in Italy.

So, how did the Italian culture not split between south and north, despite the culturally diverse conquerors and being split politically for more than 1000 years?

I am learning a lot about the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, and a key point that Slobodan Milosevic brought up in the buildup to the large conflicts was that he wanted to unite Serbs into a single Serb state. He was concerned about all the states of Yugoslavia seceding because there were Serb pockets that would become minorities, and was worried they would become persecuted. And apart from small areas like Slovenia, all of the big Yugoslav states had notable minority Serb populations while other states did not have large pockets of their own ethnic enclaves to the degree Serbs did.

Why was it that Serbs had such a predominate diaspora among the Yugoslav states, rather than Croats, Bosniaks, Albanians, etc? And further, how did these enclaves survive so much strife over many generations that they could survive into the creation of Yugoslavia?

I watched a Documentary which claimed that early Inquisition practices were the first time people were given a legal process such as their own lawyer, the ability to ask questions and to call witnesses and to cross-examine those witnesses.

My specific question is:

Was this credit given for Firstsies, or did the Inquisition actually, directly lead to the development of the modern Justice System(s)?? If so, how?

Thanks

I am currently majoring in computer science but it turns out math and I do not get along and I can not see myself doing this for the rest of my life. Something that has interested me my whole life is history. Some of the topics that interest me the most are colonization of america, the revolutionary war, the cold war, ww1 & 2, the great depression and many other things. I am wondering if majoring in history is worth it if I want to become a history professor one day?