The importance of interceptors to counter Soviet bombers in the event of WWIII was clear to all, however pilots were finding themselves at times unable to shoot down their foes with missiles that had poor performance. There was a point when they didn't even have a gun for a close engagement! Furthermore aircraft more suited to dogfights like the F-8 were put aside in favour of planes as the F-4. Why was there such a disconnect between the central command and the pilots in the field?

EDIT: This question also stands for all other air forces at the time which had the same focus. For example, the Mirage III was not designed at all to combat other fighters.

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G'day my g's, I've been trying to find some info on my dad for a while but i never know where to look, he fought against Nelson Mandela during the apartheid. (pretty sure he was conscripted) he was shot but survived and got to leave early. I was just trying to find photos or documents of him from the South African army. Anyone got an idea of where i can start looking?

I just read Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom. Stephen Platt does an amazing job explaining the Taiping Rebellion, but deals with the long-term social and cultural effects of the carnage fairly briefly. For a war that killed an estimated 20 million to 70 million people, I would be surprised if it didn't leave a tremendous, lasting scar on Chinese culture and society. Was any great literature composed as a result? Were the people of the affected provinces less loyal to the dynasty as a result of the suppression, or less resistant because they had the fight beaten out of them? Did it make them wary of religious cult leaders/Christians? Did it lead to a shift in economic production away from the devastated areas, and mass internal migration? How has it been treated in Chinese education and cultural memory?

I was doing research on french cities specifically, but if you can share anything at all about what it might have been like right after the war that would be great.

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I was amazed to learn that during the Civil war it was the democrats who supported slavery and white supremacy and after it - segregation laws, with their followers forming lynch mobs. How did such a radical turnover happened?!

Edit: It also helps that yopu have a birds eye view over the battlefield, which you don't in real life.

I got into a discussion about the aesthetics of the male vs female body -- hypothetically in a vacuum and without sexual attraction playing too much of a role -- and i started to think about historical artistic depictions and the involved subjects. the greeks idealized the male body with perfect proportions as one example. what are others? which sex has dominated the scene across cultures, or is more context needed?

Hey, fellow history nerds!

After reading quite a few pieces on the Norse colony (Vinland) in what is now Canada, I was left wondering why the colony itself was abandoned.

I guess the harsh climate and the scarsity of resources had something to do with it.

Furthermore, when they decided to abandon it, why didn't the Norse sail southward to find better living conditions? Why did they return to Greenland? And when they did, why didn't they spread the word of the New World?

Most flags from the region have red, white, black and green in some combination. African and Asian flags are fairly diverse, why do Arab flags share the same colours even though they were degsined in different years?

Why did Bulgaria join the Central Powers? Did they have any qualms about joining their mortal enemy, the Ottoman Empire?

Why did Romania join the Entente, especially considering they were surrounded by the Central Powers?

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