TL;DR edit: Basically, was he a hustler who got lucky or did he actually know how to do stuff?

For instance, he could certainly teach me some dialects of Italian, Castilian, and Portuguese. He worked in his parents' cheese shop and his brother's cartography shop, so he might know something how to make those things (but maybe not). He was a business agent for some wealthy Genovese families, so presumably he he knew his way around some accounting or management techniques. I have to assume he knew how to ride a horse.

Could he teach me to sail, tie knots, or navigate by the stars? Did he know how to use a sword or musket? Could he cook, treat a wound, repair his boots, construct a shelter? His brother was captured by pirates—did Columbus know anything about naval combat? Or was he more of an entrepreneur who relied mainly on soft skills like salesmanship, and hired people to handle the technical stuff?

Apart from specific biographical details about Columbus himself, what was the typical skillset for someone in his general professional category at the time? How did this differ from the kinds of things that your average Joe in Genoa or Lisbon would be expected to know how to do to get around in day-to-day life?

I don't really understand what happened with Robespierre. He's basically all-powerful, condemning people to the guillotine and crushing all opposition. On 8 Thermidor he gave a speech announcing there were more traitors. Suddenly, the National Convention announces that Robespierre is, himself, a traitor, he's arrested and guillotined, and his policy of terror is outlawed. It seemed like he had their full support until he gave his speech on 8 Thermidor. What am I missing? What actually happened to make Robespierre fall so suddenly and dramatically? Was it really because of one speech, or was there something else happening behind the scenes?

Or was/is it just a catch-all that was used by Christians to mean “non-Christian?”

I have often heard mentions that units that need recovery are "rotated out" and placed in the rear or a more calm front (e.g. Danish front in WWI).

But how were units rotated out after having taken casualties? Were entire Divisions replaced with "fresh" Divisions? Or were it Companies or individual soldiers being rotated?

Happy for any insight and additional reading you can recommend, hope you have a nice Sunday ~

This is something I still don't really understand. I know all of the important historical facts, having read Heather and Goldsworthy: I know the Romans originally let the (later) Visigoths enter the Empire, that they didn't supply them properly, that the Goths at times also fought for the Empire, the disaster of Adrianople etc.

Yet despite that, I simply cannot understand why the Romans never managed to properly integrate the Goths into the Empire as they did with some tribes in the past, ie defeat them decisively militarily (if necessary) and disperse them in the Empire.

Even if we want to believe that the Romans didn't want to eliminate the Goths outright, as they required their manpower etc, I struggle to believe that the Romans WANTED the Goths, and that is the important part, to exist as an independent, cohesive military force under one or a few leaders within Roman territory. All evidence points towards Rome tolerating that due to lack of force, instead preferring eg to assimilate and disperse the Goths. There's lots of evidence for this and for the Roman weakness:

1. Adrianople was a big defeat. But why did the Romans not manage to defeat the Goths on the Balkans decisively for some 10-20 years afterwards? They only lost some 20.000 or so men. Supposedly (N.D.) the ERE had some 200.000 or so men. Even if we assume over half of these were guarding the East, there should've been sufficient troops, even if only 30.000 men,to defeat the Goths, especially over 10+ years. Yet suspiciously, there weren't. Why?

2. Stilicho, the supreme commander of the West in control of especially all troops in Italy, the strongest remaining force of the WRE, could never defeat Alaric outright. Why? This was pre 410, supposedly the WRE army should still be quite strong at this point.

I just wonder, right now the Western world is eliminating Russia from the global economy and culture as much as it can (natural gas and petrol being the main blocking factors). I imagine that even after the war in Ukraine ends, the sanctions will continue at least for some time.

Why does it seem like this was not the case for Germany after WW2? It just seems that the Western world went: "no biggie, dear [West] Germany, go ahead and have all of that nice Marshall Plan money to rebuild and become one of the strongest European economies, despite the fact that you just tried to annihilate the continent". What gives? Am I missing something here?

What exactly were the relations beetwen two countries in the interwar period? From my understanding they improved significantly after NSDAP came to power, they even signed a non-agression pact and Poland participated in partitioning of Czechoslovakia. Did Hitler really want Poland as an ally or was this some sort of deception?

how much of a surprise was it when the second international voted in favor of WW1 ? Did Lenin see it coming?

What does the historical record say about this? Was his previous burial site a well known location before the construction of the Green Dome? Was it built around his body or was he moved there? Are there any records or accounts from witnesses regarding this?

I am slowly working my way from my love of colonial and revolutionary American history and have at last arrived upon the civil war. I am sure I will get there in due time but it has been driving me crazy. The north was perfectly willing to codify slavery protections for the existing slave states but Lincoln’s opposition to expansion was a major driver of secession. Why? Why was it not enough for wealthy slaveholders to keep their slaves? I understand their fears that continued non-slave state expansion would weaken their power in congress, but if it slavery in their states was given stronger legal protection by congress, as congress had indicated it was willing to do, why was the lack of expansion a major cause for war?

So, I know that the Soviet Union was dissolved as a country in 1991, but I’ve always been pretty unclear on HOW exactly that dissolution happened and which means were used to actually split up the Soviet Union into/create the borders of all of the separate countries that exist in its place today.

I understand why Lutheranism took off in Germany with Martin Luther living there and the printing press and that stuff. But why did it take off in Scandinavia? Why didn’t Scandinavia stay Catholic like Poland and France which also adjoined Germany? Why didn’t it become Orthodox like the Slavs or a route like England and create something similar to Anglicanism? Was it related to power and prestige as it relates to the Protestant German states?

I'm particularly asking myself this question about slave owners in the US with their plantations, but it's my understanding they were, through things like depending on black people for labor, somewhat trying to emulate Spanish sugar cane plantations and things like that.

How accurate could it be said that they were full up of ideas and attitudes from stories of classical antiquity from their education? Didn't they still have to learn Latin and things like that? Did they simply think, like, "patricians" were necessary for society, because that's just how it worked in Rome and obviously Rome kicked ass, or... ? Like, it's my understanding some of the founding fathers thought only people who were educated enough to understand stories about politics from Rome should be able to vote. Were these more abstract arguments or did they very much talk about concrete specifics of how they'd literally bring that into effect?

Hopefully it's clear what I'm asking. To clarify, for example, I really like the The Matrix trilogy, but to me it's very much more abstract; I'm not trying to study, like, martial arts or firearms or whatever--it's just generally about the kinds of decisions the main character makes and why. Was Rome kind of in a "pretend" part of their brains or how much did they specifically think they had to bring it into reality?

For example, were armies split like 50/30/20 for infantry/musketmen/cavalry

The amount of newly available written premodern sources might be increasing because new translations, new discovered manuscripts, archeological finds, etc. Yet they might be decreasing because undiscovered and uncopied sources degrade and perish or just that we've translated a large part of written historical sources and are more and more scraping the bottom. In other words, is there: 1) an entire world of untranslated historic texts worked on by historians/translators and large number of undiscovered sources ready to be found? 2) some yet untranslated sources, but most have either perished, been translated, or are not worked on? 3) something in-between?

I apologize if the question is silly or badly worded. I'm not a historian and English is not my first language.

In modern, industrialised warfare, most countries seem to either wholly or at least partially use equipment sourced from other states. Either these have been purchased new from countries with large arms industries like the US, Russia or the UK, as outdated surplus as seen with how many countries still use mid-20th century soviet tanks and jets, or have been donated to aid in a war effort like with Ukraine.

What I'm wondering is if this is a purely modern phenomenon, or if there was much trade in weaponry in pre-modern times. Would armies in the medieval and ancient worlds have relied entirely on weapons made by local smiths, or would there have been any instances where a country may decide to simply buy weapons to equip it's forces from another country instead?