Curious because I'm currently writing a low fantasy story based in as much realism as possible, and my protagonist's major issue this chapter is being able to cross this particular river.

I'm taking a vacation to Egypt to see some of the ancient sites. I'd like to learn some of the ancient languages that are written around the sites, mostly just so i can get some greater context as to what they are. This isn't so much of a forte of mine but if I can learn anything it would be super cool and really help make for a more memorable trip.

[deleted]

My numbers will likely be somewhat incorrect.

For example, we can see in several large battles that the victor suffered many more casualties than the loser. A popular example seems to be the battle of Stalingrad, where the Wehrmacht lost close to 900,000 men (and failed to take their objective), but the Red Army lost over 1.1 million men. That is a large spread.

Another is the Vietnam war. The USA (and its allies) lost somewhere in the vicinity of 390,000 troops, while the Vietcong lost somewhere near 950,000. Regardless of the fact that America pulled out, can we really say that the Vietcong was victorious despite their highly inefficient combat initiative?

I'd love to hear the origin of the redundancy and I can't find why anywhere.

I've noticed heads of state that are monarchs were often (and infact still are) photographed wearing their medals at larger, state affairs. I cant recall ever seeing a US president wear any - but I don't think any president during my lifetime (born early 80s) was in the forces.

If it has to with visibility why wouldn't that matter for the sea and ground forces as well?

[deleted]

When did the Royal Family lose its power to democracy?

I've just had the thought that I have no idea how first aid was actually applied in combat during WWII. How effective were medics, what training did they receive and what sort of equipment would they make use of? Once first aid had been delivered how were casualty evacuations carried out and what capabilities did field hospitals have?

[deleted]

I understand that the Quranic concept of jihad refers to a quite different spiritual struggle - what I'm interested in is the politics and warfare of Islamic realms during the High Middle Ages. From what I know of the history of the Crusades, responses to them were relatively fragmented, weren't they, with local states often allying with the Christians against traditional enemies?

Traditionally, it seems that it ended gradually over time until capitalism* eventually rose above it, as new laws were created to favor merchants - but when did it legally start to end in most european countries?

*Which some believe was always present and underlying all through out history, and there are others that don't believe that. I think that's still up for debate, but it strikes me as semantical. Anyway, question is about feudalism.

I'm fairly aware of how presidential and parliamentary systems work, but I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around how government in the Soviet Union was supposed to work. Did it have a constitution? A legislature? Did Soviet citizens vote, and if so for what? Was there separation of powers? Presumably the democracy was supposed to extend to their workplace, did that mean industries were totally nationalized? If so then what is the significance of a "Soviet" which I am lead to believe is a worker's council? I don't expect cold-war apologia here either, certainly things didn't work out the way they were intended to. But most people I ask offline respond with a curt "it was a totalitarian country," which is very unhelpful.