I get that it might be hard to construct railroads as we think of them today, because iron and especially steel were much more expensive and in smaller quantities than today, but why not carve long, smooth, straight ruts in stone to place wheels in, or something along those lines? It seems like there were some minor examples of this in Roman and Greek, but still nothing even close to a full railway system.
EDIT: Phrasing
1 Answers 2019-02-28
What is the estimate on the population of England, or at the least Wessex, during the first Viking raids on Northumbria? What about prior to the Norman Conquest? Do we also have estimates on the number Danes/Northmen (both warriors and settlers)?
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1 Answers 2019-02-27
So I know that Buthan and Nepal where influenced by Western powers but how did Liberia and Abyssinia until Italy came along manage to stay uncolonized?
1 Answers 2019-02-27
Recently while watching “Extra History: The Broad Street Pump” (Im aware of their questionable record of accuracy), opposition to Jon Snow’s theory of Cholera spreading through water is glossed over as all other docs saying “you know nothing, Jon Snow.” This left me curious about what (obviously faulty) evidence was commonly used to hold up the Miasma Theory at the time, and why people were slow to catch on to Snow’s findings.
Thank you.
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1 Answers 2019-02-27
By Roosevelts, I mean the American Presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and their families.
1 Answers 2019-02-27
Hello, I'm not sure if this is the right area to post, so if not feel free to direct me elsewhere. I have a question regarding where I can find information on family members in WW2. Relative was a member of the British forces, I have his service record number, he was a part of REME, and after he was injured I know which doctor operated on him, and the hospital name of where he was treated. However, I cannot seem to find any "official" records of him. Any suggestions of where to search, or what documents to look through, would be greatly appreciated!
1 Answers 2019-02-27
Something that's been bothering me lately is the increasing tendency towards giving vikings a positive spin in popular culture and media. Despite popular shows like Vikings playing up their traditional reputation as savage murderers, rapists and looters, concurrently there's been an attempt to create a counternarrative where the traditional view is flipped on its head.
This attempt to upend the traditional narrative — attributing all kinds of positive qualities to vikings while stripping them of their traditional negative, barbaric ones, so that vikings are described as mostly peaceful farmers and traders, intrepid explorers, skilled craftsmen, city-builders and even champions of women's rights who didn't behave worse and in many respects better than their contemporaries — has in the interest of providing a more balanced view in my opinion gone too far in the other direction and ended up just as imbalanced as that of their prior depiction.
Instead of being perpetrators of rape, murder and theft preying on defenceless villages and monasteries, they're increasingly depicted as victims of Christian expansion. Sometimes this revisionism is taken to such ludicrous extents that the Norsemen are portrayed as having had a "civilisation" in their own right, oppressed and wiped out by Christian interlopers, rather than the more historically respectable position seeing the process of Christianisation as being the first historical instance of true civilisation-building in Scandinavia.
All of this popular press has resulted in what I would call a kind of "viking renaissance", particularly in the Anglo world. This resulting in people who've just found out they have a minimal amount of Scandinavian ancestry (or even none) running around claiming to be "vikings" and/or professing belief in Ásatrú. Could modern day anti-christian sentiments among various subsets of secularised populations be partly to blame for this new wave of viking fetishism seemingly permeating the Anglo world? Or is it an attempt to square the modern day progressivism and positive reputation of Scandinavia with their ancient forebears?
See also this article: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.standard.co.uk/comment/david-dumville-let-s-tell-the-bloody-truth-about-the-vikings-9151685.html%3famp
1 Answers 2019-02-27
I was reading about Railguns and read that in 1944, Joachim Hänsler of Germany’s Ordnance Office proposed the first theoretically viable Railgun. It was to be built but never was. The Horten Brothers also designed and built the Horten Ho 229, a stealth jet that was remarkable at the time and used axial-compressor turbojets. Americans had just begun to develop axial-compressor turbojets (Westinghouse J30) and when examining the Ho 229, the American’s turbojet engines had a thrust level only approaching the Ho 229’s BMW 003A’s full output. Just how advanced were the Germans?
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2 Answers 2019-02-27
What are some of the better memoirs/biographies of Hitler’s inner circle and/or his generals? I have Hitler biographies by Toland, Kershaw, and recently found one by David Irving in a second-hand store (don’t really know anything about him so I grabbed it). But I’d like to learn more about what those around him thought. I have Manstein’s memoirs, but that’s about it. I know some of those guys had a tendency to sugarcoat their own involvement, but if there’s a biography to balance the bias, I’d like to read it. Thanks!
2 Answers 2019-02-27
Finding it hard to answer this question for my humanities class and would like to learn more.
1 Answers 2019-02-27
Before the coming of the European, the American Indians (North America) did not use metals for weapons (except, it is said, the Intuits worked meterorites).
They are known to have made things from copper.
As I understand it, Indians never did forge things from steel (requires too hot of a temperature anyway; and stainless wasn't invented until 1926).
My question is: once they learned of metals, did they forge things, themselves out of iron?
3 Answers 2019-02-27
1 Answers 2019-02-27
The exchange is one of the most poignant episodes from the famous Italian war memoir "Un anno sull'Altipiano" by Emilio Lussu ("A Year on the High Plateau" in English). You can read the full book in Italian here.
One of the high points of the book is a suicidal charge over no man's land in which the author takes part. It culminates with this excerpt (p. 98), which I tried to translate:
The battalion was to attack on a front of 250-300 meters. But the depression of the ground had involuntarily pushed us, as we advanced, towards the same strip of land in front of the trenches, only about fifty meters wide. The machine guns could no longer hit us, but we offered the standing shooters a compact target. The remnants of the battalion were all piled up there. Against us they shot at point-blank range.
Suddenly, the Austrians stopped shooting. I saw those in front of us, with their eyes wide open and with an expression of terror almost as if they, and not us, were under fire. One of them, who was without a rifle, cried out in Italian:
- Enough! Enough!
- Enough! - repeated the others, from the trench parapets. The one with no weapon seemed to me to be a chaplain. - Enough! Brave soldiers. Don't let yourselves be slaughtered like that.
We stopped for a moment. We didn't shoot, they didn't shoot. (...)
This episode was depicted (although with different dialogues and outcome) in the movie 'Uomini Contro' (1970), somewhat based on the book. You can see the specific scene here.
I saw it years ago and young me was very moved by it, but most of what I've since learned about WW1 goes against the picture the book and the movie depict, so I became doubtful.
Important note: I realise it's very hard to prove that some specific episode didn't happen. I didn't have space in the title to frame my question differently, but I would like to clarify what I meant.
I'm mostly curious to know if, when looking at the context of this literary work and what we know of the Italian front, is it plausible that episodes like this really happened. Or if, on the contrary, it's likely to be an embellishment on the part of an author with a clear anti-war agenda. I would be very glad to learn if it actually happened if that is possible, but I'm not necessarily looking for an absolute answer.
Edit: added a little more to the excerpt with the help of the DeepL translator.
2 Answers 2019-02-27
I hope you don't consider this cheating but I need help dissecting this question and finding topics to focus on (which means a lot of reading.) • Power: Compare the relative importance of military might over appearance in establishing and maintaining rule in medieval states (empires, royal & city-states included)"]
I assume "appearance" to mean perception of power/shows of power rather than concrete military power? I considered focusing on Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror but any tips/suggestions will be useful
1 Answers 2019-02-27
Besides Pearl Harbor, why weren’t there any invasions onto American soil durring WWII?
1 Answers 2019-02-27
Hello,
I have a term paper due at the end of the year for my Vikings Experience course in University. I have decided to focus my topic on the impact/influence of the Vikings on Irish sea trade/economy (10th/11th cent). From my readings I know broad connections, mainly in the establishment of the first towns in Ireland by the Vikings, the fact that the Vikings were more concerned with maintaining control over the sea trade rather than conquering neighboring Irish kingdoms, the trade connections Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, and Cork had with mainland Europe and possibly further. Furthermore, I know that Viking power in Ireland decreased in 10th/11th century and that intermarriage/conversion to christianity began to assimilate the Vikings into Irish society. Thus, what I'd like to structure my paper around is (if this happened at all) how the Irish kingdoms/society either adopted or were influenced by Viking trade practices within their towns and more broadly the Irish Sea Region
While I am still doing my initial research I wanted to see if anyone could help me with a few things.
The first is that I need to find primary sources, I read in a secondary source that the Icelandic Saga of Gunnlaug Serpents-tongue talks about Irish trade yet if anyone could find me some more Saga examples on trade in Irish Sea Region or even British Isles that would be great (if you don't know any but know of databases or can point me in the right direction to search myself that would be great too)
Furthermore, it has been troubling to find extensive and historical secondary sources about Viking trade in Irish settlements. So, if anyone could point me in the right direction of some secondary sources which could provide some insight into trade/economy in Viking Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Cork, and/or Limerick that would be a great help.
Lastly, if you are knowledgeable on this topic feel free to comment any information you find interesting, Viking activity in Ireland and its impact seems to be an amazing topic to look into so if you enjoy Viking history and haven't looked into Ireland I definitely recommend!
Nonetheless, thank you to everyone who responds to these posts, this forum has been an extreme help in my last year as history undergrad and I am sure I will be using more often when I go to grad school :)
3 Answers 2019-02-27
Was artillery just not that vital in the time period? Were the swedish soldiers/generals just that much better than the saxon/russian/polish-lithuanian ones? All of the above? Neither?
1 Answers 2019-02-27
After the fall of Rome, Germanic tribes migrated into the former Roman territories and set up their own kingdoms- Francia, Visigothic Spain, Ostrogothic Italy and the Vandal Kingdom of North Africa. I understand the Arab conquests of North Africa and Justinian's reconquering of Italy as the reasons for why those Gothic languages died out, but what made the Franks (who ruled their own land for centuries and were often united with their German counterparts) and the Visigoths (who were conquered by Arabic speakers, not Latin speakers) drop the Germanic languages in favor of Romance? Was it that the common people continued speaking Latin so the elites adopted it, or some other reason?
1 Answers 2019-02-27