I've recently been reading an ongoing letter correspondence between the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and his childhood teacher, Fronto.
I find it interesting that letters from both sides of this correspondence have survived, and I was wondering how it happened.
Did either Marcus or Fronto save not only the letters they received, but also made archival copies of their own letters before sending them?
Assuming that this is the case, do we assume that this collection of letters eventually passed into some official archive before being sent to a monastery library, where monks recopied them over the centuries?
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And is it true that the Arabic language didn't properly exist until the 7th century of the current era?
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Jefferson wrote against the Constitution. Was Madison's conversion to the Republicans a rare example of a pro-ratificationist becoming one?
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Were they run similar to a modern day corporation (with a CEO accepting contracts)? Or were they still "employed" by the countries they came from and just fought for a different country?
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I asked this some time back, a previous time Africa was a theme, and never got an answer so figured I've resurrect it.
In any case, I certainly know little about Zulu warfare in the first place, and what I do is basically '19th century. My understanding is that their style of warfare underwent a veritable revolution under Shaka Zulu in the early 1800s, changing how the military was organized and implementing the famed 'Bull Horns'. I know that there is some debate on how much it can be said this was influenced by the contact with Europeans, and the extent to which that is true certainly interests me, but I'm also especially interested in what the 'before' was.
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Western*
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I would like to know why there was such a proliferation of tables. I don't care for someone googling "artillery firing tables" and parroting the variables back to me. I want to know why there were so many different guns and shells to be computed. Pease, no theories.
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I keep reading broad statements that magic mushrooms used to be very popular among early civilizations and later through the times of early Christianity. I've also stumbled on many opinions that Catholic Church is responsible for associating them with witchcraft and creating a broad propaganda against them.
How popular were Magic mushrooms in medieval rituals and life in general? Were they actively used in witchcraft/fortune telling/magic of the times? Would an average rich citizen of 12th century Germany/Poland/England know about psylocybin or have any access to it?
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Hey, does anyone know of some good books or websites detailing the impact the USA had on Iraq. I’m not 100% sure how to describe the stuff the I want the book to be about as I’m not very educated in this area and is the reason I’m trying to learn about it. However some of my friends have talked about it such as events at the time of Operation Desert Storm, USA providing weapons through the military complex and that sort of stuff. Sorry in advance if any of the examples are complete bollocks but this is why I’m trying to learn about the particular topic.
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The question concerns itself specifically with its use on foot.
I know when it happened, a little bit of how it happened, and none on why it happened. If you look at early Polish swords from the Middle Ages, you can find a lot of your longswords and standard cruciform knightly (arming) swords. Then in the 15th/16th century the saber seemed to appear out of nowhere and managed to take Poland over.
I know that the development of firearms and the abandoning of armor had an effect, but the rest of Europe switched to broadswords (basket hilted straight sword), sideswords (between an arming sword and a rapier, also called a cut and thrust sword) and rapiers, both of which are (mostly) straight, double edged swords. The saber wouldn't start taking over the rest of Europe until the late 18th century and onwards when cavalry really started to develop. So how come Poland adopted the saber so early on, in favor of it, rather than straight, double edged swords, most of which have served Poland well for centuries?
As a sidenote, I don't believe that it's just "because of the cavalry". If that were the case then it wouldn't become the choice weapon for the Poles on foot. There has to be some kind of martial reason they switched, because I can't see any advantage of using a curved, single edge sword rather than a straight, double edged sword while on foot in a one on one.
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I’m writing a short film where the protagonist is in denial of having anorexia. I’ve been in treatment for it myself but I’m wondering how different it was back then versus now.
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Why did Vietnam invade Cambodia to overthrow Pol Pot? If both of the countries follow communism?
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(I should specify the Ordnance QF 2-Pounder.) I imagine the Pom-Pom had a HE Shell.
It's not like a 40mm gun like the 2 Pounder can't have a HE Shell (see the 40mm Bofors.) Now, I understand that Pre-War the Royal Artillery was full-on Gollum about anything High Explosive, but the War lasted six years. Was the gun simply withdrawn from service entirely by the time a round could have been produced?
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A lot has been preserved, or pieced together from remaining preserved pieces augmented by archaeology; still a lot was lost. So what parts of Greek history or of the culture/phenomena of Ancient Greece, remain unknown or even unknowable?
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