Not asking about what will happen from the current Brexit thing, but I'm curious if the predicted results from it like shortages and massive lines of trucks as border checks are built are anything like what happened in the'90s when the Soviet Republics went independent.

Did negotiating new trade treaties and such work out favorably for the new republics?

Also, I'm not trying to imply the EU is like the USSR lol.

I find it hard to believe it was for scientific interest. Was it a display of power?

I'm looking for confirmation of an old story I heard: Argentina had purchased Exocet anti-ship missiles from France, and those missiles were going to be a threat to the UK's vessels on the way to the Falklands. UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been a hold out and opposed to the chunnel (unrelated to the missiles/war), and French PM Francois Mitterand had wanted a chunnel for economic reasons. As the Falklands War was heating up, UK naval vessels were en route to the region, and Thatcher was aggressively pressing Mitterand to provide codes that UK could broadcast(?) that would disable any Exocets fired at UK ships. The deal that Mitterand made was to give the codes but only in exchange for Thatcher to agree to building the chunnel. This was a big secret and sensitive topic, because Mitterand knew that if word of this got out that it would significantly hamper the French international arms sales, because other nations would know that the French could be bought into disabling weapons they had sold. Additional question I have is that I had never heard if there were any Exocet missiles fired by Argentina that were actually rendered ineffective by this deal (ie, fired at UK ship but did not work). And so I'm looking for confirmation of this story that I remember hearing/reading about.

I took Latin and there were no articles. I took French, and, voila, now there are articles. When did this happen and why did it happen? I can't think of a plausible reason we need them if the Romans got along alright without them.

Edit. Took out 'Greeks'

The battle itself took place in 9 AD and was one of Rome’s worst military defeats so I can understand Augustus and a few emperors after him, who had living knowledge of the defeat, wanting to keep their distance; but in the next 100 years, there wasn’t really another major invasion of the territory east of the Rhine, even when Rome was at its most expansive and taking on unified empires such as the Parthians.

Was the memory of Teutoburg forest really still alive at that point and if so did the Roman emperors really fear a confederation of German tribes more than the Parthians? If not, what kept them out of Northern Germany even at their most expansive? Was it just not appealing to them as new territory?

I was just reading about Ottoman history for fun, and I noticed the main cause of their fall was nationalism. I noticed this through all of Europe during the 19th and 20th century, Why did everybody, such as the Serbs, Hungarians, and Greeks want their independence from their occupants, but not before this period? What inspired this rise of nationalism?

Or did Kings and Emperors just not think stone roads important enough to justify the cost?

How much effort would the King of England, Emperor of Germany, or the Landmeisters of Prussia and Livonia put into constructing roads for the Realm? Especially in a place like the Baltic that didn’t sit on top of the remnants of ancient empires?

I guess I'm thinking along the lines of how we can read science fiction and have an idea of what advances and innovations that people today imagined would be invented in the future. Is there anything like that for those who lived in medieval times?

Was it hard core patriotism/nationalism? Their military training? Very effective government propaganda? I don't understand where a mindset like that could come from

Basically I just wanna know about Chess, but the early days.

I know that since even the 19th century, sci-fi, or sci-fi-esque genres, books, media appeared that showed a fictional future of our world, or other worlds. Flying cars, and spaceship battles are prime examples. But how did people in the Roman Era, or past the Dark Middle Ages envision their future? Did their have similar predictions?

Or was the world simply too static, or religious (and so mostly interested in the afterlife) for the people to concern themselves with what will happen to the world in several generations? I was always interested in this question, and even heard some non-history buff friends of mine talking about it.

Also, I m not interested in Utopia theories. I know that those have existed for a long time, but they envisioned a certain society, often placing it in our own world. I would like to know how the future was envisioned.

I read that Patton kept a daily record of casualty counts from both sides to get a read on how things were going. I may have some facts mixed up but my question is......how did he/we get a casualty count of the Germans? Where the counts rather accurate to some degree or was it guesswork taken with a "grain of salt" which was a sketchy indicator?

Perhaps a website with a real-time count? (just kidding)

This is my first post and I am hoping this does not come off as a trivia related question but the other day one of my friends said to me that Napoleon once got a promotion by grape shotting civillians or civilian targets. I have been an avid History buff and taken a good amount of classes in college study but never heard of a statement like this before and not been able to fond any evidence before hand.

I don't just mean things like the British turning literally every Nazi agent in the Isles into a double agent, but things like their underestimating Soviet tank strength by a factor of three. Is this just a failure on their part somehow, or were they just outplayed by their counterparts?