What I mean by this question is, were forts like Detroit manned by soldiers sent from France to man it for a certain period before being relieved by another company from France, or where they manned by French colonial Militia? I understand the situation might be different for the British as they had far more colonists in their colonies than the French, and so am I right to assume they relied more on Colonial Militia?

How were these Forts resupplied? Was there an annual or biannual resupply convoy that came to the fort from the mother country on a fixed basis, or did the soldiers need to send a squad by ship to their country to request supplies?

Regarding Natives, why did some prefer the British and others French or Spanish, what did each power do for certain tribes to make them like them whereas other tribes did not?

As far as I'm aware, Canada and my country, Australia, have broadly similar histories regarding their key allies in the twentieth century. Both started the century as dominions of Britain, and contributed to Britain's military endeavours early in the century. By the end, both were dependent on the US as their chief military ally. In Australia, we tend to date the transition very precisely: World War Two, particularly the Fall of Singapore, when it became apparent that we couldn't rely on Britain to protect us from Japan. My question is whether Canada has a similar event which marks their transition?

Sorry for the somewhat open-ended question. I've heard a lot about Wagner since I study late 19th- and early 20th-century Europe. I realized that there would be a performance of Wagner's Lohengrin this weekend at Prague's National Theater, so I decided to suck it up and go see the five-hour-long performance.

So that I can appreciate it best while watching, I was looking for a little bit of context before the show.

First, what was new about Wagner's operas. I seem to vaguely remember something from a German lit class I took, about how Wagner subscribed to some sort of "total performance" idea, that involved elaborate staging, scenery, and loud-as-hell music. Am I remembering correctly or am I wildly off the mark?

Second, what was the artistic and literary context for Wagner's works? I also seem to remember that he was always creating operas that dealt with mythological/legendary themes. And I remember of course that Hitler liked his Wagner.

Finally, how were Wagner's operas received at various points in their existence?

I realize I've asked quite a few questions here, so answer whichever ones you want to/have time for. Thanks a lot!

I always wondered given how the French thought the Second World War was gonna be fought in the style of ww1 who invented the blitzkreig and why?

What role did the heart play in the past ? Do we have a record of cultures believing the heart was responsible for thought and memory?

So, this is less a What If and more a How much. I'll try to frame the thought process that I'm curious over...

• Any fallen/extinct civilisation on the planet will have their artefacts of existing slowly destroyed by nature and potentially their own technology and/or subsequent civilisations.
• Humans haven't been on the planet very long, in useful civilisation building mode I think 9000-10000 years at most and as a species in quantity 10-20x that.
• This planet is old, even narrowing down to the period where we've had "relevant" life gives you 6 million years for ape like, or 200-300 million if you just want "kinda getting there" and on land.
• This planet is hopelessly unstable... the stuff in the middle of plates right now is sort of stable but over those 200-300 million years a lot of the surface has been pretty trashed. Between stuff falling on it, stuff spewing out of it, bits of it trying to turn inside out, and just generally everything moving around, finding bits that aren't destroyed gets harder the further back you go.

We know of the existence of civilisations from artefacts and we know of extinct species from fossils, but both are basically statistical samples. There are writing systems that we only know of from a few thousand characters. The number of dino bones we've found represents a tiny portion of the number of dead dinos that left bones lying around. I think it's safe to say that there have been species on the planet that we don't know about simply because no fossils of them were ever found, and it's a safe bet that there are civilisations (I use the term loosely) that were lost due to being too small, too old or simply got overwritten by newer civilisations in the same place.

So here's what I'm wondering. If Earth contained a prior civilisation, how recent and/or how advanced would that civilisation need to be for us to reasonably certain of finding evidence that it definitely was there? Or to flip the question around, is there a point at which there could have been a Roman, Middle Age or modern level of civilisation which ended, and in the period since then all traces of it have been destroyed by various events?

I want to be clear I'm not proposing that such a civilisation ever existed, nor am I questioning how long traces of our civilisation will last after we inevitably die off or leave. I'm not even proposing that sentient life existed on the planet before we thought it did. I'm curious specifically about the limits of "detection" in large scale history, and what a more informed view is on how large or advanced a species has to be for us to be able to tell that they specifically were there.

Does any of that rambling question make sense?

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So I've been doing research and found out that the M4 Sherman rarely caught on fire during the later war years and that there was a 80 percent survivability rate after knocked out. But people are vehemently telling me it's not true and the Sherman was complete garbage. Can anyone clear the air.

After reading Holly Tucker's City of Light, City of Poison, I found myself riding a wikipedia blackhole that started with the Sun King himself, and ended with the Man in the Iron Mask. What are the leading theories on the prisoner's identity, and is any serious credence lent to the idea that he is The Sun King's twin brother / true father / ex-lover?

I did spend a little time trying to see if this question has already been asked/answered so if it has, definitely feel free to just direct me there. I'm honestly not quite sure how to word this because with the Bible being comprised of so many different writings by numerous authors over such a large span of time, it's not such a simple question. What I'm trying to find out is what accessible texts of the Bible (and any other texts that were not included in the Bible) are the closest translations of the original languages... or at least closest to the earliest known translations. (And when I say "other texts", I'm referring to any other known writings/documents that even slightly relate... controversial or not to the Christian faith). Whenever I've attempted to research this online, the majority of the results I get are from Christian sources. It's not that I believe them all to be unreliable, it's just that I would prefer NON-Christian sources, which is kind of hard to avoid when asking about the Bible. I have so many sub-questions to this one, but I'll start here for now.

As the battleships of 1900's probably didn't have the endurance to make the whole trip in one go, and the Russians didn't have any colonies of their own in Africa or the Middle East, where the fleet was able to coal? I mean, wouldn't it be basically an act of war against the Japanese to allow an enemy fleet to stop in your harbor? Were there some diplomatic maneuvers to help or hinder the fleet?

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I finished Adam Zamoyski's "Poland" recently, and he mentions that Poland-Lithuania had a significant enough Armenian population to make one of its five law codes in Armenian. One of the law codes was Hebrew and, well, Zamoyski spends a lot of time talking about what happened to Poland's Jewish population well into the 20th Century. But the Armenians just kind of, disappear from the narrative.

What happened to them?

I understand that tax farming occurred but what prevented a tax collector from taking everything as taxes? Could citizens take legal action against unfair tax collection? What kind of force could a tax collector use if a citizen refused to pay their taxes?

Taken from Finkelstein & Birn's "A Nation On Trial".