As far as I know, except for smaller events like the Manitoba Uprising, there hasn't really been any major conflicts between the Canadian government and the First Nations while there were numerous such conflicts in the US and Mexico. Why was this the case?

I guess the most glaring example of this would be European and Native groups during the Colombian exchange and conquest of the Americas, but I'm curious as to how translation efforts begin in general. What is the process for learning an entirely "novel" language? How long from first contact would it typically take for someone to have a reliable enough grasp on the other language to serve as a translator? Were there ever any examples of two groups who simply couldn't communicate despite best efforts?

As of 2013, of the top 7 selling beers in the US, 5 are light beers.

Yet for sodas, any pretty much anything else I can think of, you have maybe one diet drink or other item in top lists.

I am writing an essay on whether the Gordian knot was real and whether it was really cut by Alexander the Great. I've been reading into a variety of sources but I am unsure if my sources are the oldest ones. The oldest source I have been able to find that mentions the knot is Quintus Curtius Rufus in the 'History Of Alexander' but that is somewhere around 100AD, some 400 years after it was supposedly cut. If Rufus is in fact the oldest source that mentions it that's alright and a good talking point to doubt if it was cut but if it is not I feel like it would be appropriate to at least mention the older source.

TLDR; Is Quintus Curtius Rufus really the earliest source to mention the cutting of the Gordian Knot by Alexander the Great?

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We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. Brief and short answers are allowed but MUST be properly sourced to respectable literature. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: Urbanisation! Get on board, fellow country mice! We're heading to the city! This week's theme is urbanization. Know trivia about the rise of the world's cities? How our understanding of what constitutes the city has changed over time? Perhaps an urban developer who should be better known than Robert Moses? Here's your chance to urbanize our understanding!

A lot of gothic buildings, especially churches and mansions, look eerie or scary. Was this intentional? Or was that style just popular at the time and the architects would be surprised that we (maybe just me) would see them that way?

EDIT: I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for the helpful and informative answers. I don't know anything about architecture so I appreciate you all keeping it understandable for the layman. It's been very interesting reading going through all your responses.

I've been doing research on Persian Cilicia and have a few questions. First, since the last native king Syennesis III was dethroned in 400 BC, and Pharnabazos didn't start to rule until 380 BC, who governed Cilicia in Between? Then, I saw Pharnabazos ruled Cilicia 380 - 374/3, but Datames ruled 380 - 362. Are these dates right, and if they overlap, did both govern at the same time? And in which year exactly did Datames revolt? I read in an article that he started in 372, but that would mean his revolt lasted 10 years, and since some sources I read contradict each other, I doubt this is correct.

Sorry for all the questions, but im really confused. If you find good books or writeups/articles, please tell me, I'd be happy to read them!

I want to study the coinage of this period, but find it important to first understand the historical surroundings.

Let me explain, whenever I see recreations of Roman cities they're always walled but lack some sort of defensible bastion. The city of Hissarlik (Troy) has a fortified palace structure on a hill. The Russians had Kremlins which were typically at the center of their cities. Western Europe had keeps built inside of curtain walls. So how come Roman and Chinese cities lacked (or are portrayed as lacking) a citadel/keep-like structure?

edit: And I don't just mean why the Romans didn't build castles alone, I understand that they built forts that resembled castles. What I'm asking is specifically why CITIES lacked these fortified structures like keeps/kremlins etc.

I have seen some talk online connecting abortion bans to increasing crime rates, and, more to my question, I also saw a meme pointing out that the revolution in Romania occurred 23 years after the ban was enacted; implying that the children produced by that ban in some direct way promulgated that revolution.

Most of the articles or think-pieces I have read only extend the analysis to "Romania banned abortion and it led to horrendous societal outcomes like abandoned children, dead women, and over-crowded orphanages," but they don't connect it to the revolution.

I'm just curious how much truth there is or is not to this connection.

Why not let the Italians gain land? Why not make Bosnian or Serbian puppet states instead?

I'm reading an introductory textbook, Indigenous Peoples within Canada by Olive Patricia Dickason and William Newbigging, and at the end of the second chapter, the authors claim that "Indigenous Peoples did not fight to gain land or to subjugate others, but rather to protect natural resources, and then later to avenge the fallen."

I found myself not finding this very convincing. They continue with an excerpt from Ojibwe historian Basil Johnston that seems to support their claim. It seems unlikely to me that this would be true, especially with the amalgamation of various peoples into empires and confederacies, seeing as there is evidence of war that includes territorial expansion throughout the world. Did Indigenous Peoples in North America go to war for territorial gain?

In Images at War, the historian Michèle Martin mentions the difficulties the Prussians had in stopping French messengers/ spies from escaping sieges using balloons during the Franco-Prussian War. She mentions that the French newspaper Le Monde Illustré ran a story alleging that the Prussians devoted a cavalry unit to pursuing balloons to intercept them where they landed, given their failure to reliably shoot them down. However, Martin does not go into detail on whether or not this claim is substantiated. At first glance it appears a little farcical, do we know if this is propaganda or a real tactic they considered?

This is of course a sensitive topic because of Russian aggression in Ukraine right now. But there does seem to be a lot of reference to this by Putin's supporters. Nazism is a recurring theme in current propoganda it is s not only aimed at the present but also the past.

And honestly before current events, I myself had a similar image of Ukraine partly due to the collaboration depicted in different media well before 2014 and 2022.

So I have the following questions:

• How closely were Ukrainian nationalists allied to the Nazis?

• How active were Ukrainians in the Holocaust / pogroms?

• Was Ukrainian collaboration unique or was it pretty much the same thing we see with local Nazi-collaborators in other Nazi-occupied countries such as Vichy France or the Netherlands ?

I was wondering how would be in charge of choosing which projects to start and where outside Rome, and how the construction would be paid for? Did they retain part of the taxes, or would funding come from Rome? And how informed was the central government of the projects going on in the provinces?

In the US Army/Marines/Air Force, a captain is an O3, but in the Navy a captain is an O6. Were these ranks more comparable in responsibilities at some point in the past?

Something I've been thinking about recently, given the current Ukraine war and how much information seems to come out very quickly, but even in this modern age some stuff is still secret or unclear because of military OPSEC concerns.

What I want to know is, while the second world war was going on and battles were being fought, how much did the general public in western countries like the UK actually know about events on the ground? For example, did they know about the events of D-day quickly afterwards, and if so how much? Would they hear about various battles immediately as they were in progress, or was stuff often held back until later? When the Germans surrendered in Stalingrad how quickly would people in the UK have known? Etc.

Basically I'm interested in a comparison between what media coverage of WW2 as it was happening would have been like, compared to modern news coverage of recent and existing wars.