Has anyone else ever seen these used interchangeably?

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Reading about autonomous oblasts, the name seemed odd for a nation that was known for central planning. What was the relationship like between these oblasts and the republics, and how much autonomy did they really have?

The early Imperial legion had ten cohorts with the first being double sized. Was each century in the first cohort double sized or did they have an extra six centuries?

I am currently researching 1880s Prague for the sequel to my first published novel. I was wondering if some of you wonderful people could help me out with a few details that I'm unable to work out.

How would someone travel from say, Abilene, TX all the way to the Czech Republic capital of Prague? (Any good historical sources on what that journey would have been like?)

What was daily life like for a person in Prague, specifically, during the winter?

What was the political/social climate like?

What are a few things that might surprise us about Late 19th Century Prague?

How prevalent was Paganism in European Bohemia at this time?

I'll probably have more questions along the way, so I'd love to start building a relationship with anyone who might have a vested, academic interest in answering questions as they crop up in the narrative.

I'm listening to an episode of Opening Arguments in which the host digresses to mention that Soviet Russia didn't declare war on Imperial Japan when it joined the Allies against the Axis. Stalin was vulnerable in the east and didn't want to deal with Japanese soldiers while fending off Hitler's invasion on the Osfront.

Why, though, didn't Imperial Japan declare war on the USSR in support of their Nazi allies? Hitler declared war on the USA in support of Imperial Japan and both wars were initiated by Axis surprise attacks.

Was there any political fallout when Japan failed to follow through on the alliance commitments Hitler was faithful to? (that's awkward sentence to write)

I've read a lot about the persecution of homosexual men during the Holocaust, but it's unclear to me if the Nazis targeted people outside of Germany specifically for their sexuality. I know that their reasoning for targeting homosexual men was that they were removing themselves from the gene pool, and thus weakening the Aryan race, but does that mean they didn't target non-German homosexuals?

Did Palestinians sell their own land to Jews? If so, how much of it was sold? I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this. Cheers.

Would, for example, Queen Elizabeth have something to say about the divine claims of the rulers of France and Spain?

Specifically there are two factors I would like to understand more:

1) Many of the royal families in Europe, particularly in the later Modern period, are interrelated. What impact would this have with regard to questioning the legitimacy of one's right to rule?

2) What was the impact of the Protestant/Catholic divide in how Kings and Queens regarded the legitimacy of others' right to rule?

So I'm reading Yanis Varoufakis's And the Weak Suffer What They Must?, and he mentions very offhandedly something that caught my eye:

Italian, Spanish and Portuguese politics were also crucial to the monetary union project. Chancellor Schmidt had invested enormous political capital, in collaboration with Washington, to ensure that the Left failed in its bid for power in the Iberian peninsula¹⁴ and, of course, in Italy where a resurgent communist party, under the enlightened leadership of Enrico Berlinguer, was working on a “historic compromise” with progressive elements of Italy’s Christian Democrats.

with footnote 14 saying only:

14. Schmidt proved instrumental in organizing the failure, and eventual overthrow, of the radical leftist government that took over in Portugal after the 1975 revolution that ended a long right-wing dictatorship. He also played a key role in preventing the left from making gains during the transition of Spain from Franco’s fascist regime to parliamentary democracy.

There's no citation, and a look at the references section isn't elucidating what the source for this is. My questions are: is it true that Germany and the US interfered in the domestic politics of Portugal and Spain in the 70s to sabotage left wing political forces and if so how was this done? I've never heard of this, and I'd like to know more.

I’m not asking why people “dislike” Jews, as the Wikipedia entry is quite clear that there has been political, religious, and racist views of Jews for centuries, possibly resulting in some next-level propaganda. Specifically, are there are events or situations that give anti-semitism formal roots? Or was it just that people thought it was weird that random Jewish migrants never integrated?

I should mention I don’t really know much about the Jewish people, and don’t want to incite some sort of race-war type conversation. I’m more interested in events, statements, people, situations, etc that would at least slightly explain why Jewish people are hated throughout history.

In preparing for my trip to Peru, I've been reading about various aspects of the Peruvian history. The one thing that baffles me is the treatment of child sacrifices. It seems that the literature generally asserts that:

• the child sacrifices were often linked to nobility or even the emperor; and
• it was a great honour for the family and the child to be chosen as the sacrifice.

But I am not convinced. The evidence presented to support the above is that:

1. The mummies of the child sacrifices discovered to date often show traces of cocaine (coca leaves), which were restricted in the Incan empire and only the people of high status could have access to them;
2. The child mummies show no signs of malnourishment and they seem and well taken care of;
3. The mummies are often discovered with very ornate textiles and pottery and jewelry, often belonging to nobility;
4. There are some writings that show that local chiefs who have volunteered their children as tribute were given high governmental posts.

I completely fail to see that how this indicates that the children came from nobility (some articles go as far as claiming that the children were princes or princesses). For example, the Aztecs fed and dressed their sacrifices well for at least a year before the actual ritual, and as these sacrifices were treated as a member of the inner religious circle (or whatever prestige you have in that society), of course they could have had access to coca leaves that way. Along the same line of thought, they could have been well-treated and well-dressed BECAUSE they were already destined for sacrifice from a very young age, not the other way around.

Furthermore, the fact that some people used their children as a political stepping stone (i.e. they were REWARDED for volunteering their children as sacrifices; if it were truly an honour, people would be PAYING to volunteer their children, not the other way around) proves to me that these child sacrifices were reluctant participants, and most likely not nobility. I think that the more likely would be that they were of the under-privileged class, and that someone not them stood to benefit from their sacrifice.

I believe that there are some accounts of the Spaniards who rescued a girl who was walled up alive for three days as a sacrifice, and also another account of a boy who narrowly escaped being a sacrifice. La Doncella, one of the mummies from the Incan human sacrifice, apparently had well-worn teeth and white hair (at the age of 13!) which are often taken as signs of extreme stress.

I strongly believe that a society where death is truly an honour cannot exist -- if this were the case, everyone would just go ahead and kill themselves for a noble cause (ok, to be fair, the Incan empire didn't last long, but they didn't mean for it to crumble so quickly!) and I doubt even more that the children belonged to important people of the Incan empire. Rather, it seems like a well-designed scam where the children could be volunteered by anyone -- there is SOME chance that they would become child sacrifices, but also:

• Whoever volunteers the children would receive some tangible reward;
• the children might not become sacrifices and lead a decent life (I believe they could also be the priestesses of the temple of the sun, or concubines or wives of the Cusco nobles or even the emperor),

so that some people would literally tempt the fate, drawn by these two way more attractive possibilities.

So, why is it that the popular opinion today is still that the children were sacrificed willingly, and that they came from a noble line? I don't mean to be argumentative, and I would be glad to be convinced otherwise (because my views are clearly very grim and disturbing), but I wonder if the historians are overly glorifying the human sacrificial practices of the Incas. (Also since I am not an Andean scholar and most of what I reference comes from Google, you might have to correct me, too).

It seems like an easy enough question to answer, but it's a surprisingly difficult answer to find. Catholics claim St. Peter was the first Pope, a claim Protestants have always rejected. The Pope was also absent at the Council of Nicea, so where did the institution come from and how did it become what it is now?

Were instruments more robust back then? Were flights a lot more dangerous and expensive?

While Machiavelli claims it is made for Lorenzo de Medici in the forward, in Chp 16 he states it is really written for "those who know". This implies it is for someone else. Could this be an indirect reference for philosophers or the King's advisors?

Is there anyway he can use the serial number to find out what squadron or soldier it was issued to?

I was taking some geography quizzes and doing trivia when I noticed that the state of New York has cities that are named after famous historical places, mostly European cities. Some of these are

Rome, Hamburg, Syracuse, Dunkirk, New Berlin, Carthage, Amsterdam, Bath, Potsdam, Copenhagen, Carthage, Greece, Leeds, Rotterdam

I'm sure there are others I am missing. I do know that these kind of names for cities in the United States are not uncommon in many states, but it seems New York has much more than average. Is there any particular reason as to why this is and if it was a pattern or tradition in New York's history? I was just curious!