Who was the first person to smoke? How did they discover it? Why did they do it? I know it may not be known, but I expect there is an anthropologist or something on here that knows something about it.

Hello historians, I recently bought some glass plate negatives that I could tell were military in nature. Upon closer look and a bit of amateur development with a homemade lightbox and my regular DSLR, I was able to see that the two plates contain about half propaganda postcards, and half are original photos. Two of the photos are of dead soldiers...one a mass grave, and the other of a skeletal soldier dressed and propped up to make it look like he was relaxing on a beach or something.

Is there ANYWHERE or ANY organization that would be interested in such negatives? I know there are plenty of WW1 photos out there, but with the mass grave and the body, I didn't know if that would spark historical interest. There is also what appears to be a downed plane, with soldiers standing around it. Thank you if anyone can guide me in the right direction. Money is not my objective, but the preservation of history.

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And are they at all valid?

Usually, all you see from the era are some colourful posters that would suggest that everything was fine and dandy with the two countries, with the Soviet Union as the big brother pointing towards a communist utopia. I know that Mao couldn't stand Khrushchev, which is why their relations started deteriorating in the mid-fifties. But what were they like before? What were they like in practice, when they actually had to implement reforms together? What further reading could I do on the topic? Until now, I've found Jersild's Sino-Soviet Alliance and Lüthi's Sino-Soviet Split. Should I start with those?

Thanks.

Wouldn't limiting Germany's ability to become powerful enough to be a major threat have been in the Allies' best interest? How was Germany able to get to a point where they were a threat to most of the European continent, despite the Treaty of Versailles?

While studying the 100 years war, I noticed that after Agincourt, when the English were extended into France, there seemed to be no recruitment of French people into the army. This confuses me for to reasons:

• I am unsure what recruitment was like during this time, whether it was still feudal levies or something different. If the system was the still the feudal system then surely the French would have been used to providing a small number of men.

• Gascony and Aquitaine had been in English hands for a very long time by now. Surely their loyalties were so in line with that of England that soldiers could have been gathered from these regions?

Am I incorrect about these presumptions? Did the English, in fact, recruit French people into the military? If not, why not?

The Stonewall Riots, the moon landing, Manson murders, Gadhafi rose to power and Woodstock all happened in the one summer amongst other things. Is there a particular reason why so much happened during this time period?

I’m always watching history stuff on WWll and I’ve never heard anything about having fighters to escort the Enola gay to her target area (If they did shouldn’t those pilots be famous or get credit as well for the missions success.) If the bomber didn’t have a fighter escort along, wouldn’t they be afraid that there might be some fighters covering japans homeland? Did the Japanese no longer have any fighters left in the air?

To my understanding, a decent deal of why the South seceded is because they didn’t have the same representation in the Government as the Northern states did. This allowed for unfair laws and tariffs to be places against Southerners. Wouldn’t it be win-win if the North just removed the 3/5 Compromise though? The South would get more representation, and the North would finally be able to declare slaves as actual people and not property. Am I missing something here, or did they just not think of this?

Was there something about the Dravidian South that made it difficult to hold, uninteresting to conquerors, or both?

Does the beach head they were defending drastically change the route back?

I'm thinking mainly of his commentaries, but there are other examples too ... e.g. when he said "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion" and during a storm on a boat, "Fear not, the boat carries Caesar and Caesar’s good fortune".