Brahmajala Sutta mentions that some people earn their living by foretelling, among other things, solar and lunar eclipses:

“Whereas some recluses and Brahmans, while living on food provided by the faithful, earn their living by wrong means of livelihood, by such low arts as foretelling ( 1) There will be an eclipse of the moon. (2) There will be en eclipse of the sun. (3) There will be en eclipse of a star (nakshatra)[110]. (4) There will be aberration of the sun or the moon. (5) The sun or the moon will return to its usual path. (6) There will be aberrations of the stars. (7) The stars will return to their usual course[111]. [\q 021/] (8) There will be a fall of meteors[112] (9) There will be a jungle fire[113]. (10) The-re will be an earthquake. (11) The god will thunder. (12-15) There will be rising and setting, clearness and dimness, of the sun or the moon or the stars[114], or foretelling of each of these fifteen phenomena that they will betoken such and such a result.” [...] ‘Gotama the recluse holds aloof from such low arts.’

Was there some scientific understanding of when and why eclipses happen, or were their predictions as inaccurate as any other kind of fortune-telling? Also, why would someone pay to find out whether there will be an eclipse, just to look at it like we do today or was there some other motivation?

Did the British or the Nazis have any tanks during the Battle for Crete? Mainly did the Germans have any Panzer 2s?

I was reading about Thomas Jefferson today and of the six children he had with his wife only two lived into adulthood and he outlived one of them as well. In my own family, my great-grandparents lost two of their seven children during childhood and it seems like it was treated as a sad but normal thing, unlike today. How did people "in the old days" deal with the high infant and child mortality rates?

Hey guys I have to do a paper for my ancient Roman literature course and I chose to explore the idea that Nero wasn't as bad of an Emperor as he is made up to be (especially in Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars). I would appreciate any information and/or books that I could read on the topic. Thanks

Between the battle of Actium in September 31BCE and Octavian acquiring the title of Augustus in 27BCE I've found very little reliable information online. Most sources are vague or absent on details about how Rome and the Roman world reacted; Cleopatra eventually committed suicide and Octavian had Caesarion killed in 30BCE and acquired decisive control of Egypt, but beyond that I haven't found much else. I'm curious what Octavian was up to for those few years in between, how he was maneuvering politically and how he was treated, what powers he had, etc.

I'm interested in pre-medieval Mediterranean book copying.

There's a lot online about the book making process, but not much about the industry around it. Did it rely on companies distributors and stores, or academics and traders? Were there freelance scribes that worked out of their home?

Reading a variety of books on Holocaust denial, I keep coming across vague references to historians who have claimed we should totally ignore it. Lipstadt mentions this in the start of Denying the Holocaust for example. Who has claimed this? Do some academics still support this line of thinking?

I know two major challenges to official dogma (at least in Catholic Europe) arose with the Protestant Reformation and the secular Enlightenment, both after the Renaissance. Even before that, heretical sects arose like the Hussites and Cathars in the West and the Paulicians and Bogomils in the East. But most of those movements were rooted in alternate interpretations of the Bible and Christianity, as was the Protestant Reformation later on. Did anyone from medieval Christian communities actively question Christianity itself?

In medieval Western Europe, neither church nor state had enough organised power to enforce perfect orthodoxy at the time. For example, various folk beliefs hung around from before Christianity, and the Catholic Church didn't seriously try to crack down on those until it got reinvigorated after the Renaissance. Moreover, Catholicism has never emphasised Biblical literalism the way some Protestant denominations do. So I figure that less strict believers didn't get in serious trouble unless they publicly challenged the Church. Again, this mainly applies to Western Europe; if anyone knows about the situation under the Eastern Church, I'd greatly appreciate it.

But my question is if anyone in medieval Christendom questioned the validity of Christianity and the Bible. Obviously, your average peasant would lack the education to know all that much about what he was supposed to believe, but beyond that, is there evidence that people actively doubted the religion itself? Of course, they probably kept those doubts to themselves, and they probably didn't have enough scientific knowledge to abandon belief in the basic concept of God. But you can believe in God without avowing the dogma of an organised faith like Christianity.

On a similar note, did anyone raised Christian convert to another religion? If that did happen, I'd assume it happened within Christian communities in close proximity to Jewish and Islamic communities, or in places and eras where paganism was still ticking around.

We all pretty much know the old legend of Columbus proving the world was round is bunk. Did most learned people think it was just a massive ocean between Europe and Asia? Or were there some that thought something could be there?

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*middle ages dialog For example a man gets shot with an arrow, he pulls it out. Someone asks them what happened? They respond "I got shot" Is this the right way to go about this?

The only reason I can come up with as to why they weren't shot down is that the gliders were unmarked. The idea of not shooting down unmarked planes flying over your fort baffles me, could someone please explain why they weren't shot down?

I understand that in general the Protestant estates of Bohemia were anxious that Ferdinand might take away some of their rights granted by the Letter of Majesty, but according to Martinitz's account the crowd that barged into the council chamber were upset that "His Imperial Majesty had sent to their graces...a sharp letter" which "declared all of our live sand honor already forfeit". What exactly was this letter that got the Protestant estates so spooked they felt they had to toss a few lord regents from the window? Also it seems odd that the letter came from "His Imperial Majesty", meaning Matthias instead of Ferdinand--why would the Emperor be giving orders to the regents of Bohemia instead of the King?

Source for the quotes is "The Thirty Years War: A Documentary History" translated by Tryntje Helfferich

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As I know a lot of European countries were in the wars but I didn't hear Spain before. Is there any specific reason for this?