Hey all. I'm currently in a English Medieval class for school and I've been wondering due to learning about the Danelaw and the Norse raids into England about the native religion of the Anglo Saxons before Christianity. So my question is: how closely related were the beliefs of the Anglo Saxon pagans and the Norse pagans. Were they close enough that Norse raiders would have recognized the early Anglo Saxons as having the same beliefs, or were they very different, only sharing some of the same Gods?

Thanks in advance for the answers, my professor is more focused on English ecclesiastical law than pre-Christian England so he kind of rushed through the early Anglo Saxons.

The mythos surrounding Columbus' first voyage has always interested me, and I've read a good deal on it, and even written about it here. One thing which I've never really been able to find much information on is the specifics of how he, and others, understood the size of the Earth to me in that period! It is well known that the whole "Earth is flat!" thing is a later addition to the story, and most people understood the world to be circular, but much of the argumentation over his theories, as I understand, hinged on his significant under-estimation of the globe's size (or not really globe, as I also recall something about it being pear shaped?). So I'd be quite interested in understanding just what Columbus' theory was there, and what 'sizes' he was coming up against in debate.

Today, there are more than 350 million Arabs, from many nations. As far west as Morocco and as far down south as Somalia. Arabs come in many different colors, and 2 side by side could look like complete opposites. So my question is, how could Arabs, who from my knowledge originate from sparse tribes scattered across the Arabian peninsula(mainly in the south) develop/transform into what they are in modern times?

After this latest shooting and the sudden emphasis on mental health, it got me thinking "why did those go away in the first place"?

Can anyone answer the above? Who were some famous Sikh soldiers who fought for the American side?

This would have been only half a century after the War of 1812, so had British ambitions in the New World died down by that point? Was there a view by the 1860s that white countries should not colonize other white countries? It seems to me that if Britain did want to retake North America, a period of civil war would have been an opportune time to do so.

I understand if they were hunted for meat or fur but I’ve heard of “hunters” just shooting them from the tops of trains and leaving the bodies to rot.

Were they somehow a nuisance or just considered good sport to kill?

My understanding is that the Proto-Sinaitic script is generally now considered to be the parent system of the Phoenician alphabet, and that it borrowed its symbols from Egyptian Hieratic. If I've understood correctly, these were both abjads like the Phoenician alphabet. Does that not make one of them the world's first alphabet?

I’ve read that the Hagia Sophia was used as a stable and a prostitute drank wine while sitting on the Imperial throne. Is any of these claims true?

I was just thinking about California and West Coast rap culture and was curious about the reason that black culture developed so greatly in LA and those areas. I understand the Hispanic aspect of LA and cali as that is rather intuitive. But AFAIK, slavery wasn't allowed in California so that can't be a reason for the amount of Black people in LA. And my limited knowledge leads me to the exoduster movement, but that's just Kansas apparently.

Edit: Or att least, as a race in itself.

If they did were they the one who signaled their army to advance or was it mostly the Taisho who overlooked everything?