Also, what happened to them when Japan surrendered? Were they placed in POW camps or just relieved of duty?

I just realized that without conveniences like jars of baby foods and powdered dried foods, we'd be individually responsible for making sure babies were able to eat solid foods at some point in their development, despite not being able to chew. My first thought is that mothers would chew the food before feeding, or cook the food until it broke down? Do we wean babies differently/more early now that solid food is more conveniently accessible? I appreciate any related information.

I've heard a lot of conflicting answers about this question. My Russian History Professor argued that Alexander II was scaling back on reforms when he was assassinated. However, I've heard other sources argue that he was trying to get a constitutional government set up when he died. What are the facts on this?

Not only that, but why 12 months? Why make some 30 days, some 31 and one 28 OR 29? There are 364 days in a year. Perfectly divisible by 14 giving an even sweep of 26 days per month. Why not make life easier?

And what about time? Who decided how long a second is or how many seconds should fit into a minute and an hour to make up a day? We know that a day has 24 hours but TECHNICALLY, the time it takes the earth to make one rotation is 23hours 56minutes 4seconds (hence the leap year). That means there are 86164 seconds every day. Why make it such an awkward number? Why not just decide that the second is a length of time that fits as a nice round number into a day. Make it just a little longer so that there are 85000 seconds in a day; then, if 85 seconds make up up a minute, 40 minutes make up an hour, then a whole day would be EXACTLY 25hours and there would be no need for a leap year. Not to mention that if we stuck to the 14 months of 26 days per year, everything would be far less complicated.

But back to the original question. Who "invented" the months of the year and when?

The wiki article on it points to early examples of certain nightclubs having swing-dancing competitions, or big-band performances appearing in films like The Mask, but these seem more like symptoms than causes to me. For a few years (it feels like it was 1997-98, in my mind, but I'm sure it lasted for longer), you could hardly go anywhere without hearing the Cherry-Poppin' Daddies or Brian Setzer or one of the other groups that crept in on this. Even the success of something like Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5" seems like it was on the tail-end of this as an associated phenomenon.

But why then? What made the mid-90s the right time for this weird, short-lived renaissance to occur?

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I was reading about the Dutch Golden Age on Wikipedia and it says Antwerp was arguably the most important port in the world during the Eighty Years’ War. I’m wondering why the most important port in the world was in a country that wasn’t even independent and not in a more powerful country, such as Spain, England or France.

For example,was there any sort of metric system proposed for time where there were 25 hours in a day, with 50 minutes per hour/seconds per minute?

Not sure if this kind of question is allowed but since I have to write a paper about Custer I want to get a sense of how historians keep personal morals in mind. Pretty much everything he did in the Indian Wars would be considered war crimes by today's standards but he was lauded. Do we keep analysis relative to the values of the time?

More broadly is this an issue in academic history?

Were enslavements of Natives attempted at all?

Countries such as France and Sweden had estate parliaments. In France, commoners (everyone outside of the nobility and church) made up the third estate, while in Sweden, these were divided into the 3rd and 4th estate. How did one attend these assemblies? I'm assuming there was farmers present, how were they picked? Was it simply first come first serve, or was there some kind of process already established?

What I mean by that is, how long after the war did it take until schools began to adopt the war as a common subject to teach about in history classes, and vice versa with World War II. This isn't necessarily restricted to just American schools. I want to assume (perhaps correctly?) that by the time the second war was raging, the first was being taught about in schools.

Do YOU like threads with lots of visible comments? Have YOU ever started a post with, "I can't believe I can finally write an answer here?" Have YOU ever desperately refreshed the page waiting for the first upvote on your epic 4-part response that doesn't actually answer OP's question but is just so cool? Sounds like you're an excellent recruit for the great Stickied Daily Feature Thread Reformation of 2018!

Starting this week, you'll notice that our daily feature threads like today's Sunday Digest will undergo some changes. In brief, the new schedule:

• Sunday Digest
• Monday Methods (alternating weeks)
• Tuesday Trivia (alternating weeks)
• Short Answers to Simple Questions (weekly!)
• Thursday Reading & Research
• Friday Free-for-All
• Saturday Spotlight

(1) Short Answers to Simple Questions has been a great success so far. It will now be our regular Wednesday feature, every week! Those of you who might be nervous about writing a long answer or simply don't have time, this is a great place to jump in and help our community out on your time scale, at your comfort level!

(2) Theory Thursday must sacrifice its alliteration to become Thursday Reading & Research. We envision this feature as a place to discuss new or new-to-you discoveries and in-progress research excitement--essentially, a combination of the current Wednesday What's New, Theory Thursday, and Saturday Reading & Research threads. This is the go-to place to ask for book recommendations and share reviews.

(3) Most importantly: by popular demand, Saturday's feature is now Saturday Spotlight. A lot of people--commenters, flairs, even mods--have floated the idea of "BlogHistorians": offering users the chance to outright post a short essay on a topic, without the veneer of a question to answer. The mod team has always deferred to our mission statement of Ask Historians. However! The sneakily enterprising AH community has done it anyway. Our current Friday and Saturday threads are filled with amazing full-blown essays that don't deserve to get mixed in with news and gossip.

So we listened! Saturday Spotlight is your new home for original, unprompted work. There are NO scheduled posts or authors or themes. We really hope those of you who work on topics that don't get much visibility on AH can use this as a way to dive in and even inspire more interest and questions. This thread is sorted by random, too--no worries about racing the clock to post; we want everyone to get an equal chance at top visibility!

(4) Sunday Digest, Monday Methods, and Tuesday Trivia continue as currently, with MM and TT alternating weeks.

The mod team is excited to see where the new features take us. We especially hope that some of you who haven't quite found your niche at AskHistorians will see it here.

See you in the stickies!

I may just be cynical but I don’t believe goodwill is enough of a reason, especially as the Ottomans were having their own problems as well as being very far from Ireland.

Russia put a lot of money and resources into trying to promote the spread of communism but it was never explained why.

It’s about the imperialism of africa and how one of two tribes who made up most of the population killed the other.

It had a title that really grabbed you like First they had us do something terrible to our family

I just can’t remember.....

I found some online genealogy stuff that claims he moved to Haiti and had some kids, but it seemed super sketchy and the kids then vanish into thin air.