I've always assumed it was pronounced with a soft c, like mass-a-don. But here recently I've heard it pronounced with a hard c like mack, Total War and Dan Carlin.

Also, would Alexander have called his empire Greece or Macedon or something else entirely? Obviously he'd still use regional names but what would you call the whole thing?

I've read a lot about the Revolutionary War, found it very interesting. George Washington is lionised and always comes off somewhat larger than life, even at the outset when he is first appointed. He seems to be held in almost awe-like respect right out of the gate.

So what made him such a powerful figure before being appointed by Congress?

Kind of interested in the whole shebang. How you would get a phone on a farm in the middle of Kansas. Before pay phones would people go to the post office to make calls similar to how telegrams worked. Was it by the minute, by the call, did long distance cost more, etc.?

Thanks.

Edit: When/how were all phones put on the same network in terms of the continental US? Were their separate networks and if so for how long before that was solved for? I'm assuming things worked in 'hops' between networks that were connected in a chain, so then if one in the middle went down calls would cease between NY and LA but still function between NY and Boston?

E2: Not really asking about how it was popularized and the fairs/expositions that they had, more like the immediate period after that once service started people available and provided. I've seen documentaries on that, maybe a better phrasing would have been to ask how the earliest companies functioned in the first few decades of operation once they had already formed, their business model, etc.

Was there already a network of freeways that were repurposed/updated/renumbered to be incorporated as interstates, or did the entire system need to be built from scratch?

I'm currently writing a research project, over halfway through on the aforementioned topic, and was wondering what different perspectives/interpretations there were over how WW2 was won. For me, the research has made me side a lot more towards to the camp that strategic bombing was perhaps the among the largest factors in the defeat of Nazi Germany. What do you think?

As part of this weeks theme, I was wondering if I could ask a bit of a historiography-oriented question. I'm wondering why historians might divide Africa into Sub-Saharan areas and not-Sub-Saharan areas. How does emphasizing this distinction help people understand/communicate history? Additionally, can drawing a line between 'the Africas' create confusion by imagining a (naturally influenced, but artificially designated) separation between parts of African history?

I was just talking with one of my gf's friend's and somehow the subject turned to Marie Antoinette. She was telling me that she learned in her art history class that Antoinette was very distant from her kids and went crazy from syphilis. She was basically saying she was a horrible woman who kind of deserved what she got. The extent of my knowledge of this woman is from listening to Mike Duncan's series on the French revolution, but from that I got the impression that she was very caring towards her children. Also, I have never heard about her going crazy. The podcast made her seem like a pretty sympathetic character. I can't find anything online that backs up what she is saying. She is telling me that I just learned it from a podcast and she learned it from a college professor so she is without a doubt right. So is there any truth to what she was telling me? Was she anywhere near as bad as my gf's friend is claiming?

Hope it doesn't sound stupid, but I have no idea if the area was populated at all during that time. Asking for the area of New Enland and the areas north of it.

If there were no coastal settlements, were there inland settlements? If no, where there nomadic peoples?

Can the population size in the area be estimated?

From everything I've seen and read about WW2, Italy was always the one made out to be bumbling and inept. What was the reasoning for this? Were they seen that way during WW2 or was it only after the war they were seen that way?

The name we know a war by today is often very descriptive of what the war was, like the "Thirty Years War" and "the War of Spanish Succession". When does names like this start to be used? Before or just after the peace treaty is signed, or decades later? And is it common for the name to be changed later?

Did any diseases endemic to the Americas ever reach Europe?

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