I quickly read that Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas was sent by Caliph Uthman, and the Chinese Emperor Gaozong received him and commemorated a mosque in Muhammad's honor.

I read this on Wikipedia, so i'm looking to get some confirmation on how authentic this is, and any more depth to the subject.

The majority of what we hear about the US Navy is focused on their battles with the IJN. I however noticed that on D-Day, the US Navy had a presence of battleships, destroyers, and cruisers supporting the shore bombardment of the coastline and cleared corridors for troop transports.

Did these US ships ever have any large confrontations with either navies? The Royal Navy seems much more prominent in this theatre.

When I try to read about this I seem to always get these kind of canned responses praising the technical marvels of the painting but not an explanation of when it was first widely recognized as such and thus so highly valued.

I know most famously Van Gogh's art wasn't widely appreciated until at least a decade after his death, and people who saw his works before then weren't inherently awe struck as they claim to be now so clearly the famousness of a painting has to do with more than purely its technical merits. Does it just catch on like an Internet meme?

OP is not a pedo btw, I ask this because I was reading the KJV bible (I'm mormon and it's sunday) and I came across 1 Corinthians 6:9 and it says:

"9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind," (1 Corinthians 6:9 KJV)

I wondered what it meant by "nor effeminate" (Because women are effeminate, obviously) and it had a cross reference next to 'effeminate' and the cross reference column says that an alternate translation from the Greek of 'effeminate' was 'Catamites'.

I didn't know what a Catamite was so I googled it and apparently it was the term, in the context of ancient greece, given to a boy who was used by a man for the purpose of anal sex.

I then learned that the exact term is called "pederasty" and that it was common in many parts of the ancient world and that it was even involved in Greco Paganism via a boy named "Ganymede", quoting from the mythology:

"[Ganymedes] was the loveliest born of the race of mortals, and therefore the gods caught him away to themselves, to be Zeus' wine-pourer, for the sake of his beauty, so he might be among the immortals."

— Homer, Iliad, Book XX, lines 233-235.

All of this made just messed with me so hard, How was this practice considered so normal? How was it so normal that even had a mythological person that was a little boy used for butt-sex?

I get that the Bible isn't so much better about stuff we in the [current year] consider revolting:

• young child marriages between men and girls

• incest, such as two daughters getting their old father drunk so they can have sex with him so that they may "preserve his seed"

• stoning people to death

• polygamy (though being mormon, my recent ancestors participated in it lol)

• deity approved genocide

So on and so forth, But to me, I just can't imagine why the cornholing of little boys was considered a normal practice, so normal that even Zeus practices it, when we today view it as abuse and disgusting

Explain to me the logic behind how they viewed this practice then and now, and how this practice evolved to appear revolting and deplorable to the majority of people now?

More generally, what effect did photography have on painting? How did painters react?

I was reading recently about a princess of the Japanese Imperial House who would have to renounce her status and title because she was marrying outside the nobility.

However, I was under the impression that the old nobility of Japan was done away with after WWII?

So surely anyone she chooses to marry is a 'commoner'. Or are the old noble houses still considered to be nobility in all but official title?

I'm writing a story in which the main character is a strict vegetarian (what you might call vegan today). And I'm wondering, what might they have with them to eat on longer journeys made by foot? By longer journeys I mean when there they might be in the middle of nowhere for days or even weeks. I realise people probably weren't as aware of nutritional needs back then, but I have no idea what would have been practicable.

Why exactly has the concept of virtue lost so much popularity in Western society? I'm referring to the pagan, Aristotelian virtues adopted by many Christian thinkers (e.g. the cardinal virtues) as well as the general concept of "respectable sensibilities" that were especially prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries (at least as I perceive them to have been as a lay person). Was this really just a matter of declining religiosity? If so, would it be because these virtues were viewed to be part-and-parcel with religion?

I'm genuinely curious because I personally think the concept of aretaic virtue, at least, is a pretty helpful one, but my question isn't meant to have a normative implication that views this (self-perceived) historical shift as necessarily bad.

If so, was only one type of ink used?

For instance, hobbies such as reading, board games, video games, art, etc. are typical of a kind of individual which prefers to be left alone. I'm not making declarations about this group of people, but I think we can agree that this kind of concept is a 'thing.' Put simply, was this a 'thing' back for pre-modern people?

In the classic medieval era, we see armies composed of various different types of troops. To specify my question, how uniform were these troops? Would you have a two-handed swordsman fight beside someone with a sword and shield? Were troops assigned what weapons to wield or was it more up to personal choice? How did this change as nations moved towards professional militaries and larger standing armies?

I just read Juliet Barker's Agincourt. I found it fascinating, particularly the details about how the English army was raised and paid for. Not being a historian, and knowing that pop culture science books are often flawed, I am curious about how this book is viewed by specialists in the field.

How accurate is Juliet Barker's Agincourt? Are there any major debates she left out or glossed over?

I know that it is possible to make armour Bullet proof as the Ned Kelly gangs armour was able to stop bullets but are there historical examples of similar attempts to make amours that could withstand bullets. Were the armours of Cuirassiers and harquebusiers bulletproof?

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In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell asserts that

In particular the Communist Party, with Soviet Russia behind it, had thrown its whole weight against the revolution. It was the Communist thesis that revolution at this stage would be fatal and that what was to be aimed at in Spain was not workers' control, but bourgeois democracy.

(Chapter 5)

Do we have any documentary evidence from the USSR side about their desired outcome in the civil war? If so, how does it line up with Orwell's interpretation here? (I know that Homage is not regarded as a particularly reliable historical overview, so perhaps this is a case where Orwell is "not even wrong?")

Hi.

I've read a story in a paper of someone who had to "hack" his radio in Bulgaria during WWII so that he would be able to listen to "non-local" channels outside Bulgaria.

If anyone has any information about the subject I would thank him very much.

Thanks.