I've read that shakos were supposed to offer protection from sword cuts to the head (in I assume the very rare event that happened) or intimidate the enemy, but they were universally considered impractical and replaced by the the mid 19th. Also if they were meant for either of those things why wasn't something like that standard for infantry in the 18th century?

So many other countries in the area were taken over by the English or French (or, in the case of Indonesia, the Dutch and the Portuguese). Why did Thailand withstand, when neighbors like Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma and so on?

I have liv'd long enough: my way of life  
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;  
And that which should accompany old age,  
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,  
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,    
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,  
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

I'm having a difficult time understanding who the English longbow men were in the period of approximately 1300-1500.

Some particular questions:

1. How and why did a longbow man come to develop this particular skill? My understanding is that mastering the longbow was a difficult task requiring lots of practice from an early age. But, I gather that longbow men were not related to nobility (rather mostly sons of farmers?), so I wouldn't think they have a lot of free time. If they're not hunting (and I thought this was basically a royal prerogative), then what's the utility for someone, especially a farmer's son, to spend a lifetime learning this difficult to master skill? I wouldn't think even relatively well to do farmers would have the time and inclination to practice archery just for the fun of it.

2. How did a longbow man come to be part of a field army and what was his motivation to fight? My understanding is that English armies of this time period were not mostly professional armies. Would a recruiter come around to villages looking to enlist longbow men and people voluntarily enlist? If so, why would they voluntarily enlist for dangerous duty far away from home and family? (for pay? adventure? opportunity for plunder? patriotism?) Or, perhaps, they were obligated to serve as feudal tenants of some noble or well to do gentry? Were they basically conscripted into service by some royal recruiter?

3. How did a longbow man earn a living when he wasn't serving in an army? I understand some might become a mercenary or perhaps a full time, professional soldier in the employ of the king or some noble. But, it's my understanding that the majority were not professional, full-time soldiers. If that's the case, what did they do for a living for the 90+% of the time that they were not on campaign?

Pretty much as the title says. I have been reading about Utilitariaism lately and the theory is fascinating but I have a fairly good knowledge of British Political history yet can't immedietly think of any actual examples. Perhaps there simply aren't any? Or maybe my understanding of the practical implications is wrong and policies like I'm imagining simply wouldn't exist?

All help appreciated, Thank you

boop

Suppose I were a warrior in a Saxon warlord's retinue. How did I achieve my position? What was my life like? My social status? Was I wealthy? Will my children likely be warriors of similar status? Am I virtually guaranteed to be male, or did women achieve high martial status as well? Did it make a difference if I was a continental Saxon vs. a British Saxon?

This question was inspired by Nolan’s Dunkirk, so I mean a pilot that would have been captured towards the beginning of the war.

How would they have travelled to Germany? Would they likely have survived, and stayed put in the camp for the duration of the war? Were there any Allied rescue attempts, or many successful escapees?

The third stanza goes as follows:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

A listener of NPR's 1A said today that with "slaves", the song refered to black slaves that fought with the British to earn their freedom. However, online I found that it referred to the kidnapping of sailors to serve in their ships.

To whom is the word "slave" referring to?

This must have been addressed here but I can't find anything.

From my reading in this area, these stones weighed 6-10 tons for the lower layers, and 1-2 tons for the upper layers. The pictures that we have show workers dragging stones on wooden sledges. Moving a 1 ton stone would probably take dozens or even hundreds of workers, depending on the friction and angle of the incline. My understanding is that most scholars believe that the Egyptians built dirt ramps, which were used to drag the stones up to the final location on the pyramid.

But I see some fundamental problems with the dirt ramp theory. I think there are two possible ways to do this, both of which have major challenges:

1. Spiral ramps that wrap around the pyramid. The problem that I see here is that it seems physically impossible to pull a sledge around a corner. As you get closer and closer to the corner, there is less and less room for the laborers to pull on the ropes, which means you can't use your full labor force to keep dragging the sledge up the dirt ramp. There's a couple of engineering options here, you can build ramps or wooden scaffolding to stick out past the corner, so the workers can keep pulling forward until the stone itself is at the corner. Or, you can have some type of giant wheel (similar to a capstan) that allows the workers to pull at a 90 degree angle and lets the ropes wrap around the pyramid. The first option would take a prohibitive amount of dirt (or a knowledge of scaffolding that's not supported in the written records). The second option would require the Egyptians to understand wheels and pulleys, which I thought that they didn't use.

2. Build one giant ramp that leads all the way to the top of the pyramid, in one straight shot. With the fairly gentle slope required by the sledges, I think this ramp would be ridiculously long. I don't know the exact angle of inclination that can be supported here, but modern trains max out at 2-3% and it's rare to see an ordinary paved road at more than 7-8%. If you have a 5% ramp angle, this means that the 140m pyramid would need a ramp that's almost 3 km long! That seems ridiculous to me. Even if they had enough workers to support a 10% ramp, this is a 1.5 km ramp, which is an incredible amount of dirt (far larger than the volume of the pyramid itself).

I have an engineering background, not a historian, so I understand the physical challenges far better than the history. Can somebody please weigh in on how this was actually physically possible?

From what I'm reading, it seems like humans were in Australia around 55.000 years ago. That's not just a little, but a lot before anything else, including coasts along the way, like India. Or Madagascar. Or pretty much anything else.

Other than aliens, do we have any idea how or why this happened?

I can't recall ever hearing about German colonies.

Why weren't they on a colonial bandwagon, or if they were, is there some explanation for their somewhat lackluster presence there?