I met someone called SipahiWarrior123 on a German history forum, he has proven himself particularly by a display of profound knowledge on archeology of America as well as culture and mythology of Native Americans. Despite his expertise, he sometimes makes some doubtable claims, like the origin of the Native Americans from shipwrecked Turks, could you give evidence for or against the following claims or put them in a historical context.

1.) Knighthood originated from Islamic countries.

2.) There was technology inside the watches made by Muslims, which are being used in modern aviation and space travel.

3.) The ship type in which Columbus sailed to the Americas was adopted by the Spanish from an Arabic vessel.

4.) When black powder was adopted from the Chinese, it had no much use for firearms. It was not until Muslims developed 27 of the 29 different black powder types and therefore improved it, that it could be applied for military purpose.

5.) Although the irrigation systems of the Muslims were hundreds of years old, they were technologically modern until the 20th century.

6.) Muslims invented torpedoes.

7.) The Muslims invented siege weapons, comparable to modern tanks, wherein they were safe from stones, arrows and flammable pitch.

8.) The Osman had the best artillery.

9.) The impact of the Osman cannon balls are comparable to the impact of modern 120mm tank cannon, even though weighting only 1-3 Kg.

10.) At the time of the besiege of Constantinopel, the Muslim Osman had the biggest cannon ever built, it could fire a cannon ball of 600 Kg weight.

11.) The Muslims were leading in Medicine, while the Christian Europeans only got from them medical books which have been already outdated for 800 years.

12.) It has been discovered, that Galileo and DaVinci didn't invent anything themselves, they only translated the Muslim sources containing the technologies wrongly claimed by them.

13.) At the time of peace negotiations between the Muslims and Europeans, a science centre was built in Sicily where the Muslims shared their knowledge, but the Church considered it devil's work.

14.) The tolerance of the Osman empire was the reason for its demise. They allowed non-muslims to take political posts and replaced the original muslim Sipahi with the mainly non-muslim Janitshars. This led to the undercut of the power and the Sultan became nothing but a Marionette of the Non-believers and therefore the Osman empire declined.

That's a lot of points, but I hope some of you can share their knowledge to give evidence for or against some of the claims or but them into a bigger context.

The distance is fairly small, given the size of the US at the time.

• What were fortifications and defenses like?
• Did people live in between the two capitals? Were there settlements or towns?
• How often did efforts take place to infiltrate or assault an opposing capital?

When reading basic WW2 history, particularly in things like Middle and High school textbooks, I recall reading about how the Russian winter was one of the major reasons for the failure of the USSR. But is that really true? I know that the Russian winters are very cold, but did they really stop the German army in its tracks? If so, what was the problem? Lack of winter equipment? The inability of German tanks and vehicles to progress amongst the snow? And if the Russian winter wasn't as massive a factor in the German failure as suggested, how big was its impact?

I'm taking a class on the history of India and South Asia which has a large paper component. I'm going to do mine (hopefully) on the development and spread of Hinduism throughout Asia. That said, I will probably narrow it down as I work towards it, as I have several months. I would find it very helpful if people could recommend good overviews to get me started and a few more specific books for later on.

Many modern depictions of executions show a cheering, laughing, jubilant crowd, who find pleasure and satisfaction from the execution. Is this depiction backed up by any historical evidence? Is this historical evidence trustworthy? (As in it isn't embellished by the executioners soas to make the person seem more hated than they actually were). Was it universal, or were they only really happy when killing people that everyone hated such as murderers and such?

Anything?

Is there a documented time the play was played and it was considered to be the best time it was ever played to this day?

As in X, Y, Z actors played it in day/month/year at place and it was praised by the people and critics to be the best one ever played.

Why is it that a powerful Russian state based out of Kiev never re-emerged after the collapse of the Mongol empire despite having been the most prominent Rus' city prior to that?

Also why it is that Kiev was sacked during the Mongol conquest and yet other large cities such as Moscow and Novgorod managed to escape that fate?

I know that Nazi Germany had a 'German Physics', which rejected certain advances, especially those considered "Jewish Physics", which of course meant a number of fairly important advances such as Einstein and relativity, but was there a similar movement in any Communist countries during the 20th century to reject "Capitalist Physics" and advance an ideological pseudoscience within the field?

I know early cavalry didn't do proper charges instead opting for the old jab and run, but when was a jousting type, the lance tucked under the arm, charge invented and when did it become popular?

I've read much about the preparations for the coup and how it unfolded, but very little on what would have followed once it had been successful. It's quite interesting, as the coup leaders would have had to deal with a variety of problems such a ethnic conflicts, a collapsing economic system that they would have struggled to fix, and a restive population that rejected their communist ideology whole-heartedly and would certainly reject them. I've been reading a lot about the collapse of the soviet union as until recently I thought it was mostly peaceful and didn't realise the number deaths involved. Thanks in advance

I remeber learning in high school about reaganomics and his big cuts on taxes, especially for the wealthiest. Republicans adore him and most (such as hannity, just heard him say this on his show) say it created thousands of jobs, led to actually having more money to spend and all that. Democrats hate him and say he led to massive debt and the future bankruptcy of social security. In a neutral, non party-affiliated point of view, an economic pov perhaps, were reaganomics postive or negative for the US economy? What long term and short term consequences did they have?

Did Stephen King create it, or was he borrowing on older tradition?

Hi all,

I hope this doesn't violate the rules of the subreddit, as I know this isn't a direct question, but I am looking for help from good historians for a source I once came across in this subreddit. I will try to describe it best I can.

I remember seeing it in a discussion about the Confederate states' reasons for secession. Basically it was a table of each state and their own independent declarations of secession. More importantly, it highlighted the specific bits where slavery was explicitly mentioned as a reason for secession, helping to support the notion that the Civil War was about slavery. The source was online (a website somewhere, not a journal or book).

If you're familiar with this source, or something similar, please provide it. Thank you.

If the Trojan War happened it would have occurred in about 1200 BC which would only place it about 400 or 450 years before it was written down by Homer in the 8th century. That’s not very long at all. That’s only about the distance from us to Hernan Cortes or Henry VIII which we still clearly “remember” as a society and no one questions that the Romans had a roughly accurate recollection of their early history hundreds of years before it was written down. Even the Old Testament of the Bible is generally accepted as having some historical basis.

Why then do I often read historians who seem totally convinced that even the rough outline of the Iliad as documenting a long and costly war between the Mycenaeans and Trojans is not “historical evidence” that it happened? The Homeric epics seem like such a vast and complex and specific collection of stories (even to the point of listing a bunch of specific genealogies) that I don’t see how they could have simply come from nothing.

Seeing as they were both regions that had experienced prolonged Roman rule and Romanization at least in some areas, I don't understand why Gaul became the Romance language France, but Britannia was overtaken by the Germanic Anglo-Saxon.