[deleted]

Another term I often see in 19th and early 20th century novels is 'plane tree', but I haven't been able to find out what they are.

I'm reading Polybius again (I'd forgotten just how gripping he is) specifically the first Roman landing on the shores of Africa in about 261 BC in the 1st Punic War. The Romans laid siege to and captured many Carthaginian towns and won significant victories first at sea in the battle of Ecnomus and then besting the Carthaginian troops on land. The consul Gaius Atilius Regulus now had the advantage and the chances are he might have taken Carthage itself. The problem as he saw it was that it would have taken too long. New consuls were about to be elected, one or both would be in Africa before he could take the city, he would lose his command and the glory of any victory would belong to them rather than him. Thus he decided that a speedy end to the war through negotiations would mean that he could claim the credit for subduing Carthage with a treaty that among other harsh conditions included her abandoning Sardinia and Sicily and handing over her navy. Things would not turn out as he hoped but the point is that the attack on Carthage was deferred because of politics.

This seems to me a terrible flaw in Roman governance. How many other bad decisions had been made simply because a consul acted hastily because a new consul was about to take office? Did the Romans recognize the inherent danger in this? Were any precautions ever taken to prevent consuls from acting foolishly in the last weeks of their consulate simply because of their own vanity? Did any Roman or Greek writers ever discuss this potential problem?

I have heard some people making this claim but I don't know much about Slavery to make a comparative analysis. So, is this really true or just bad history?

Having recently watched Goodbye Lenin (great movie, watch it if you haven'), I want to know how accurate the movie was. How did East Berliners and Germans adapt to the western lifestyle? Was the movie and its quirks all accurate?

Thank you!

I would assume the US would warn it's allies about the bomb drop to avoid friendly casualties. Were the locations chosen because they knew no allies were on the ground, and therefore they wouldn't need to warn the allies? Or did the US send out a warning about the power and destruction about to be unleashed?

I've heard that humans originated from Africa. Ok, then what? How did they get to all the other places? Is this a specific branch of study? Where can I learn about this?

For instance, I'd like to read a biography on Churchill. Google will have you believe there are no more than about 10, whereas I'm sure the actual total is closer to 100 (correct me if I'm wrong). The same ones keep cropping up. No doubt they are the "best" but sheer comprehensiveness can obviously be an issue. 1000 pages is no jaunt. I recently chanced upon Sebastian Haffner's interesting looking <200 page bio purely because he's the author of one of the great works on Hitler. But what if he didn't write The Meaning of Hitler? Would I have found it?

Thx.

I think I'm talking about the World Wide Web rather than the Internet in general, but still: when browsers that could be used on computers were first developed, how did the scientists behind it get the average person to start using it? How did you even learn about the Internet and how to get started? Were there awkward tutorial manuals?

I will be writing my dissertation on these two conflicts, focusing primarily on the similarities and differences in the counter-insurgency methods used. I was hoping for some suggestions as my university's library is somewhat lacking. Thanks in advance.

[deleted]

In The Warrior Diet written by Ori Hofmekler in 2002, He States that Spartans and Romans had diets consisting of eating meals in a 4-hour window sometime during the day. Is this true?

Two of my deceased great grandparents always said that they were in Auschwitz, however I recently found out that neither of them were tattooed. They apparently used to say that they weren't tattooed because they were sent to Auschwitz so late. From what I understand they weren't in Auschwitz for long before it was liberated.

Have there been accounts of people being sent to Auschwitz so close to liberation that they weren't tattooed? If so, at what point do we know they stopped tattooing prisoners, and why did they stop?

Please post sources if you can

Edit: My great grandparents were both Jewish, my great grandmother was 16 and my great grandfather was 18, give or take a year.

Just curious to see if there is any record of where the stone may have gone, especially after reading about the Tuilleries palace and how its ruins were used to build a Corsican villa in the 1880's.

More specifically, roughly 13th century or earlier.

I am creating a setting in the Dying World genre in which mysterious caves exist and are explored, and I want to try to make the equipment that these Cavers use realistic to the setting's technological level.

So, are there any examples or accounts from the 13th century or earlier of climbing and the like, in which specialized equipment was used? My google-fu is failing me, so I've resorted to asking here.

[deleted]

I'd be most interested in knowing about Iceland, since I've been reading through the family sagas and it show up all the time. There was one passage in particular that caught my attention in Gisla Saga, where a woman describes a thrall (a war-captive, who she brought to her husband's household when they married) as her foster-father - not something I was expecting.

So how did fostering work, exactly? What were the goals? What kind of relationships would people have with their foster families?

I started watching a BBC documentary on youtube about the explorer Ibn Battuta and realized that they had had to turn of the comment section and like bar. Probably everyone started a flame war over politics or something. But this made me wonder, are BBC history documentaries good sources? Are they non biased, do they give out much information, are they interesting? If there are any BBC documentaries that are particularly good or particularly bad, please mention them!

Hi! I've had an interest in history ever sense i was young. One thing I've NEVER been able to completely figure out was the difference between Fascism and Nationalism.

If my current understanding correct then Fascism is "Our race is the best" while Nationalism is "Our country is the best." I just wanted to make sure I had the right idea in head for future conversations.

Watching witnesses talk about 60's era serial killers they say (as a society) "No idea had occurred it would be a serial killer, because nothing like that happened before." And many people talk about an innocence in the early days of mega publicized serial killers. The idea of serial killers wasn't new, because of Jack the Ripper and some others that have made the books. But this type of crime does seem to be more prevalent in the last century and this one. Is there an ignored history of ancient serial killers? Is it is a recent epidemic-if so, what would cause serial killers to develop in mass? Do serial killers develop in certain societal circumstances (times of excess, drought, political strife, etc?)?

It has always bothered me how someone whose claim to fame is living in exile from his homeland where he claims the right to be a theocratic monarch. Generally, when it's closer to home, we tend not to be very fond of those. The other example of a similarly treated character I can think of is Ruhollah Khomeini, who received a lot of exposure in France in the 70's.

And yet with the Iranian Revolution fresh in memory, the 14th Dalai Lama was (or remained? I'm assuming he already had some prominence) lionized as an intellectual and embodiment of wisdom.

How did this happen? Was it the trope of the "Eastern Mystic" run amok? Was (is) he just that compelling as a character? Was it part of any kind of larger resistance movement aimed at China? Have there been further similar aspirants who have been treated this way?

I hope this makes sense as a historical inquiry. Thanks!