Before gun manufacturing became mechanized, it appears that specific families ran large workshops for producing gunpowder weapons. How would these weapons be made and repaired without interchangeable parts, especially in the early to mid 1700s?

The common image of Constantinople seems to be of a cosmopolitan trade hub with people from all across the Mediterranean so naturally one assumes there must have been people various faiths living within it's walls.

What was the big obsession with esoteric knowledge in this period? Were the Rosicrucians real? Where did they come from?

This trope can be found everywhere, from Basil Bazarov in Tintin and the Broken Ear to Professor Moriarty in the most recent Sherlock Holmes film - whether a conflict between two third-world despots or a world war, unscrupulous arms manufacturers can be found pulling the strings to ensure that they turn a tidy profit- sometimes even selling to both sides. Did this ever happen in actuality, during the period described?

What were the key reasons that made Nordic Lord's like Harald Bluetooth to give up their faith for Christianity? Even more so local Lords, what was so appealing with Christianity?

What tactics and arguments did the church and the missionaries use? Even if a long process, why would individuals in the Nordic countries abandon Norse faith?

At the end of a recent movie an allied pilot is captured by German soldiers at Dunkirk. Does anyone have information on where these soldiers would have been moved to throughout the war and what their survival rates were like?

Another question is, were there whole "ninja villages" that could get paid enough that everyone in the village could sit around or train full time based entirely on the income from assassination jobs?

I remember something about an amount mentioned in the book Shogun but I don't remember what it was or if it was realistic.

(No, I don't watch Naruro. I hate that show.)

Just as an example, when the Europeans arrived in America. On initial contact, their cultures would be vastly different and their languages would have little to no common roots. But eventually they got around this, and people from both sides could learn the language of the other. How would they go about setting this up? I have often heard that missionaries were charged with learning the languages of other cultures in order to facilitate conversion, was there ever a standardized system for how to learn a completely foreign language?

I was playing the Total War game set around 400 CE as the Aksumites. I was wondering why they, despite their proximity and close ties with the Arabian peninsula, did not get conquered during the Arab conquest of the surrounding areas. Was there an attempt to invade the region that failed?

So I've been wondering this for awhile now. Were they terrified by the site of these lumbering mechanical monstrosities?

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I have heard of US military segregation, British colonial army separation, the obvious racism of the Nazis and the lunacy of the Japanese regarding race but I have never heard any negative racism regarding the Soviets?

He didn't die until 1941 so I'm wondering if he had an opinion on Hitler and nai Germany's aggression.

I was asked this and didn't know how to respond.

I know that it really varies between each country, but I'd like to know the differences specifically on what each country employed mostly and were there any sort of "distinct" specialties or preferences among the variety of countries. book recommendations are welcomed