I guess this question could also be phrased in two parts: "what was the purpose of, and who occupied, the domus augustana/flavia/tiberiana after the capital of the empire was relocated? Additionally, was it occupied in late antiquity or the early middle ages?

Nowadays it's in ruins but I always wondered how long it took for that process to take place. Like, were Gothic and Roman peasants occupying it after the Gothic Wars ground out masses of the population? Any and all information is welcome, I find this subject absolutely fascinating.

Why do people let some of these great, historic ships be scrapped? It's a disgrace and a shame. I mean most WWII warships met this fate. They deserved better than that.

I should clarify by ancient warfare, I'm referring to Bronze Age warfare

Did he think they were basically poor idiots or was he appreciative of what they did?

I was recently reading his quote "A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon" which seems to imply the former.

Assuming he actually said it of course.

As far as I know it is not the case for Japan as it was in Europe that multiple unrelated families took the same surname. Does this mean that all or at least most Japanese people with the same surname direct descendants of the same individual clan? It seems that way to me but I'm no expert on Japanese history.

If not with the Japanese is there any group for which this is the case?

Hey all,

I have usually read cultural histories or histories of movements. I've typically steered away from Great Men Histories or histories of nations/wars. However, as of late, I've read both Bolivar: American Liberator and Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty and found them both excellent. Both have reignited an interest in national histories. As a result, I'm looking for recommendations of histories of West Africa (particularly Senegal, Guinea, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, Mauritania, or Ghana) or Chile. I'd be interested in reading about Pinochet or West African figures as well.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you!

^

It seems backwards to me that the Union army would allow Confederate imagery and statues to remain, as at least to me, I feel like it would just allow anti Union sentiment to grow and fester. Think how long people were saying "The South will rise again." And even today it feels like there's a North / South divide.

So why didn't Union leadership see fit to try and remove traces of the losing side? In my limited historical knowledge, it seems unlikely any ancient armies / governments would allow the same thing.

Is there a consensus as to when events from the current day transition and become history? I was thinking, at what point will something of significant enough consequence that happened today make it's way into a general history book and be taught about in a high school?

I apologize if this isn't the best spot to ask.

My grandfather told stories of French soldiers who were trying to escape Dunkirk shot dead or deliberately drowned by the British, are there any records of this?

So I do HMB fighting and I want to learn all I can about the arms and armor used jn combat in Western Europe around ~14c-16c. Specifically, I would like to find out as much as I can about how they made and repaired their armor. Id really like to see lots of examples of how they layered, rolled, etc. the plates in various styles of armor. Currently I fight in a homemade coat of plates and splinted arms/legs made from 19ga 316 stainless. Without access to a forge or blacksmithing knowledge I will predominantly stick to constructing armor along the lins of brigandines, coat of plates, and corazzines. So information on easily constructible armors would be ideal.

The Russo-Japanese war can be described as the first modern war lost by a modern civilization. How did the West cope with the fact that a presumed inferiour race defeated a 'white' imperialistic power? Are there any notions of racial slur against the Japanese? Did the west got scared of the 'Yellow Peril? And how did the press describe this Asian culture?

I've read that Egypt was the most powerful civilization in the world for longer than any other. In fact, they lasted so long that we are closer in time to cleopatra than she was to the building of the pyramids. How did they last that long?

Having fulfilled Godwin right in the title, let me just restate the question in a bit more detail.

Before the 1940s, was there a single name that was used universally throughout the Western world to signify a despot or megalomaniac tyrant, in the way Hitler is today? "Universally" means that the recipient could be safely expected to consider a comparison with said person as an insult; various leaders who are seen differently by outsiders vs. their own people (such as Vlad Tepes, if I am not mistaken) or who were hated only by some social classes or movements (e.g., Napoleon or Lenin) are thus excluded. (Note that "but Nazis still love Hitler" doesn't mean Hitler should be excluded. Literally Hitler-loving Nazis are sufficiently fringe that they would rarely ever take a Hitler comparison as a compliment, whereas I can easily imagine a Napoleon comparison being meant as a praise among liberals in the 19th century.)

Caligula? Henry VIII? Ivan the Terrible?

I have recently begun watching the BBC series World at War. Episode 5 discusses how Stalin pulled his Siberian forces away from the east when his master spy in Tokyo told him that "Japan had its eyes elsewhere." The show didn't go into any further detail, but it seemed like a foreboding notion that Stalin had some idea of what Japan wanted to do.

Am I reading too hard into this? I've heard some conspiracy theories that FDR knew about the attacks beforehand, has such a theory been espoused about Stalin? Or is there another explanation for why Stalin was so confident about pulling his Siberian forces towards the German front?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but why would it not be possible just go round a shield wall and attack the flank? Take the Battle of Hastings. William I first had cavalry so he surely could have outmanoeuvred Harold Godwinson's shield wall, but he famously was unable to break through and would have likely lost if his opponents hadn't messed up and broken ranks. The only thing I can think of is if the shield wall completely surrounds the unit, but then that's leaving you open to being surrounded which doesn't seem like it would be a good strategy. Am I completely missing something here?

I'm reading Bertrand Russell, and he uses a lot of Greek characters and formal logic symbols in his text, which makes me very curious to know how writers managed to work things like that into manuscripts before handing them in to publishers if they only had their respective language's typewriters to work with. I poked around on Google, but the only things that come up are people discussing different European countries who use the Latin alphabet and the varied standards in machinery required for necessary accents and diacritics, but most older British and American typewriters I've seen or know of don't really have any extra-standard-English bells and whistles like that incorporated into the machinery.

Did they have special advanced typewriters for authors who work in fields with more niche character needs, did they just handwrite the relevant notes on the pages for their editor, or is there a simpler explanation I'm missing?

I see claims like this fairly regularly when works touch on pre-roman Germanic cultures but never really see a source. These notions also seem like something which would significantly impact the functioning of society yet such impact is never elaborated upon. Are these just misconceptions that ended up on popular consciousness or am I missing something?