What I'm specifically curious about is the establishment of modern combat units made entirely of foreign personnel.

What was their intended purpose? Were they just a way to lump up any foreigner who came to fight for a country or did they actively recruit in foreign countries? Did they operate in any particularly different ways?

The French Foreign Legion is obviously the most famous one but is there a difference between it and the ones that exist or have existed in other countries' armies?

I’m going to get a tattoo of a F4U Corsair from WWII and I was thinking about putting some bombers in the sky in the background.

For historical accuracy I wanna know which variant of the Corsair I should use, and or what kind of bombers… if any. I know some were used during the Korean War too.

I was thinking maybe B-24s for the bombers but I don’t know if that would be historically accurate.

like to preface this by saying that i know very little about ancient egypt and nearly nothing about the great sphinx.

I read a very brief passage on the sphinx and learned the word itself is a greek term and that we arent sure what exactly it was actually originally called and it got me wondering. What is the earliest known reference to the sphinx in history or are there even any? Was it ever forgotten and rediscovered, did this happen more than oncw? Did it inspire any myths or legends from ancient history.

Every time I read anything about North American natives, their names are literally translated to English, and I do not understand it. Why Native leaders are called "Spotted Elk", "Sitting Bull" or "Long Horn", seeing how nobody calls, say, tlatoani Motecuzoma "Speaker Who Frowns Like Lord" and if I asked here about Roman emperors called "Lame" and "Little Boot" most people wouldn't know what the hell am I talking about.

I know they had bows for hunting but I've never seen or heard a source that talks about vikings using bows in warfare, why not?

What is the 'long fourteenth century'?

I keep seeing it referenced, and yet I am not managing to find a definition, or to find out why it's considered to be a useful unit of time to think about.

Why did the 3 furthest out planets get elements named after them, and not any other? Or is it the gods the elements are named after?

At my college (Sociology, subject: Religion and Society), I have chosen Ashoka the Great as my topic. The emphasis is religion, especially through "sociological lens". Do you have any sources you recommend, maybe links?

All help greatly appreciated, thank you!

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We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. Brief and short answers are allowed but MUST be properly sourced to respectable literature. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: Women's rights! For this round, let’s look at women's rights throughout history. Tell us about the cultural context or historiography around rights of 51% of the population in the societies you study. How has the idea of 'rights' shifted over time? What did power for women look like in times and places where it appears to the modern eye they had little power? (Trivia about individual women is coming up later this month! So hold on those!) This week's thread is the place the claim and celebrate those who fought for, those who got, and those who were denied women's rights.

In light of the current events, that once again prove that history repeats itself, I am curious to know what happens to people whose whole worldview collapsed and who realize that "they were the baddies" all along.

Didn't they have to pay reparations to the victors of WW1 and also had some of their territory taken away?

When did usury stop being a sin in Christianity and Islam?

Does it have any ramifications in modern times with especially religious countries?

From what I can tell, the primary difference between cavalry and dragoons is that cavalry fight on horseback, while dragoons dismount to fight. I don't really understand where the much greater price for cavalry comes from.

It kind of seems to me that "the modern territorial state sprung into existence with the signing of the Peace of Westphalia" is something of an axiom within academic polsci. However, I often see it being mentioned as a throwaway statement by legal and political science scholars that don't necessarily have a history background, and it rarely seems to be engaged with in any critical manner. Was the Treaty itself really that pivotal of an event? How can it be reconciled with notions of statehood held in non-European contexts?