It is my understanding that at one time The Church of the East was a fairly major religious power and the main form of Christianity in the east. That their church had membership from Iraq outward to modern day China.

Beyond that, and the fact the church is much smaller now, the knowledge I have of them is very limited. But it is my understanding that they were historically led by an Archbishop of Baghdad.

I know that when Christanity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire the emperor created 5 archbishops/patriarchs to manage the religion in the empire. 1 in Rome in the West. 4 in the east located in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria.

The archbishop in Rome had a lot of sway and so, once the western empire began collapsing, effectively broke away and began laying the ground works for what would be Roman Catholics. The archbishops of Alexandria had qualms with the Orthodox view of Christ and so when the Abbasids took over Egypt, they effectively broke away to create the Coptic church.

But it's my understanding that the other 3, in Constantinople, Antioch, and Jerusalem, all remained within the Greek Orthodox church even after Jerusalem and Antioch were conquered. So how exactly did an additional archbishop in Baghdad come about and how did it lead to the creation of an additional church?

Trotsky was an intellectual like Lenin, was a good military strategist, and was more closely aligned with Lenin’s ideals. So why did he not take over after Lenin died?

My (high school) history teacher made some comments today about what he termed "the security dilemma"; that when one country successfully invades another, they are forced to ramp up defense spending in order to maintain their hold. As a result, the invading country feels like their military is in a good position to invade the next country/territory. And from there, they go through a cycle of invasion and increased spending, until they put a stop to the invasion or collapse. Is this an arguable historical position to take? For some reason, I have trouble believing that it is a widespread pattern, and pointed out the United States as an example of when a country acquired territory without falling into the "security dilemma." However, he argued that the settler-colonialist nature of the US made it unique, and mentioned that defense spending did actually increase significantly as Americans expanded westward.

The bigger question I had, though, was whether collapse inevitably follows from invasion. During a discussion of current events, a classmate asked, "When Russia loses, what will happen?" I said that saying Russia would lose was quite the assumption to make, but my history teacher made a comment along the lines of "Countries that invade other countries never last, which makes Russia's collapse inevitable. You should ask [classmate] about the life cycle of an empire sometime."

This generalization really bothered me. Can it really be true that there's no such thing as a long-term successful invasion?

I’m analyzing lyrics to this concept album I really like about an undead zombie, and *one of the songs goes as follows—

“Armies form and prepare to fight. Damn, what a battle, it lasted twenty nights. 19 days, 12 B.C. to think nobody ever heard of me.”

Being the way that I am, I like to deconstruct a song in every way I can, but my research skills and knowledge have fallen very short. So if anyone has any idea what these lines could be refering to, if anything specific at all, then I would very much appreciate your input.

Take the examples of Dagestan and Moldova. Both have almost 3 million people (including Transnistria for the latter), both were conquered by the empire at roughly the same time (1813 and 1812 respectively), both were conquered from an Islamic empire (Persia and the Ottomans respectively), both have their own ethnic identity and language(s), and in terms of size, Dagestan is larger.

So what determined SSR status / why weren't there more full-fledged SSRs?

As I’ve been planning my courses I got fairly frustrated with how art classes are set up as difficult to continue. Intro classes in x amount of weeks, structured similarly to humanities courses in diversity. Things like Intro to Painting, Painting 1 and 2. It feels very broken down and artificial, and while understandable, also very different from studying under someone. What led to the transition from apprenticeships to art schools or the presence of art in modern schooling or universities?

I understand that Germany was the big bad and all, but logically it should’ve been Austria-Hungary, as well as Serbia too an extent. Why did Germany blamed so heavily? I think part of it is that Austria-Hungary and the ottomans faces different punishments. Am I right in this assessment?

I am eating a pre-mixed salad right now that would be absolutely perfect, except it has kale. I cannot stand kale. I hate that kale is everywhere in everything and is recommended to me as some cure-all superfood. I remember a time when there was no kale to be found anywhere.

So how did the craze start? Is it something like Big Kale farmers having really good marketing?

What other crazes have gone down in the past and what did people believe was good about them?

I remember reading once that a country repainted their war planes in ww2 to make it seem like they had more planes than they actually did. I don't remember exactly which country it was, or if it even happened at all, but I'm pretty sure it was Japan if that's the case. Regardless, can someone please confirm or deny that this happened and provide a source? Thanks in advance.

Apologies for the crudeness of the question, but the way I see it a woman having intercourse daily would lead to pregnancy quite often which couldn't have been profitable for the brothel. Abortions were not completely safe procedures and I imagine raising the child might be costly in both resource and opportunity cost for someone in this line of work. So my questions are:

- What kind of methods did women in this line of work use to avoid being constantly pregnant.

- How often would one of these workers get pregnant?

- How was that child dealt with if born?

I imagine many cultures in many different times had enough different practices to fill a room, so Im more interested in the context of Western Europe in the middle ages.

The federal republic never made nukes which I always found odd. Granted it's better they didn't, but for a country that had a supposedly neutral stance, you'd think they'd make atleast a few as a detterence to something like the soviet union. As far as I know, they didn't lack resources (there is some uranium in the former republic) so that's likely not a reason. Why didn't Tito decide to arm the country with nukes?

It‘s everywhere and known to everyone (at least in Europe/North-America). Could not google it.

The aforementioned ancient empires were on the southern end of the Caspian Sea. Are there any records of them using the Caspian Sea for trade, travel, warfare, or really anything? Do we know if they contacted other people along the Caspian by navigating the Caspian itself?

​

Thank you ahead of time for any answers!