Before spectacles, were there any homemade devices that helps with vision impairment?

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My grandfather enlisted in the Navy after Pearl Harbor and served as a battlefield medic for five years in the Pacific Theater. Unsurprisingly, he never opened up about his experiences during the war. He passed away a few years ago, taking his experiences with him.

What I would like is to find out what ships he may have been stationed on, if possible what unit (division? I'm not sure the correct terminology) and what battles he may have taken part in. From there, I would use that information to research other people's experiences to gain a deeper understanding of my grandfather's experience.

TL;DR What resources can I use to discover information about my Grandfather's tour of duty in the Navy during World War II?

During the second Punic War it was pretty clear that Hannibal could subjugate Rome. From the Trebia River and Lake Trasimene to the famed Battle of Cannae Hannibal routed Roman army after Roman army after Roman army on a shoe string budget and established himself as basically uncontestable to the Romans, they could not defeat him. But due to Hannibal's lack of full fledged support from Carthage all he could do was just slap the Roman legions around northern Italy, he could never really establish any annexed territory and firmly insert his foot into Roman ass. Why didn't the Carthaginian government back continued involvement in the Italian peninsula? Given all of Hannibal's success it seems like Italy would have belonged to Carthage if they had wanted it.

I watch a lot of documentaries on the second World War, but one thing that they seem to universally disagree on is WHAT, exactly​, the Japanese Naval Doctrine was at all. Maybe this isn't a great question, but I'm simply confused. I have heard that they emphasized big gun battleships and cruiser, or they emphasized carriers, or they even emphasized night torpedo attacks from destroyers. So if somebody could clarify, that would be great!

I'm talking about words like assassin and torture, words that surely would have no meaning to the average person in Shakespearean times. Did Shakespeare have to explain what he meant? Why didn't he just use words that people would understand without an explanation?

Is there any scholarship about attitudes concerning sexuality and heteronomativity in Mesopotamia, Persia or pre-Islamic Arabia?

I imagine that it was overhunted because it tasted so good, because from what I understand it was a pretty stupid bird and wouldn't be too difficult to hunt, making it a poor trophy

I'm creating a story in the dying world genre, in a setting with 13th-14th century technology. One of the main characters is a woman who used to be a bowyer.

Would she have first become an apprentice?

Would she work alone, or in a workshop with other people that made items related to bowyery?

Would the purchasers of bows come to her place of work, or would her wares need to be transported to a larger town or city?

Was there a bowyer's guild, and if so, how influential was it? What did membership of the guild entail?

All accurate information is appreciated :)

Wikipedia is somewhat vague on the matter.

What was the tipping point or catalyst for crossbows becoming a prominent weapon in the high middle ages? Can we identify a particular period when crossbowmen (as opposed to standard archers) started to have a noteworthy presence on the battlefield?

What do scholarly historians think of Mckenna's account of human history aka the stoned ape theory?

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It seems like all the current Spanish speaking countries spoke Spanish and were thus conquered by the Spanish long before the american colonies came, unless I'm mistaken.

It just seems like there would have been a shitload more Spanish speaking allies from all those countries fighting together to save/conquer America (USA) for their own rather than let the English speaking armies take it.

Why didnt or weren't they able to do it? Why is Spanish not THE dominant language?

Hey people, I am a big fan of the movie Braveheart and I was wondering if what happened there is an actual true event or William Wallace is just a legend. Are there any facts that confirm his existence?

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During the Ancient Roman times it seems that Romans had an idea of what "Italy" is, and what being "Italian" was. And the Romans seemed to identify with their fellow Italians more than they did with other surrounding people.

For most of the Roman Republic era modern Italy was populated with Greek colonists, Etruscans, Umbrians, Samnites and more, but as I understand it, these were all collectively considered "Italian", along with the Romans themselves. Then there were Celts and Gauls further North, and apparently they weren't Italian. Some of the societies living in Rome's "Italy" had their own distinct societies, customs, languages and some even had different alphabets to the Romans.

So basically, what was it that made Romans say "these guys are Italians and this land is part of Italy, but these guys are not Italian and this is not Italy"?

Also, Cisalpine Gaul was considered to be part of Italy, but Gauls weren't considered Italian. Why was that? Or were the Gauls from that region an exception and they were considered to be both Italian and Gallic?