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I'm doing research on the Genghis Khan and at the end of every biography I have read it simply states, " he died at age 65 on August 18, 1227, of complications resulting from falling off a horse."(or something along those lines.) I was wondering how one might die like that, and if it was common at the time.

Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, etc were all kingdoms in the late Middle Ages, before being conquered by the Ottomans. But a lot of them were formal kingdoms (or even Bans, duchies, etc) for just a few hundred years before being conquered by the Ottomans and ruled for... a few hundred years. Also, language (traditionally a strong divider of ethnic identity) wasn't a huge factor, since Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Montenegrans speak very similar dialects. I wondered if, in the case of the Croats and Serbs, the issue was that Croats were ruled by the Habsburgs and Serbs were ruled by the Ottomans, but checking a bit, it seems like it wasn't quite that simple, with Serbs living in Croat areas and vice-versa.

It is of course not impossible for areas to keep a strong sense of self despite lacking self-rule (Wales, for example), but I wondered if the Ottomans had some particular policies that entrenched the divisions between, say, Serbs and Bosnians, to the extent that they formed distinct enough areas to be noticeable enough in the 19th century to be carved out appropriately (Bosnian crisis, Kingdom of Serbia).

Or, is this a case of areas being carved out in the 19th century and just choosing the names of stuff that was there before as part of a nation-building process? I mean, when the Serbs rebelled and became the Kingdom of Serbia, was this less them wanting to free Serbia, and more just a bunch of people rebelling against the Ottomans, and then saying "oh, this area was once the Kingdom of Serbia, so we'll call our Kingdom Serbia" and then doubling-down on a national myth as part of a nation-building process?

So, wikipedia tells me the Chetniks were originally anti-Ottoman rebels. And during WW2, they considered the Nazis the enemy, but worked with them against the partisans. So I'm a little confused. Were these guys from a particular ethnic group? Were they a political movement? What were their goals during and after WW2? What did they think of the Nazis?

I have heard of the three false Dmitris, pretenders to the throne of Russia who claimed to be Dmitri Ivanovich, the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible, who had escaped an attempted assassination, but what actually happened to the real one? According to the Wikipedia article some think it was an accident (stabbing yourself due to epilepsy seems like a bit weak excuse to me) while others think the regent and defacto ruler of Russia had him killed.

What is the current historical consensus? And if he was assassinated what was the probable motive?

Not every arrow, spearhead or a bow could be recast into something else. What happened to them?

When the Caliphate conquered Egypt, the vast majority of Egyptians were Christians. I know that, initially, little effort was made to convert them. But today, only 10% of Egyptians are Christians. So, what I'm wondering, is whether conversion to Islam was a long, gradual process, or whether there were particular times when conversion increased significantly (for example, maybe a ruler who put a lot of effort or even force into conversions). For example, during the Crusades, were most Egyptians still Christians or had they mostly converted? What about under the Ottomans? Etc.

I'm assuming that using a "jousting" attack would be impractical so how did cavalry use their lances in battle?

So I mean of the many many hundreds of bombs that were exploded for testing purposes, are there any humans that died by being caught up in the explosion? I'm not interested in deaths months or years later due to radiation, only in immediate deaths from the explosions. Perhaps someone was too close or an island villager who wasn't evacuated or an airplane that got caught up in the explosion, something like that.

Why is there an apparent trend in academia to paint a nicer picture of brutal cultures than is truly accurate? Its different than colonial powers ignoring their own atrocities because nobody has much of a stake in the reputation of long dissolved polities and lost cultures.

The two examples that come to mind immediately are Roman games and the Mongols. A tour guide recently explained the Colosseum to me talking about how the good the games were politically, how gladiators often survived, how animals were used to kill prisoners, and all without mentioning the killing of animals or associating gladiators with slaves. I've noticed similar views in a few books and essays recently.

The Mongolians are also suddenly portrayed as the bringers of unity and passage of knowledge while barely discussing the violence, rape, pillage, and massacres in recent literature.

What's up with this? Why are people trying to pretend that the good didn't also come with some bad.

What made Iran top priority? Money?

I've heard it over and over again from Catholics, that the Church compiled the Bible that all other Christian Bibles are based on. The vague story I've heard is that there was some sort of Vatican Council or something that got together and chose which books to put in to create the Bible that Catholics are to follow, pre-reformation. I guess a spin-off question is why exactly the Church decided to make an actual 'selective' Bible.

I know that Luther removed books during the reformation and I've no doubt that other denominations have maybe altered it too, but is the Catholic Bible the real 'original' Bible (ignoring the Old Testament taken from the Jews, because that was obviously borrowed)? Did the Church really compile the Bible and pick which books belong in it? I've tried looking it up but I either get a big bowl of word salad or some weird hard to understand historical rants.

Bonus points if you have reasoning as to why they chose certain books!! Thank you so much.

Richard Wright writes this sentence about the slave trade in his book Black Power. He is visiting Ghana but appears to be talking about the African continent as a whole.

I know people mostly are curious about stuff that happened in the Cold War era, but did the release of DDR/USSR records on the second world war change anything about how the west, or at least western historians, understand World War 2?

edit: This includes access to German/Wehrmacht records kept by the Eastern Bloc.