I read that Oppenheimer said "I am become death, destroyer of worlds", a quote from the Bhagvad Gita, after the atomic bombs were dropped. Was Hinduism or knowledge of Hinduism prevalent in America at the time?

I live in the USA so if that specificity makes it easier to answer by all means :) curious when and how female breasts became sexualized, "indecent" to expose in public, etc. #freethenipple

It seems like no good western movie is complete without a saloon with an out-of-tune piano. Pianos are hard to move and had to be fairly expensive, so were they really that common? It follows that a professional piano tuner wasn't a common job in the 19th century frontier, but did pianos come with a way to be tuned by amateurs?

As I understand, perhaps as a consequence their refusal to participate in 2003 Iraq, there has been a general rebranding of history and running joke that the French army tends to surrender fast and fight weakly. The basis for this are the quick defeats in WW2 and 1870 and the defeats in Indochina and Algeria. Of course, not everybody believes it and some will go as far to the other side as to say France had the most military victories in Europe since the medieval era. So would anybody be so kind to provide an anchoring source to link when this debate comes up, it would be great. How did France compare it to the military contenders of the times ? Has France seen a decline in military in the past centuries or is it just a misconception ?

Perhaps when did they start building walls or facilities that are more than just a village

Wondering because when I hear people compare the Trump administration to the Nazi party, and how people are saying "oh this is gonna turn into the Nazis all over again"... when the Nazis were beginning to rise were people thinking "oh this is gonna turn into __ all over again?"

And who was the "you're being literally like Hitler" before Hitler?

Or were they fighting a losing war soon as US steps in?

And what was the plan if he would have won?

I was wondering what the best sources would be to learn more about Napoleon's military career and tactics. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

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Self-explanatory I guess

I've heard of diseases like cocoliztli that had an impact back then, but are there others?

I admit I am not fully versed in the histories of all the American colonies but it has always struck me as strange that the Spanish Empire in the Americas fractured so spectacularly after Napoleon overthrew the Bourbons.

Going mostly off of the Revolutions Podcast history of Spanish American independence, it sounds like there were so, so many regional rivalries and bad blood built up even before independence. With the removal of their common overlord, it sounds like most of the colonies almost immediately descended into war between different cities, provinces, or vice royalties.

Peru fought with Chile and Ecuador, Argentina fought with Uruguay and Chile. Bolivia fought Chile and Peru. Columbia fought with Ecuador and Peru. Gran Columbia fractured almost immediately and had multiple armed revolts. Paraguay fought everyone all at once. Mexico suffered civil war after civil war for decades and the Central American federation broke apart fairly quickly

This seems to stand in stark contrast to the other colonial empires, even as they achieved independence themselves. Brazil fought with it's neighbors but it's territorical integrity was never compromised and it never fought any very serious civil wars. The US was politically stable up until the Civil war of course, but remained stable after that and eventually prospered. Canada had some relatively minor issues with French Quebec but nothing on the scale of many Spanish American colonies.

So what was the major difference with Spanish America? You would think the common language, culture, and history would push them towards integration and cooperation but that was obviously not the case. Many of them still harbor pretty serious national rivalries.

I know the question is vague, but let me give some background for it:

I am part of a renaissance faire guild. Specifically a travelling tavern that is mostly a support guild (we give a place for other guilds to come and convene and give an idea of what a tavern in the time was like - mead and cider is served but not to the public).

My role in the guild is the games master. I don't do this as much for the other guilds because they come to relax, but I do enjoy teaching patrons about various games. The problem is that there aren't many games I can teach them that aren't already around or that I know too much about.

I do enjoy "liars dice" (similar to the card game "bullshit" and is seen in one of the Pirates of the Carribean movies, played amongst the captains) although I don't know if that is the right thing to call it, or "shove a penny" which is similar to shuffleboard but played on a tabletop with coins (slide the coin into a scoring region but not off the table).

I would like to get into something else, specifically something that would be a betting style game and something easy and quick to teach because the public has a short attention span. I have ideas for things, but nothing that is nearly accurate and I've not been given permission (by the guild leader or my wife) to expand into games that I can't show are somewhat accurate for the time.

I've tried looking it up and I can't find much on it because most games lasted longer because drinking and relaxing wasn't as much of a "one drink and go" type of thing. Can anybody here PLEASE give me some insight into what types of games were played or where I can find information on it?

What strikes me as different about the Cambodian genocide is the fact that — comparing to the Armenian genocide/the Holocaust/the Rwandan genocide/etc. — there seems to be a lack of this "foreign element" — a culture that differs by language/religion/traditions etc. — that some major local group wants eliminated.

I am aware of the mass killings of clergy/monks and the ethnic cleansing of the Vietnamese/Chinese minorities in Cambodia, but "Cambodian genocide" does not refer to "the genocide of the Chinese Cambodians" but rather to the whole population.

Is this use universally accepted? Is it for a lack of a more applicable term? What makes the Cambodian genocide different from the atrocities of Stalin's regime in USSR (Holodomor/the Great Purge) where this term isn't used (to the best of my knowledge at least)?

To be clear, I have no intention to trivialize the tremendous suffering of the Cambodian population. I am just wondering about the seemingly inconsistent use of the term.

Thanks!

According to wikipedia, The Zero had an enormous range, but how did pilots deal deal with the hours of empty ocean of travel time?

I have recently been reading Stephanie Dalley's translation of Mesopotamian myths. In Erra and Ishum, Erra claims to be, among many other things, to be the "campaign standard." This made me wonder whether any of the ancient Mesopotamian kingdoms/empires like Babylon or Assyria had military standards like Rome's famous eagle standard. A quick search did reveal that ancient Egyptians carried known standards into battle, but nothing in Mesopotamian armies.

Did they have notable or any known standards that were brought onto the battlefield like the Romans eventually did?

If it helps any, Dalley says in the text that it was probably written around the 8th century BC, and it ends with a note by a Neo-Assyrian king at the end.

In colonial America, it seems that the term "farmer" was rarely used and the term "yeoman" was used instead. I do understand that they have slightly different connotations ("someone who owns/manages a farm" vs. "a commoner who cultivates their own land"). But that just adds to my curiosity. When and why did people stop using the former in favor of the latter, given that they actually do mean slightly different things?

Or was "yeoman" a word that upper class people would use, whereas the actual yeomen themselves had called themselves "farmers" all along?

I realize this might be a better question for /r/linguistics or /r/etymology, but I'm not sure which one, so I thought I'd ask here first.

I was watching a review of that movie The Last Samurai and the commentator said that the idea that the samurai didn't use gunpowder because they were "dishonorable" was a lie.

So how was it used? Did the average soldier use gunpowder? What did they use and do we know what their general strategies for fighting with it was during that time?

In the early Roman Republic, when things were still clinging to some approximation of the law, they were limited to a 1-year term to be shared with another consul, and then not allowed an immediate repeat term (they had to wait a number of years). In fact, across the ancient world in republics, very short term limits seem to be the norm. Of course, some people held office for longer, but often this was a problem or abuse, not the intended functioning.

By comparison, although I vaguely remember some agitation for shorter terms, America opted for four years. Why such a long period of time? Or was the roman system just exceptionally short?

If you want, you can tackle the question either from the perspective of America (why are American terms so long) or Rome (why are Roman terms so short). Each can help explain the other.

If there are known places where the remains were buried or dumped that they could be brought back up and put in a better resting area than where they are now