Today is the 75th anniversary of the fall of Singapore, a big turning point in Australian history. I have two ancestors that I know of who were captured in Singapore and spend the rest of the war as Japanese POWs. They both spent time in Singapore and Burma, one of them was then sent to Nagasaki to work the coal mine (he was there when the bomb hit and died of cancer a few years after he returned).

My question relates to the story my grandmother (the daughter and niece of the two men mentioned earlier) has always told me about their capture. She says they didn't fight in the Battle of Singapore, but arrived after Singapore had already fallen. She says they didn't know Singapore had already fallen, and their guns and ammunition were on a separate boat. Apparently they landed at Singapore, got off the boat, and were immediately taken prisoner.

Now like any Australian I have a healthy belief in the incompetence of the British command in the Pacific, but I'm skeptical about this story. I haven't found anything like this in online accounts of the battle or the aftermath, and this seems a little too comically incompetent even to me. Did this actually happen? If we don't know, could it have happened?

Vikings are just one example of what I'm talking about here-- Genghis Khan's armies were famous for the same thing. So did women who found themselves pregnant as a result of an invasion on their village by an enemy usually keep the babies? Were the children ostracized, or treated as equals in their societies? What about women with husbands who already had children? Were their rape babies (for lack of a better term) accepted into the family or rejected?

Adding to that, considering how common rape was in ancient days, how likely is it that I (or you, or anyone) have an ancestor who was the product of rape?

Were there any individuals who were "out" at this time or was there not even a concept of this? Was to be openly gay truly as taboo in those times as I have often heard?

the Spanish had massive armies and plenty of resources so where the Comanches and Apaches just that tough to beat?

The interview can be conducted over the phone, Skype or, via email. I would like to thank anyone in advance for taking the time to read my post.

edit: The assignment is to interview someone who has a career(holds degree) in your interested field of study. You need to be in the United States. Most of the questions will about how to interviewe prepared for their career i.e. internships, courses.

Sorry- I'm a Brit trying to understand the complexities of a war that is rarely studied on our shores.

In old photos and videos, especially from the 1920s through the 1960s, suspenders (or braces, if you're talking about the kind that button onto pants) seem to have been far more common than they are today, especially with suits (which themselves were more common). Why did they fall out of fashion so sharply as the 20th century wore on?

or do they refer to the same thing?

I'm currently working on a paper for my Global History of Warfare class on the English Longbow. I've been digging through my school's library system, but I want to make sure that I'm not missing any key resources. If this is against the rules I apologize in advance.

Anything regarding the longbow as an innovation, as having an impact on society, its role in battle, the archers that used them. I don't mind digging through texts either as long as there's something substantial pertaining to the English/Welsh longbow in there.

In the TV show Borgia: Faith and Fear which is set in Rome circa 1493, there is a scene in which a man convicted of sodomy is publically tortured to death using the Pear of Anguish. Was this really the standard punishment for sodomites during that time period?

The United States federal government has a bicameral legislature because our national legislative process was designed to balance the small states with the big states, and popular sovereignty of the American people with the federal sovereignty of the state governments.

But all US states have unitary governments. Why did most of them adopt bicameral legislatures?

I will be writing a short paper on the mechanisms of Nazi propaganda, due in two weeks. I have read sections of Mazower's Dark Continent and Bessel's Germany After the First World War, and am getting a sense of the despondency felt by a few demographics affected by the war. The texts are telling me clearly and directly that the Nazi party appealed to those demographics more effectively than other minority parties. I'm sure I will be reading about scientific racism in upcoming texts, and I also have selections from Spielvogel's Hitler and Nazi Germany assigned before writing this paper. I think I'm getting a lot of information on the mechanisms that the Nazi party used, but I want to be able to at least touch on how the interwar depression made Germans more vulnerable than, say, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with our own economic recession and Islamophobia at play. I definitely would be especially aided by some information on political ideologies and national identity going back further into the nineteenth century in Germany, because the foundational elements of the "German character" that went through this are going to be found farther back than defeat in the first world war. I am gaining insight into how Germany's infancy played a part there, but beyond my readings and lectures, I'd like to engage in conversation here about that.

Also, as I always mention in this sub, IF I AM ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! I am a history undergrad and I do very good work academically, but because I did not receive a standardized high school education, there are overwhelming gaps in my knowledge of the facts. I am taking this class, The Third Reich, not because of the content, but because of the craft. I probably know the least, in my class, about fringe extremist parties and even the holocaust itself. But I will not let that negatively affect the quality of my work.

Thank you!

It seems from my reading of various sagas from various cultures that the use of honey was widespread, and its use in brewing beverages would require rather large quantities. What various techniques would people from as early as 7,000 BCE through the age of Beowulf have used to acquire the needed honey? At what point were humans able to domesticate the honey bee and how crucial was that to the development of widespread honey/mead consumption?

It doesn't seem like it would have been an obvious thing - after all, we had no experience with space. I'm sure by the time to space race was going on and it actually mattered, people had plenty of clues as to the vacuum of space, but at what stage was it commonly accepted that there was no air in space?

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I was discussing Germany after World War II and how the country was split, most importantly Berlin. The Cold War's effect on Berlin is used commonly in popular culture, but I've never actually heard why.

I suppose my question breaks down like this:

1. Why was Berlin so important in the first place? I understand that it was a political hub, so this isn't difficult to understand, but I'd like to know in case I'm missing something.

2. Did the Cold War, the espionage war between countries like the US and UK against Soviet nations and the like, really see Berlin as a main battleground?

3. If yes to 2, why was the city so important to the Cold War?

If this question needs to be clarified or altered, please let me know and I'll change what I can. Thank you very much for your time and answers.

I have noticed and am intrigued by the existence of an old Iberian kingdom next to modern-day Turkey (then, Rome). I wondered if and how does the Kingdom of Iberia connect to the Iberian Peninsula.

Later on however I found out there was this other Kingdom: Galicia-Volhynia over modern-day Ukraine. Again I am wondering if there's any connection between the eastern Galicia and the western, spanish (?) Galicia