Especially in Central and Eastern Europe that were almost completely devastated, how much farmland was left available for use, and was it enough to produce a sufficient amount of food for the populace?

If not, where did their food supplies come from?

Thanks for any info.

edit: I have gotten a lot of pedantic comments on whether or not yogurt is "exotic" and "middle eastern" (which is the deletion field you see before you) and I am majorly over it... it was a loose phasing to make it a more appealing question and get the updoots. Which apparently worked! Safe to say yogurt is not in the traditional diet of the bulk of European people who settled America in the 18th-19th century, that is to say German, Scottish, English, Irish, or even Italian, it it is a bit weird therefore that it has it's own private aisle with friggen genre subsections in the grocery store. In its marketing in America, it is framed somewhat as exotic health food, and this foreign health food framing has lasted in my brain, even though I eat about 50 oz of yogurt a week, no foolin, despite my ancestors stereotypically eating mostly oats and kasespatzle.

Did they clear large areas of land for grazing or did they bring in fodder from farms?

More broadly, why is there so much emphasis in school on covering only African-American segregation, instead of covering that as well Latino segregation in California/western US, etc.?

Again, I realize I probably sound horribly racist, but, as a history major, this is something I've been thinking about lately.

In modern life, it's common in some communities for people to think about, joke about, or discuss existential ideas; why we're here, what our remit in society is, how to cope with temporary existence, how to find purpose, how to embrace the self, and so on. In 2017, there are dedicated meme pages now for this self-aware, self-referential, existential, often nihilistic dialogue.

Question: what historical record do we have of people expressing these kinds of existential thoughts? Is this a relatively recent luxury of post-industrial society? Do any pre-industrial records show a concern for life purpose, or do we just not know?

Just curious

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The most promising source that I haven't gotten around to checking yet is Micheal F. Holt's The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. It isn't quite available to me but it seems both very relevant and very comprehensive.

As per research so far, I've really just found that he continued backing the gold standard when he shouldn't have during the Panic of 1837, along with removing government investments in banks.

I've read conflicting sources on his views of slavery, his continuation of Jacksonian Indian oppression, and small conflicts with Canada and Mexico with US expansion annexation. The internet has been a weak source of information for me so far.

Again, you guys do great work and any help would be appreciated.

I'm currently reading "The Prize" and they mention the Japanese didn't attack the oil reserves on Pearl Harbor. American leaders interviewed claimed that the loss of those oil reserves, which was the whole of the pacific fleet's fuel source, would have crippled the pacific fleet. Is it oversight, interntal sabatoge, or what?

The Wikipedia page about crossbows says that "Can. 29 of the Second Lateran Council under Pope Innocent II in 1139 banned the use of crossbows, as well as slings and bows, against Christians." This ban was presumably issued for ethical reasons (e.g. to protect the lives of Christians) as oppossed to strategic reasons (e.g. keeping weapons out of the hands of hostile social classes/ethnic groups). Is this the first known instance of a weapon being banned for ethical reasons? Were any other weapons banned between 1139 and the development of chemical weapons?

What has it historically meant through the ages and what does it mean now? If the idea has evolved, how?

I was recently re-reading "V for Vendetta" and a character points out that the anarchist known as "V" uses Beethoven's 5th symphony to cover his speech in an audio recording and that the rhythm of the opening notes to Beethoven's 5th constitute the Morse Code symbol for the letter "V".

A little light Wikipedia research says that this synergy between the symphony and Morse Code is likely coincidental, but would anybody be able to shed any light on it?

So, last night a random thought occurred to me; It seems like whenever a president leaves office they essentially "retire" from politics.

Are there any cases where a president, after leaving the office of the president, then sought office elsewhere, and were they successful? (be it local, state, or federal)

Edit: Spelling and clarity

I have always had this notion that without WW2 the FDR reforms wouldn't have been sufficient to get the economy rolling again after the Great Depression hit. My understanding was that it wasn't till after WW2 that things really took off and that the war had a significant role in the recovery; however, I just learned about the "broken window fallacy" theory of economics which would suggest that war doesn't improve the economy. How does an economist/historian make sense of the post-WW2 recovery? What were the economic forces driving the recovery?

Can you narrow it down to one thing? Was it a combination of things?

They did for example let them move through Sweden into Northern Norway as far as I know.

What exactly did they do and how many German troops there were in Sweden for example?

In Bernard Cornwell's historical fiction 'The Warlord Trilogy' (The Winter King, Enemy of God, Excalibur), set in late 5th-century Wales and Cornwall, the British characters have a system by which the sworn word of 'tongued ones' is considered legally valid to the exclusion of all others, such that if a tongued one gives testimony that contradicts the word of a non-tongued one, the word of the tongued one is taken as truth.

The different types of tongued ones are listed as a Lord (including kings, princes, and minor chieftains), a druid, a priest, a father speaking of his children, a gift-giver speaking of his gift, a young woman speaking of her virginity, a herdsman speaking of his animals, and a condemned man speaking his final words.

Is there any historical truth to this, or is it entirely an invention of the author? Were there other times and cultures where a similar system was used?

I am curious about what knowledge was lost in the fire, and subsequent Serapeum Libraries destruction. Obviously we don't know what was lost, because it is lost.

I also understand that there is a lot of speculation involved.

Are there any interesting facts that most people don't know about?