The word "Alcohol" itself has Arabic origins, so it seems likely it would have been studied during the Islamic Golden Age. If the prohibition of alcohol did apply to its use in scientific experiments, were there any notable controversies that occurred during this period as a result?

My understanding is that the Hill abduction is one of the first claims. But the idea of extraterrestrials goes back to at least Giordano Bruno. Were people just unable to conceptualize interplanetary travel? Was interplanetary travel too far removed a concept from the minds of the general public to spread such an idea as alien abduction?

Were Japanese coastal fortifications already bombed out, or would the US have faced opposition like they did on the beaches of Normandy? Would British or other Allied troops have participated?

Was is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or was it Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart? What would his friends and family call him?

In chapter three of The Prince, Machiavelli advises his reader to set up colonies in order to make his newly conquered state more secure. Obviously he had ancient rulers in mind when he said this, but did anyone take him up on this advice, or were there contemporaries of his that were notable for doing so?

Ive heard that birth of a nation was well received at first because of a wide racist audience. What were the reactions of African American, protestant white American or other popular reviewers of film?

After being a squatter at Public Domain Review, History now seems interesting.

I understand the fear of the spread of socialism during post-WWII world history, but why did the US, and other nations, put so much effort, resources, and lives into relatively small countries that showed widespread support for socialism? Did experts and advisers truly believe that the spread to smaller nations would have a negative impact on the global economy, or peace on a meaningful scale? What precedence did they have for this? Did any of these ideologies change in the aftermath of the Vietnam war?

As a follow up, were the intentions at the government level due to the same fears instilled into the general population regarding communist movements, or were there other motives at play? What was the reaction of other USA aligned countries (government level, not general population) to the choice to abandon the 1956 election? What about their reaction to the aftermath of the Vietnam war? And finally (I'm sorry, I'm broadening, but I obviously don't need every question answered by one single poster) what about the reaction of countries involved in the non-aligned movement (Yugoslavia especially)?

I realize This is more of a method discussion and i certainly don't expect a definitive answer here.

I've been toying around with an essay about Commonwealth Iceland, specifically my assumptions that Icelanders around 1000 were not Norwegians.

I have a hard time though defining excactly what these terms mean and if they are in any way fair to the people that i'm trying to write about. My question therefore is how we go about defining the ethnicity of ancient populations?

I've figured that the most obvious way is to imagine if you could ask the people at the time, what their nationality was.

There's a couple of obvious flaws with this. Nationality is a modern concept, people define themselves differently in different times, an anglo-saxon might have no way of defining himself from the viking raider except that they are pagan and he is not but to us today there are more important differences.

This method is also problematic in "modern" times, there's an infamous account of people in 1910's Greece who identified themselves as Romanoi or Roman. But they spoke Greek, retained little cultural ties to Rome, had presumably no blood relation to Rome. But who are we to say they were not Roman if they identified themselves as such?

But i Digress.

Are there other methods of defining ethnicity? are we stuck in the pagan/christian worldview and can make no assumptions about a culture of immigrants to a new country who share a tongue and cultural ties to a foreign kingdom? (I'm referring here to my main thesis of whether Icelanders were Norwegians in 1000 ad.)

I'm not articulating my questions very well. Perhabs there is some literature on this very very complex question someone could introduce me to?

Thanks!

As we all know, Israel isn't exactly the favorite country for most of the muslim world. However, when the topic comes up, the usual explanation for the enmity involves the fact that the state of Israel exists, and displaced the arab population already there.

What was the state of anti-semitic attitudes in that part of the world prior to 1945?

I asked my Mom if it was a groundbreaking thing to have a person of color be a lead on TV. She said the 'Latin lover' was a big thing in the 50's. Was that true? Was there one cultural icon that lead to this phenomenon?

Spain and Castilian Spanish remain heavily influenced by Arabic in their toponyms (Andalucía from Al-Andalus, Guadalquívir from Wadi Al-Kabir, Gibraltar from Jebel Tariq), politics (alcalde from al-qadi, alcázar from al-qasr), agriculture (aceituna from az-zeytuna), and even in its colloquialisms (ojalá from wa'sha'llah)

What was the attitude of the ruling classes and the clergy to this Arabic influence following the Reconquista? Was any effort made to remove Arabic vocabulary from Spanish? What was the attitude of the Inquisition towards people using Arabic vocabulary? How did the Arabic influence survive the Expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609?

Also, did the Society's Soviets have any hint of the mutual antagonism between the President and Joint Chiefs?

Okay, I read somewhere that things like Consuls and the senate still existed in the byzantine empire. What the hell did they actually do? I can't imagine they had any real power.

I'm writing a short story. And I don't ask if it was common, which I assume not, rather if it was possible or existant.