I thought that getting shocked when touching another person would mean some sort of bad omen (or good omen?), in lack of a scientific explanation, but couldn't find any info on it.

Before the arrival of the European powers in Indonesia, how was warfare conducted between Indonesian kingdoms? What kind of forces or tactics would we see being utilized in a battle between two warring kingdoms?

When someone says an old tribe didn't have the concept of private property, what does that mean? What is the difference between not having private property and being socially acceptable to steal?

For example:

Say I was a man of that tribe and had this stick that my brother had carved out and given to me so the stick meant a lot to me. Then someone comes into my house and grabs it, because I had left it in a place where they had acess and because there is no concept of private property in my tribe.

In that situation would I be dumb for leaving it out in a place where anyone can take it ( assuming I didn't want anyone to take the carved stick ) or would the person just be stealing something that is not theirs?

All of this is assuming people weren't dumb enough to not be able to think " Well, this guy's stick was given to him by his brother and he put it on a pedestal in the living room, he probably like it very much so I probably shouldn't take it".

I'm from the Philippines, and whenever I read the history of US colonialism there, most sources say that the Americans promised the Filipinos independence after a very specific timeline. They said this very early in their occupation—early 1900s, when the whole period lasted from 1898–1946.

And they were pretty close too. From 1935 onward, the plan was to release the Filipinos within 10 years, and despite the World War II interruption by the Japanese, the Americans managed to set their colony "free" without much of a schedule lag—independence was scheduled around 1945, so as it was actually granted in 1946, they were off by a year or less!

This is not something I've read other colonial empires doing, whether the British, the French, the Dutch or Portuguese, and I'm not sure if the US did the same with its other colonies—Puerto Rico, for example, is still a colony today, did the US never intend to let them go after a set period? (Cuba, on the other hand, seems to have been intentionally let go, although the US quickly supplanted formal independence with an informal virtual monopoly on their economy, plus direct military control via Guantanamo.)

TL;DR: Is it only the US that planned its colonies' independence, or did the British ever plan to free India after a certain period, or the French likewise with their colonies, or any other colonial power with theirs?

Just a quick question, why do people quickly use these words interchangeably?!

And, as a follow up, if Clinton was not a resident of Arkansas, did he cast his ballot for himself in Washington, DC in 1996?

Columbus landed in America by crossing the Atlantic, so landing on the east side of Australia (in Cook's case) seems odd. Coincidentally, the anniversary of that is tomorrow.

I know Napoleon himself left on a small ship but how were massive amounts of French Troops brought home without being detected by the British Navy?

I'm wondering how the last ice age effected human progress, mainly in geographical terms. I know it's thousands of years later but could that be the reason why the most advanced(organized) civilizations at the time were in more southern latitudes then they are today? Was egypt/sudan as hot 5000 years ago as they are now, because that would make the pyramids even more impressive.

I am in a class that is researching potential racial cleansings. In Putnam County, Ohio in 1920, the US census data indicates there were 28 African Americans taking up residence. By 1930 only 1 African American remained in the entire county, again based on US census data. SO...did something happen in Putnam County in the 1920s that forced almost all of the African Americans to leave?

Are there any resources available to search or read through newspapers from the colonial era in North America? I remember there being a map based website shared on Reddit that broke tons of archives down based by city. I can't seem to find it though and I'm not sure how helpful it'd be.

The books I read in history class were often long, dense and uninteresting -- more suited for scholars, etc. This has turned me off to a lot of history.

Does anyone have some suggestions for books that would be fun to read and also historically educational?

I was originally going to only ask this question about U.S. history (as of recent events -- I thought I would re-educate myself), but screw it, any world history is awesome.

Thanks in advance!

Specifically, has there been a rise in the usage or has it been steady since FDR? How often do executive orders get replaced or overturned by later Presidents?