I am aware of the Eastern Empire being Roman for a long time after the fall of the Western Empire, but it's notable how parallels seem to have been drawn in the HRE, Third Reich, and Russia with Rome. I've also read about claims to legitimate succession in Trebizond and other splinter kingdoms. So how many nations in all have claimed either direct or "successive" descent from the authority of Rome?

*After sorry, typing on my phone.

In the second episode of the series, the removal of ethnic Germans from Eastern Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe is described as "ethnic cleansing" of Germans from lands they'd been living on for centuries.

I had always read that this was a removal of Germans from conquered lands they had settled during the war. Which is the truth? Or is it a little of both? And if it is, why do we only ever hear one side of the story?

The Mikawa quake was the only quake in WW2 Japan to be censored, and it left a very large subsidence circle on the bay floor near three islands (though the Image was poor quality) which intersects the fault line that apparently moved as a result of the quake. It was apparently at eleven kilometres deep but a significant strata subsidence suggests a circular event of perhaps a kilometre at most. A coal mine/deposit beneath the bay could have been used and the carbon would have absorbed the betaparticles.

If swords have been used for thousands of years in thousands of battles then shouldn't we be digging up swords and other weapons daily? Do they decompose? Were they recycled at the time? Where are they?

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I'm not asking for the reasons why they were ousted from China. I'm wondering about how exactly the KMT govt got out. Did all the politicians and generals etc just jump into boats and travel to the island with luggage and stuff? Or did they all just scatter and eventually find their way to Taiwan seperately? Or did they have a plan beforehand at all?

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I'm visiting Orlando, and my girlfriend told me that the reason so many of the streets in Florida are paved with bricks is because they used as ballast in ships, and when they were no longer needed they would repurpose them as pavement.

Immediately I thought of a story I used to tell my guests when I was a tour guide in the Pike Place Market in Seattle. The large stones used as cobbles in lower Post Alley are supposedly ballast stones as well. They say that ships would arrive empty from San Francisco and drop off their stones so they could fill up with timber. The story in Seattle further goes on to suggest that those ballast stones were rubble from the 1906 earthquake.

Most of the Seattle version sounds fanciful, and there's a strong chance it came from Bill Spiedel, who is well known for playing fast and loose with history in order to tell a good story, but since I heard something similar on the other side of the country it made me wonder if there was perhaps a kernel of truth.

I posted this about a year ago and got no response, so after stumbling across it i decided to try again. Thanks!

When from my little knowledge, Africa actually had/still has more resources as well

Because I focus on Norse stuff, I know of Ibn Fadlan as a famous primary source. However, I don't know anything about him besides that he was a soldier on some kind of diplomatic expedition who encountered a group of Norsemen who traveled down the Volga and recorded his meetings with them, most famously an account of a funeral.

A lot of people commenting on Debbie Reynold's death are invoking the 'Golden Age of Hollywood'. What defines this era? Why did it start? Why did it end?

/u/juslen

This is one of those classic Murican overpatriotic statements, how much merit is there to it?

After reading up on Enrico Dandolo, 42nd Doge of Venice, I had a few questions that I hope someone could answer.

Enrico Dandolo was said to be already blind during his appointment to the position as Doge of Venice. Was this common, and did this influence his function as Doge? He also took part in the fourth crusade, and funded it if I understood correctly. How would a blind man contribute to the Crusader, and why would he? If I understood correctly Venice and the Byzantine Empire were not on the greatest terms. What was Venice's part in the sacking of Constantinople? Its sometimes attributed as part of a deliberate scheme of the Venetians, but is this accurate?