Hello, I was wondering if anyone here has any advice for choosing a specialization? I'm going to transfer to a 4 year institution soon (currently in CC) and I have no idea which way I want to go.

I'm very interested in Russian history, ancient Greek history (classics in general), Early American History, Early Colonial history of North and South America, and Medieval European/East European history.

I know for sure that I would like to be a professional historian and I know for sure that I could specialize in many different areas but I just can't decide.

The obvious answer is of course to do what is most interesting but for me that doesn't work too well. I had thought about doing the area that is most inaccessible to a lay person or someone new to history and that would probably for most people be Medieval history but at the same time, I'm not very interested in Christianity as an academic subject which would of course be a big part of West European Medieval history, Russian, and East European medieval history. So, any advice?

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What was the extend of the country's contingencies for a nuclear war and the postwar period of such an event?

Imperial Roman Legion that is. Not really too specific of a time frame but from 0 AD to around the "Five Good Emperors" period.

1. How many auxiliaries were there in a legion?
2. How effective were they in battle?
3. Did they have any specific role? Cavalry? Skirmishers?
4. Were auxiliaries attached to a legion and went wherever it went?
5. How much cavalry and archers would a typical Roman legion have?

Mormons have always been the kind of black sheep for me as far as Christians go so I was surprised to see Wikipedia claim it has 4.5 million followers. How did a small band of people fleeing west to avoid persecution expand so fast in under 200 years? How much was natural increase? How many conversion? What was the appeal for converting

In this sub and elsewhere, it was shown that the modern narrative of the conflict between Church and Galileo is less than true.

What is the origin of this? How was it popularised?

Trying to write an essay on this topic. And pointers / sources to check out regarding this? Seems like an extremely interesting paper!

During WW2, of course.

I know that collecting was a popular past time in the Victorian era. Did they have any specific terms/vocabulary used to describe the collections themselves, or even different terms for different types of collections (i.e. collections of beautiful items vs collections of "grotesques")?

Took a tour recently at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The U-boat had 2 Enigma machines and a codebook, but to my knowledge, Enigma had already been cracked by the time of the U-boat's capture. My tour guide indicated that the capture helped "end the war a few months early", but was light on details as to how or why. If that claim is true, what are the "how and why" of how the capture aided war efforts?

This question is focused more on navies and military ships from the American civil war era and onward but any helpful info from the civilian maritime trade of the time is also welcome.

What i'm specifically wondering is as more and more steam ships appeared in navies and began to overtake the more traditional ships of the line what happened to the types of sailors who's skills no longer became needed? People like Carpenters Mates, sailmakers, seamen who worked the rigging, etc. did they suddenly find themselves out of a job?

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At first I had thought this might be a Christian/Muslim thing (cross vs. crescent), but then I realized that swords have been mostly straight in Europe since at least the xiphos days (long before Christianity), and were made curved in parts of Asia that were never Muslim.

The exception here is cavalry swords, which were curved in both Europe and Asia to assist with keeping the blade on target during ride-by and at a downward angle. But leaving aside this purpose-built design, it does seem that most European sword blades were straight, while most Asian (and many African, while we're at it) were curved, even for swords that were meant to be used by foot soldiers or duelists. I'd love to know why.

Did the Germans respect neutral embassies in the numerous European capitals they captured? Did the Allies respect neutral embassies in Rome? Did the Soviets respect neutral embassies in Berlin?