As the title says. Are there any examples of wars in Greek antiquity whose victories can be conclusively attributed to the intentional application of biological warfare?

Since it's Thursday again, I have yet another question about teaching tools.

I teach World History. My students are first year undergraduates from many different countries. This week I have learned the hard way that even 'obvious' historical facts, like say, what the Roman Empire was, is not obvious to all my students who after all come from all over the world.

I have found Google Maps an immensely useful tool. Now I can simply point to a place on the globe, and explain that during this period that empire ruled over roughly that territory.

There are of course several problems with this approach: The globe has modern states and modern borders on depicted on it, and my hand-waving is vague at best.

So my question is, is there some kind of historical globe that I can use? Ideally one where I can set the date and show (roughly) what the world looked like during various periods of time. I know several computer games by Paradox can do this, but booting up EU IV in class is hardly professional (aside from not being 100% accurate).

I was listening to a podcast where Putin was compared with late era Soviet leaders that suggested that Putin had less restriction on his ability to dictate policy than late-era USSR leaders because the Politburo was an effective check on the Soviet leader. Is this true? How much control did the leader have on the composition of the Politburo?

In Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell begins Ch. 15 as follows:

"The army, driven back into Virginia, went into winter quarters on the Rapidan —a tired, depleted army since the defeat at Gettysburg —and as the Christmas season approached, Ashley came home on furlough."

What does winter quarters mean?

Looking at maps depicting the world during the 7th and 8th centuries AD, the Islamic Caliphates seem to have expanded to include most of central and western Asia along with Mediterranean North Africa in the span of just 80 years. How was this achieved?

I'm doing this for a school project, and I've been getting many different answers on this question. This question is really general and I'm basically looking for world history on this topic.

I'm new to this subreddit so excuse me if I have broken a couple rules. Thanks!

Of course it is an oversimplification to compare different millennia, but my understanding is that technology and information were still less advanced than that of the central Roman Empire until well into the Middle Ages or even much later.

Everyone knows nostalgia today as a rose-tinted view of the past or your childhood. But in the Civil War doctors diagnosed nostalgia often in hospitals and there are even death certificates stating that the cause of death was "nostalgia".

What did doctors do to treat nostalgia? What was nostalgia? Perhaps it was PTSD before we knew PTSD was a thing? The supposed deaths due to nostalgia intrigue me a lot.

Hopefully this goes along with this weeks theme!

I just finished watching Troy and i'm curious if Achilles, the man, actually existed. If he did he must have been quite the warrior to have a legacy built around mythology and immortality still lasting to this day.

I was reading a Wikipedia post on the WWII Emergency Shipbuilding Program, and it includes a passage about builders using ripe bananas to substitute for grease when launching ships. The passage does not include a citation. Can any of you comment on the accuracy of this?

My apologies if this question is a basic one, it's not a topic I've read a lot about and I don't remember learning anything beyond that the Canadians were loyalists in school.

It seems that areas such as Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec were already relatively quite developed at this time. And at least the Maritime Provinces seem likely to have been culturally quite similar to New England at that time. Did these provinces have the same priveleges of self government as the Thirteen Colonies, and did they suffer from the same oppressive policies following the Seven Years' War?

How likely was it that the pacific disposition of the Maritime Provinces was related to the recent expulsion of the Acadians, perhaps a poignant reminder of what could happen when you defied the Crown? Did Canadian loyalty have anything to do with its relatively shorter distance to Northern Europe?

Thanks guys.

I'm reading Kotkin's biography on Stalin and he says that the Bolsheviks basically took power in their revolution because the Provisional Government collapsed. However, it seems Lenin didn't think they had enough power to hold back a German advance on Petrograd which is why they signed Brest-Litovsk. Starvation, banditry and chaos seems to be a key feature before the Civil War and the Russian Army seemed to have collapsed. How did they create a Dictatorship of the Proletariat from the wreckage of this mess? What did they do?

I'm reading from a text titled exactly as my Reddit post is titled.

And excerpt from the text reads as follows:

A Key ingredient in the development of the cult of a new patron was the acquisition of his or her relics; and possession of the remains of a popular saint could mean the difference between a monastery's oblivion and survival. Hence, the acquisition of relics was a real necessity, and, as ever, the only means of acquisition were purchase, gift, invention, or theft.

I'm a bit confused by this:

1. What exactly is a/the "cult" referred to in the first sentence?
2. What is an example of a "Monestary" and why do they essentially need the relics of a popular saint to "survive"?

"We will force this war upon Hitler, if he wants it or not." - Winston Churchill (1936 broadcast)

"Germany becomes too powerful. We have to crush it." - Winston Churchill (November 1936 to US-General Robert E. Wood)

"Germany's unforgivable crime before WW2 was its attempt to loosen its economy out of the world trade system and to build up an exchange system from which world finance couldn't profit anymore." - Winston Churchill, The Second World War

"The war wasn't only about abolishing fascism, but to conquer sales markets. We could have, if we had intended so, prevented this war from breaking out without doing one shot, but we didn't want to." - Winston Churchill to Truman (Fultun, USA March 1946)

"This war is an English war and its goal is the destruction of Germany." - Winston Churchill (Autumn 1939 broadcast)

Some others are sometimes added, but these ones are always quoted together, always without exception in the same order. Do we know what the original source of them is?