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I'm also curious about how Viking longships fared in the winter storms of the North Sea and Bay of Biscay. Would the Norse just not bother sailing in the winter?

Long story short: I've been trying to work out why there are shards of china pottery all across the fields of one of the local Big House estates near Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland.

Some considerable digging has found one reference to a practice called 'dock dung', where all the sweepings of a Victorian street were gathered up, carted or even shipped out, and applied to fields as fertiliser. The only bits of Victorian street debris that will have survived for over a hundred years are pottery shards, or so the theory goes.

The one reference is in an essay about the Tamar Valley Orchards in Ian D. Rotherham's Orchards and Groves: Their History, Ecology, Culture and Archaeology, and it's basically a casual remark. I can't find anything else that doesn't come from that reference, so if this was a real agricultural practice, it may have had another name.

I'm looking for other evidence of the practice (or, I suppose, other reasons there might be shards of pottery all across the fields), or other names for the practice.

The population of Japan and France in 1600 are both losely estimated at 20 million. But Japan is 20% to 30% smaller than France and France is often considered to have a high pop per area compared to other European countries. How come Japan's population was so high? (considering that the most prosperous period had yet to come)

But even for such a population, Japan could still field enormous armies. Daimyo could field armies in the ten thousands and the battle of Sekigahara had 80 thousand soldiers on each side. Why is it possible that Japan could field such enormous armies ?

11 million people were killed in the Holocaust, but people tend to focus mainly on the 6 million Jews that died. Why?

For example, in 1969 11,616 soldiers were killed but the only famous battles that are cited in most histories for 1969 are Hamburger Hill (72 KIA) and Operation Apache Snow (102 KIA). So where and when did the other 11,442 soldiers become KIA in 1969?

It is often said that a loaf of bread cost a wheelbarrow full of money. Surely everyone wasn't hauling around wheelbarrows everywhere. As a followup question, how would the government distribute the notes?

I'm asking again as I'm curious about it.

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Are there any good sources or books on them? Where were they usually located? If they did exist?

What were the roles of the Hapsburgs in religious conflicts in Europe?

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I'm genuinely perplexed. When taught about the Treaty of Versailles and the Paris Peace Conference, I was told the Allied interests were represented by the US, Britain and France. Britain and France I understand. But why the US? They only joined in 1917, suffered relatively little, and were seen as isolationist. Perhaps I'm being a bit presumptive, buy I would think that the European countries would tend to ignore the US because of these factors. Moreover, why wouldn't a country like Canada have a greater influence, considering they did substantially more and were more impacted? If anyone can shed any light on these questions, I'd appreciate it.

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