While the cracking was announced in '73, I know that is was Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret in 1974 that enabled the fact that Enigma had been cracked to become widely known. What I would like to know is what reaction there was from the German military, if any.

A long time ago I saw a map of Greek colonies around the Mediterranean, the one that stood out to me was Monaco.

So from what I gather, it was Greek, then Roman, but what after the fall of Rome. Did Charlemagne conquer it? When did it gain it's independent status or have they had it since essentially Rome fell?

I am doing a personal project and was attempting to find information on defensive pacts throughout history. From wikipedia, one gets the impression that the first defensive pact was the Dreikaiserbund.

In popular game titles like Civilization 5 and the Total War series, defensive pacts appear long before recent history. In the same titles, a defensive pact differs from a military alliance in that defense pact bound countries will automatically declare war only if the other member of the pact has war declared on them, whereas a military alliance works as either the aggressor or defender.

When did these alliances begin and what is the earliest example, if not the Dreikaiserbund?

Thanks!

I know the Romans tended to treat the Norse Gods as if they were, to the point that they use to call Odin Mercury when ever they wrote about northern religions

I always hear it was feudalistic, but it is never elaborated on.

The events depicted in "Dr. Strangelove," to be clear.

I have heard/read over the years that before his death, Stalin planned on deporting millions of Jews in the USSR to gulags, and that his death during the week of Purim prevented this from happening. Is there any historical evidence/basis to this story?

It seems to me that Caesar was the first person to gain and maintain "emperor" levels of control over the empire, so I'm curious as to why he isn't considered the first emperor? From what I've seen every emperor looked to Augustus as the father of the imperial system and tried to emulate him, with barely any mention of Caesar at all. How did Caesar come to be less revered than Augustus, and why don't we consider him an emperor?

This summer I have grown an interest for Roman history, especially anything regarding the Late Empire(s) and ERE after the fall of the WRE.

From what I have gathered the Late Empire (both halves) increasingly became dependent on "barbarians" manning their armies, either as auxilia/legionaries or foederati and that in addition it had a hard time recruiting ordinary citizens (especially those from the "heartlands") to serve.

Am I correct here? In that case why was it so? It seems that this trend was reversed around Justinian, is this correct?

Plus a small bonus question, as you can see I separated auxilia/legionaries and foederati as I am under the impression that foederati was more or less armed by themselves and the others was armed by the Roman state. Correct?

Thanks in advance for any answers!

Apologies if this doesn't fit with this week's theme but in various histories on Venice and some economic literature I've heard it said that Venice was the richest place on Earth per capita, I've also heard that said about the Northern/Central Italian republics generally during their golden ages.

The only problem is I haven't been able to find anything tangible to substantiate the claim and I've been looking around. Although the decline narrative seems to be emphasized by many historians, I wonder if the wealth attained by Italian city-states in this period is the reason why a wealth divergence continues between northern and southern Italy today.

I'm new here so to fit in with this week's theme, what would be the difference in marriage and courtship practices between workers, peasants, the middle classes and the aristocracy? Is it true that male fidelity was not expected in marriage in this time?

My dad was wondering if you guys could tell me when hydraulic machinery started becoming more commonplace in work environments, not when it was invented/conceptualized.

I imagine that to learn classical music, a person would have to be in a family wealthy enough to afford lessons and custom made equipment. Yet, I don't imagine being a violinist in an orchestra as being a well paying profession. Where did these people come from?

I've only just started learning about the Czech Republic recently because I found out I had ancestors from there. I know it spent some time called Bohemia, and it also spent some time being owned by different groups (Duchy of Bohemia in the Moravian Empire, Kingdom of Bohemia in the Holy Roman Empire, etc) and I'm trying my best to learn about it. Wikipedia seems to talk about what names it took as it switched hands or came into its own, but none of the Wiki articles seem to go into why.

Marcus, Cornelius, Cassius, are a few names of people I know or have heard of who have Roman names. Along with modern derivations like quentavius (the -ius ending) Why do you think they became relatively common, and how long ago did it start?

Today, Tuesday Trivia is a not a place for nuance, for reading through sources to redeem those women who were unfairly maligned for acting against gender stereotypes or simply for political motivations of the author.

Not today.

Tell me about the evil women of the past. Who are they, and what did they do to earn a place in this thread?