This question is more for Game of Thrones fans. (No Spoilers) Last Sunday's episode featured a visually stunning scene where there were dozens (hundreds?) of ships launching flaming shot into a costal city that was being bombarded. Each ship had a trebuchet on the front deck that was launching a flaming load hundreds of yards into the city center. However, from a practical perspective this strategy seems like.....a remarkably terrible idea - taking a bundled load, dipping it in pitch/tar/unrefined oil, igniting it, slinging it from a wooden trebuchet on the deck of a wooden boat would most likely be a disaster. It just seems like an elaborate way of burning your own fleet to ash. My question is this: is there a real life historical context for this? Was this a real Greek/Roman/[somebody else] strategy in actual naval history? I do recall this being an effective strategy on land, but I've never heard of a naval application. If, yes, there were flaming naval trebuchets, how did they work, how did they control accidental fires and how effective was it given how dangerous it was for the attackers? Thanks!

In finishing up my Bachelor's, I read Robert H. Jackson's "Report to the President on Atrocities and War Crimes, June 7, 1945." At one point he mentions: "They [Nazi leaders, SS, and Gestapo] did not hesitate to instigate the Japanese to treacherous attack on the United States" (Jackson, found in The Holocaust: A Reader by Simone Gigliotti and Berel Lang).

I was under the assumption that, while they were allies, Germany and Japan had little contact between one another. Did Nazi party leaders actively work with Japan to plan and execute the attacks on Pearl Harbor?

Things like the PIAT, the M1 Bazooka, Panzerfaust, Panzerschreck or even the PTRS-41.

When Rome destroyed Israel in the first century, did the royal family die out there? Did it survive around a bit before going away?

It seems like anytime anyone talks about the first amendment this is the example they give. Was there a specific instance where this happened, or just a fear of it?

are there any seeming anachronisms in the Norse descriptions of the new world?

EDIT: Can anyone answer the second part, that's what I'm most interested in?

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What are the factors and the contributing reasons of why the modern scientific method we know today have mostly originated in Europe?

I wonder if there was any "plan b" for USA, France, GB, etc... In case of German/Japanese "strategic victories" during WW2.

Is there any historical evidence of procedures, plans, whatever to be applied in case, for example, GB was completely invaded and defeated? What was the plan in the case of a defeat in the Pacific war?

Where can I read more about this?

Hope the question is clear.

I figure hour glasses were used - how would you make sure to turn them? Was this the same for English and French ships alike? What happened if someone forgot to turn them in the midst of a battle - where and how would they be "reset"?

By neo-Carthaginian group i mean any sort of group that claimed to be the descendants of the Carthaginians or are somehow inheritors of the Carthaginian title like the Holy Roman Empire or Medieval Russia with Rome. Or maybe a group in Rome similar to modern day neo-Nazis that would idolize Hannibal, and possibly commit violent acts in the hope of tearing down and remaking the social order into something closer to Carthaginian traditions.

Ignoring the obvious. As a politician, did he keep his promises? What did he do for Germany?

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Did fairs in medieval Europe implicitly encourage the wider use of money? It seems that local markets allowed simple bartering, but big fairs were more likely to use money for purchases because the fair was temporary and required debts to be settled quickly. So did these fairs (such as the Champagne fairs in France) lead to more use of government-minted money?

Let's say I bought $10,000 USD in today's money of stock in 1650, 1750 and 1850: what sort of returns would I have today? Would I have done better by cashing out before Great Britain dissolved the Company?

Looking at pictures of tanks from that era a lot of them must have been an absolute nightmare to escape from. Hatches that could be blocked by the gun, for instance.

Obviously there were many different designers and manufacturers of tanks in that era but how much thought did they put into crew survival?