Was rewatching the first episode of Band of Brothers, and one of the interviewees mentioned that part of the reason he joined the airborne was because the recruiting officer said "but you get paid $50 a month more" which in his words "that made it a $100".

How well paid were American soldiers during World War II?

Now this is going to be a bit more of a broad and (probably not) less dumb of question than that, but I have always been boggled by how historians worked before books were widely available. Maybe I am overestimating how much you need books to learn things or how much effort you need to write one by hand, but I look at my textbooks and it just boggles me how anyone would be able to be well-read in ancient Greek and Roman history, or learning the finer points of another language in the 1100's when books were a hand-copying affair that took an extremely large amount of effort. It also boggles me how historians worked back in the medieval and ancient era, simply because I might be overestimating how difficult research was back then.

So make me feel dumb/pampered r/AskHistorians, because I know this probably is a stupid question.

This is especially mind boggling when you consider the facts that

1. It lost big time in World wars (cities were destroyed)

2. It was split into two during cold war

3. When it got back together East and its people were impoverished compared to west Germany

4. It doesn't posses nukes not is a part of the P5 at UN

So how did they end up here ?(ahead of France and Britain on many aspects, who were both victorious)

I mean, the quotes are infamous. "There is no greater happiness in life then to [slaughter] your enemy." But, what was Genghis Khan like to those who knew him on a more personal, intimate level?

Bit of family background;

I am the child of a Croatian Catholic (mother) and a Serbian Orthodox (father) living in Bosnia. On my mother's side, all the relatives are Croatian Catholic as far as I know. On my father's side, the family tree going back over a hundred years is all Orthodox Christian. Our first names on both sides all fit the various frameworks of typical Croatian/Serbian names.

However our last name is Turkish. I know many Muslims who may have Muslim first names (i.e. Mohammed or short forms) but with Slavic last names. But my family is the opposite. Why is this the case?

In the movie 300, the shields were entirely bronze with no painting. Some sources say the shields were red, while others only specifically state the lambda was red. However I don't know where they are getting their information from. I think there's an ancient source describing their cape as red, maybe people are going from "red cape" to "the shields must've been red too"?

Other sources I've examined also talk about illustrations of Spartan shields on Greek vases, and point out that maybe people think the shields were red because the vases were red. Of course this would be illogical since the vases were made of red material hence everything was red. That same source also said there was no lambda in the illustrations.

Sorry I didn't record these sources but I could track them down if needed.

So, what color were the Spartan shields (if any color)?

What did Japanese in Edo think of modern city in 15th century? What did the people in Aleppo, Syria, think? In London? Back then, city design didn't seem to be as unified as today, despite them being a rich city.

Bonus question: when and how did we unify our vision in "modern city"--or, when and how did we start to think globally that modern city means tall skyscrapers, big roads, etc?

We all now about the Paris guns that the Germans used in WW1 to bomb Paris from the trenches. They were outlawed after (or during?) the War, and didn't see use as far as I know after that.

Why? The distance from Calais to London is only 169 km and the Paris guns had a range of 130 km, so with "modern" technology would it have been possible to attack London? If so - why didn't they?

Whatever happened to the Panzer VIII Maus crew? I've only ever found one account of someone saying the Maus was easier to drive than a normal car.

I was just wondering because there is the english legend of Saint george slaying a dragon and another on the Welsh flag but also a completely different one in the Chinese zodiac. Did two completely independent myths develop and evolve or was one inspired by the other?

We all know the generic music they play in the media for ancient Egypt, Persia, China etc... Is all of that just Hollywood invention or is there any historical accuracy to the music?

I enjoyed the movie but I know a lot of it was just made up, exaggerated, etc.

I just find reading about the East and West interacting to be really interesting.

While I was taught that Roman mythology was essentially Greek religion with a fresh coat of paint, when reading about the rituals and beliefs of the Romans it looks more like they were different pantheons with some external differences. I know that after the Romans incorporated Greece they began to copy many of their cultural practices, and they began to link their gods to the Greek deities. But how did the religions get so similar in the first place? Did the early Romans just have similar gods, or did they make major changes in the late republic to their pantheon?

Edit: For example, Ares and Mars seem like the same god, both male war gods who are sons of Hera and Juno respectively. But while the Greeks had disdain for Ares and though of him as a crude, bloodthirsty and arrogant god, the Romans considered Mars to be a paternal figure, who protected the home, had great honor, and even had some connections to agriculture.

I was also curious if modern interpretations of Persians names, such as Darius and Xerxes, followed the same naming convention actually practiced in ancient Persia.

Colombus discovered America in 1492. Vasco da Gama did discover the sea route to India i 1498. And Magellan sailed around the world in 1522. Why didn't the Europeans "discover" Australia before 1770?