I was thinking about how Star Trek had become such a cultural obsession for a certain section of the population and how conventions for it became such a stable industry. Was Star Trek the first TV show that inspired these kinds of conventions? Were there any pre-television celebrities that had similar phenomena? Like the cast of an Opera meeting fans in an organized fashion 20 years after their theater run ended.

India, for example, or Australia, or take your pick. Would they have known that Britain is, relatively, fairly small? How did that knowledge, or lack thereof, impact the level of success the British Empire had?
I know this isn't a sub for theoretical history; so the idea of "could that have changed Britain's success" doesn't belong. I'm just wondering if the conquered lands knew that the size of Britain and were ok with it, or was that not really a factor in any case?

I just read "The File" by Timothy Ash (I highly recommend it) and while he gives good descriptions of how the system worked and even motivations for why people were working as Stasi agents and informers, he really didn't talk about what happened to people once they were arrested and convicted. Were there special prisons for those arrested by the Stasi, and if so what were conditions like? How long could someone be expected to be in prison? I know this question isn't that specific since I'm almost certain that people would be arrested for different crime sand as a result punishments would be different. I'm just looking for a general descriptions.

Thanks!

We tend to idealise them today but how were they truly accepted in the eyes of the public or the authorities that may have had to intervene? Also, the layperson is familiar with the big names like Socrates and Plato but a quick search will show that there were many many more who are not as popular. So would a philosopher's recognition only have come after popular analysis of his work which may have been after his death or would they have been able to experience the feedback to their work? Would they have been seen as a dime a dozen?

It always seemed like a strange thing to be specifically called out in either faiths holy texts about. How did religion get involved in what seems like such a nitty gritty matter of finances?

Does a collection of these ancient maps exist online or in book form?

It seems that if you look back to not so long ago, everybody wanted to be an Empire. Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire, French Empire, British Empire, Empire of Japan, the list goes on.

Today I believe only Japan keeps the title. Is it because it's now seen as bad to have an empire? When did that change?

Pausanias' Description of Greece [5.7.6] tells us that "the most learned antiquaries of Elis say that Cronus was the first king of heaven, and that in his honor a temple was built in Olympia by the men of that age, who were named the Golden Race." Is there any archaeological support for this, other than the name of the Hill of Kronos? Google searches and a read of several books on the subject has failed to reveal anything to me as of yet.

Several posters in the thread also concurred that the act was not illegal and additionally that it was a core principle of the United States to have the right to secede. Is this a widely held view among historians as well?

There is a theory that Hangul may have been inspired by, or based on, the Yuan era Phags Pa script. How accurate is this claim, and are there any historical documents attesting this?

Bonus question: how did this change in the 1500s with the increasing professionalisation of soldiery?

I'm curious about the day-to-day logistics for a late medieval knight (or mercenary captain, etc) of making sure his men were capable of fighting.

So i feel like there is a hole in my knowledge of german history. I know about Charlemagne and the Franks, but i am a bit confused. Did the franks rule most areas of Germany? When did the franks and germans get different rulers?

Pretty simple question. The color black I heard was at some point the same as the color white. I have a theory why this could be but is it in fact true?

We all know about the atrocities that the Japanese committed in China, but if they had a stranglehold on the Chinese, what happened to Hong Kong, which was still a British Colony at that time? I know about the fighting between the British and Japanese in Singapore and India, but did the British actually fight the Japanese in Hong Kong or any of mainland China?

/r/Battlefield mod here, the upcoming "battlefield one" will be in WW1. People are asking for the christmas day snowball fight in the campaign. Was there actually a snowball fight? According to a commercial i saw they sang together?

If you look at a picture of pretty much any part of San Francisco on street view in Google Maps, it shows a densely packed block of row houses, often on a narrow street. Everything seems packed in instead of spread out. Most other American cities seem to have a small, dense urban core surrounded by miles of single-family homes. The only other big cities we really see the same type of packing are New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, which are all older, East Coast colonial cities. And even those cities experienced sprawl. So why didn't San Francisco?