I'm reading a book that says "Cambridge University began the fifteenth century with a mere 122 tomes." What kinds of books would those have been?

From what I have seen, it all jumps from Hiroshima to Korean war, but the time in between, the occupation and division of territories, the finding and researching of Nazi's technological advances, the reconstruction, the soviet distantiation from their former allies, etc. I have very little knowledge of.

When Japanese is written horizontally today, it is written left-to-right like most western scripts. But it seems that prior to the end of WW2, writing from right-to-left was also or more common? WW2 era money features right-to-left writing, for example.

There is also vertical writing, in which the columns go from right to left today. Did the writing direction of vertical writing also change or was it always starting at the top right corner?

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Let's just take one topic. For example to Spanish civil How many books would I have to read on this topic to answer questions regarding it? What kinds of books, how old can they be before they are outdated?

I'm just curious about how much research one has to make to create an informed answer.

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This question could be paraphrased in this way: when did birthday celebrations become a widespread thing?

Native Americans never practiced "science" as we understand it. Would contemporary historians refer to Native Americans as living in a "dark age"? I highly doubt it, as this would suggest an air of European superiority.

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I recently saw Milos Forman's 1967 film "Fireman's Ball", and was struck by the appearances of young people. Despite being produced in a Marxist-Leninist country, many characters look seemingly identical to the youth of London or Los Angeles.

Did the adoption of Western fashion trends upset socialist leaders in Central and Eastern Europe?

How did the TaNakh form into the canon of books that are there today? Also, why does Judaism reject the Apocrypha as canon? Lots of attention is given to the New Testament canon, but not nearly enough to the Jewish Bible a.k.a. the Old Testament.

In China and Korea, eunuchs were employed to safeguard the emperor's harem, did the Japanese court not see any problems with males interacting with the emperor's concubines? Related to this, were there any precautions taken to prevent sexual encounters?

It just surprises me that Russian landed nobility would be willing to arm and train hundreds of thousands of their thralls.

Today I learned that the gospels weren't actually written by who they were named after, and they were supposedly not eyewitnesses. Apparently some gospels were based off others, the miracles cannot be confirmed, and there are inconsistencies. If this is the case, how did the gospels become so widely accepted? What parts can be verified as true? Is this the same throughout the entire bible?

Just watched "Smokey and the Bandit" and this is a major plot point. If this is true, why the restriction?

Hello,

I'm reading Tony Horwitz's 'Confederates in the Attic', on page 186 of the paperback edition he mentions the 3rd Missouri, a union regiment made up of mostly German immigrants and 'many left wing political exiles who carried a red flag emblazoned with a hammer smashing chains'. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me more about this regiment, I haven't found much beyond the very basic military history of the unit, I'm interested in the political exiles, had these men been participants in the 1848 revolutions? Do we have any pictures of their flag? How common were leftist union units?

Thanks!

In American football, it is common for certain positions to share similar numbers, for example the large number of quarterbacks with numbers from 1-20. Can anyone expand on where this came from?

Is this practise common in any other sports as well? And is there any significance to which sets on numbers go with which positions?

Yes, I know it's maybe a little low on the significance scale compared to most questions that get asked on this sub, but it's a curiosity of mine and this is the absolute best place I know of that has experts in just about everything.

I've been doing some research and already understood how the date would be converted to the roman calendar,but just the month and day (e.g. January 10 would be written as 'ante diem iv Ides Ianuarias) but how would I include the year in order to write, for instance, January 10,2010?