The overall tone of superheroes in popular culture has gotten darker and more realistic over the past few decades. For example, Adam West's Batman worked blatantly with authorities, but Christian Bale's Batman could only collaborate with law enforcement covertly because of law.

Has there actually been a vigilante or self-proclaimed superhero recently? If so, did their existence contribute to the admission in popular culture that working outside of the law for a debatable good is illegal?

I've read that not only did the low quality of American torpedoes hamper American torpedo bombers, but also effectively rendered the American submarine fleet ineffective for the first year of the war until improved designs were introduced. How valid are these accusations, and if valid, why did the US have such ineffective torpedoes when compared to the other belligerents?

I watch a lot of Man at Arms on Youtube and their method of getting the sharp edge on their blades is usually by using a grinder to shape the sword to a very sharp edge. So I was wondering, how did blacksmiths make their swords sharp with the tools of their time? I doubt they had grinders at all.

I'm watching The Heavy Water War on Netflix and while I recognize that the series has some issues with its portrayal of Heisenberg I find myself wondering about the extent to which the British military command knew about the Nazi Bomb project and, specifically, why the Germans were so interested in heavy water to begin with.

The series seems to suggest both that the German bomb project was a well known fact at the lowest strategic level of the Allied military and that the consequences of and significance of nuclear weapons were understood by the same.

This strikes me as suspect but that's a bit out of my wheelhouse.

I know that throughout the existence of the Eastern Roman Empire until its fall, what we today call Greeks all considered themselves Romans. But when did this stop? Did they become "Greeks" once the Ottomans took over? Or did they continue calling themselves Romans under Ottoman rule?

Is that true? Was he such a genius strategist?

It was just a "shower thought" I had, Wouldn't ownership of a cat help cull the population of infected rats hence leading to the trend of owning a house cat?

But wouldn't the predator animals or the rats get infected too?

edit: Thank you for all the replies!

With secret agents I mean spies and professional assassins. I distinctly remember that the persian king (or his evil advisor) in the prince of persia movie had control over an entire school of trained killers.

Is that just a hollywood trope or does it have some truth to it?

With the easily accessible knowledge of today's first-world societies, I wonder if we're relatively more adept to strategizing and avoiding trickery.

Are there any examples of people regularly making obvious blunders, maybe military leaders or explorers?

After looking through the FAQ i wasnt able to find anything on this topic. Obviously there has been an abundance of speculation, conjecture and conspiracy theories on this topic, so much so that, its become difficult to separate the truth from the facts. I've seen a few documentaries on the matter and the story is so well entrenched in American history, that it confounds me that i still dont really understand what was the motive behind it? is the official record on this matter clear or is there much we still dont know? What the hell happened?

I was thinking about how in Cuba they tend to concentrate on Positivism and don't really talk about the influence of Von Ranke aside from during Historiography class.

This got me thinking: is Positivism more a phenenon of Latinized cultures while Von Ranke's influence is more limited to Germanic countries?

In Why the West Rules--For Now, the author mentions that by the 1830's geologists were aware that the "miles-long, curving lines of rubble found in parts of Europe and North America..." were formed by ice sheets pushing debris (as opposed to the Biblical flood). Can anyone name locations of such rubble which I could google images of? I'm used to seeing glacial erratics in the Sierra Nevada's in California, but these sound a bit more dramatic... Thanks!

Pikes were effective in the middle age, Alexander's sarissae gave him a tactical advantage over hoplites, why did the long spear decline as a weapon of choice (or use) during the classical period?

Why did the Spanish dictatorship come about? Why were children taken away from their parents? Were there any statues removed in Madrid after the fall of the regime?

I was thinking about the possible propoganda benefits of a terror cell claiming responsibility for an attack that someone else committed, before anyone knew differently, or claiming they caused some sort of accident to make themselves seem stronger than they are. I know that False Flag attacks have happened before, but I was wondering if the reverse had happened?

How much truth is there to the theory that the loss of trade and connection to the rare agricultural-surplus producing regions like Egypt, the african coast, etc and inreased piracy and slave-hunting ultimatively caused by the emergence of the Caliphate are to blame for whatever we label as "the Dark Ages" in Europe?

How does post-roman, but pre-islamic Europe compare to Rome at its height and to shortly after the Caliphate emerged?

Edit: god dammit, what an akward typo in the title This is what happens when I edit Roman Empire to just Rome.

Jews were persecuted for a very long time.

What are the reasons for that?

I mean some reasons I have heard in history ed, but I'd like to know if there is an exhaustive list of reasons and an estimate on how much influence they had.

Also how did historians come to these reasons? Did they just try to think about possible reasons and then try to find evidence in historic documents for or against these reasons?

Are there comparisons to persecutions of other minorities? Did anyone find out what makes some minorities persecuted more often and more severely and others less?

I always thought that that topic was a bit simplified in my classes.

My teacher basically told that jews where forbidden to do certain jobs, which forced them go into banking and trading, which made them rather rich and successfull, which made people envious, which started persecution.

It's an argument that makes sense, but it seems too simplistic to me to be the whole truth.

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