Currently, North Korea only claims it owns the South and the Liancourt Rocks, but has there been any other document or propaganda thing that involves more territories to be under North Korean control?

NK has a deep hatred of Japan for example, did they ever had a plan to bring Japan or other Asian countries under their sphere?, i also know that since their existance they plan to completely annihilate the US, but even as fantasy propaganda, did they ever said something that involves the US being under their regime?

Korean Ultranationalists also claim most of Manchuria, i'm not sure if NK's Juche system did the same secretly.

For example, let's say I have a gold ingot dissolved in aqua regia. If I drop sodium bisulfate in to preciptate the gold out, would the alchemist believe I have transformed the salt into gold? What would have qualified as turning something into gold for an alchemist? Was alchemy really focused on the idea of turning something relatively worthless into gold?

The only "clue" I have is the Christian god creating the world in seven days, but I don't really think they invented the idea. Who came up with weeks, who liked 7 days?

I've always wondered "why 7?" 364 is a multiple of 7, so the year is almost perfectly divided, but dividing by 7 isn't very nice. 5 day weeks would be a better division (though you will always have the leap year issue).

Were there ever cultures with a concept of weeks that weren't seven days?

I'm trying to do some research for an animation where the characters end up in 1572. I've been trawling the internet looking for anything to show me what the streets looked like, but I can't any paintings from the time or even modern depictions of what a street would look like in the 1570's all I get are maps.

Maybe you guys can give me an idea what they'd look like via a description or even better if you know of a painting that shows these kind of streets because I can't find one.

The Iran-Iraq War is occasionally compared with the First World War - is this an accurate comparison? If so in what ways were they similar? How did they differ? What was behind the similarities?

I always was interested the topic off Arminius defeating Varus' army and I watched a pretty underwhelming documentary today.

But it is mentioned there that Varus' head was cut off and sent back to Rome. This travel must have taken a while.

How would they have preserved the head for such a journey or did they not preserve it at all and it was purely symbolic and no features were distinguishable by the time it arrived back in Rome?

Edit: Corrected a word.

So my housemate and I were discussing this last night and came to a "chicken or the egg" scenario.

So everyone knows the Greek myth of Achilles, was dipped in magic water, only his heel was dry and he was invincible except for that part of his heel.

Now was that part of the heel named after the myth, or was he named Achilles as that was his only weakness. I guess the same could be asked about Paris who shot the arrow, was he named after the city, or the city named after him or coincidence with his name?

Historical inaccuracy doesn't include scientifically inaccuracies e.g. turning water into wine.

I just finished Andrew Roberts' Napoleon: A Life and I was struck by Napoleon's failure to make the best use of his best Marshal in times of crisis, in 1814 and 1815, instead cooping him in Hamburg or Paris -- away from the centers of conflict -- precisely when Napoleon himself was stretched thin and could have used a peer in command of a supporting army.

Were there political or personal reasons for why Napoleon sidelined Davout time and again?

Did either Napoleon or Davout later ever voice reflections or regrets about the latter's usage?

Just curious as to if this has been the case, if so then it's died out. Hopefully the same can be said for racism in the future.

I know that Hitler preferred blondes, but have there been any other cases?

In the campaigns of the Hundred Years War, Edward III's troops took many French towns by surprise and scaling ladders. But if surprise and simple assault failed, little else seems to have worked. Until the final war years and the coming of strong cannon, the besiegers seem to have had almost no luck breaking down defended walls.

Yet even before cannon, besiegers had learned to breach castles with mining or counterweight trebuchets. The English kings weren't any strangers to this: King John's Dover Castle was briefly broken into by mining in 1216, and Edward I breached the walls of Caerlaverock in 1300 and Stirling in 1304 with siege engines.

So what happened to English siegecraft?

Sieges weren't as common in the Hundred Years War as in some others, but there were still a fair number -- Calais 1346, Rennes 1356, Reims 1359, etc. But those sieges seem to have been remarkably lacking in siege engineering, compared to the wall-breaching work of Dover 1216 or Stirling 1304. Why?

I can think of six possible answers, but I don't know which, if any, are true:

1. Yes, mining or counterweight trebuchets could breach walls, but only if the attacker had exceptionally large numbers or favorable circumstances. The Dover and Stirling cases above reflect extraordinary weight of numbers or good luck.

2. To build mines or trebuchets, you need trained siege engineers. Non-royal sieges like Rennes had nobody on hand with the skills required. As for the king's own sieges at Calais and Reims, for some reason Edward III didn't follow his grandfather's example: he just didn't hire engineers.

3. In response to the power of mines and trebuchets, walls, even town walls, were built much thicker than before. So in practice all the towns you'd really want to break the walls of were trebuchet-proof.

4. Towns have enough people and building materials within them that they could build the walls back up nearly as fast as the besiegers knocked them down.

5. Trebuchets are vulnerable to counterfire, and mines to countermining. Perhaps French townsmen were just much better at siege defense than we might imagine.

6. Despite being quick to adopt some other military innovations, Western Europeans never really took to siegecraft seriously until cannon came along. For some reason, cannon were appealing from the start in a way the other approaches weren't.

Are any or all of these part of the answer? Is there something else that explains it?

EDIT: the right answer may be "food!" Quoting Jonathan Sumption's Hundred Years War, volume 3:

Sieges posed special difficulties of supply. A siege army was rooted to the spot, its foragers forced to look for supplies over ever greater distances the longer the siege lasted. This was one reason why the English rarely attempted them...

Unlike the English, though, the French could bring supplies overland through friendly country from considerable distances, especially where there were navigable rivers.

In other words, the English could only conveniently besiege places like Calais or Harfleur, ports close to the English Channel and England's own food supplies. Elsewhere in France, they had no way to deliver their besiegers the huge amount of food required to maintain an army sitting in a single spot. This explains why the French often mounted sieges in the Hundred Years War, and the English rarely.

And the English knew their problem going in, so they didn't bother investing in good siege equipment or personnel in the first place.

I'm watching the Smithsonian Channel's show "Apocalypse: WWII". In the second episode, the Germans just took over France and had "200,000 rifles" turned over to them. What did they do with these weapons and weapons from the other countries they occupied?

How has the common perception of these conquerors changed over time, if at all? Were missionaries in South America viewed differently from the conquistadors?

It's widely discussed that the eruption was incredibly loud for long distances however were there any communities near enough that everyone in a particular community felt the effect of burst eardrums and their community adapted to this?

The Mongols, Alexander the great, the persian empire and the Umayyad caliphate all conquered Persia and to the west, but never conquered India. Why is this so?

Does anyone have any good recommendations on book/article recommendations on Ancient Greek hoplite warfare (preferably some sort of comprehensive overview)? Also, do any of the ancient sources go into great detail regarding the method of hoplite warfare (and were correct)?

The book list, though awesome, is particularly lacking in classical/ancient warfare.

I know it was conquered and stuff, but how did the ethnic composition change so much? Even before the population exchanges after the fall of the ottomans, it was mostly Turkish. Are Turks in that area just ethnic Greeks who were Turkified/converted to Islam or are they central Asian Turkic people?