I'm curious as to whether tribesmen who had emigrated from what corresponds to Denmark would preserve any sort of familiarity with invading Danes some centuries later.

Didn't Quebec stop being part of France after the Seven years war, while parts of the American south still were?

• The movie is set is the 1823 in South Dakota, but it seems like they try to portray more of mountainous western Montana region. Can somebody speak to the conditions trappers faced there, in this frontier area. There were French trappers in the movie, is this historically accurate for the location depicted in the film?

• Were there frequent conflicts between trappers and Native American tribes?

• How were trapping camps or missions organized? In the film they seemed to have something like a military structure. Several characters talk about enlisting.

Many of the lines in the "Major-General's Song" from Pirates of Penzance are incomprehensible to the average person today, such as references to "the crimes of Heliogabalus" or "The Frogs of Aristophanes." My questions is: was the song understood by Gilbert and Sullivan's contemporaries?

Here are the lyrics in question:

I am the very model of a modern Major-General,

I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical,

From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;

I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical,

I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,

About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news---

With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,

I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;

In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

I know our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's,

I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox,

I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,

In conics I can floor peculiarities parablous.

I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies,

I know the croaking chorus from the Frogs of Aristophanes,

Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore,

And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.

Then I can write a washing bill in Balylonic cuneiform,

And tell you every detail of Caractacus's uniform;

In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

In fact, when I know what is meant by "mamelon" and "ravelin",

When I can tell at sight a chassepôt rifle from a javelin,

When such affairs as sorties and surprises I'm more wary at,

And when I know precisely what is meant by "commissariat",

When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,

When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery:

In short, when I've a smattering of elemental strategy,

You'll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee---

For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,

Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;

But still in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

I understand that they would likely be similar but I'm curious as to how advances in technology or tactics would change that.

I'm writing a book about pirates that is placed in the early 1700's. I'm working on a scene where a Royal Navy warship is chasing a Dutch Flute and catch them, but I'm not sure if that's possible. I know that British Man O' Wars can sail up to 8 or 9 knots, but have no idea how fast a flute can sail. Are smaller and lighter ships typically faster or do the warships have an advantage because of more tack?

I understand that ancient civilizations knew generally about the passage of time through seasons and by the rising and setting of the sun and moon, but when did the first civilization realize that a year was 365ish days and that a day could be broken down evenly into hours, minutes, and seconds? And when did the world come together to say "once every four years -- except on years that end in 00 -- we will have an extra day to make up for the fraction of a day we leave out every other year"?

I'm just curious about this as I saw a caveman in a show with yet another stereotypical name. I went to look things up and couldnt find any real evidence on what they may have, if at all, used for names.

Thanks.

So I'm Canadian and for a history class I'm taking I had to read Robert Graves, "Goodbye to All That" and about half a dozen times during the book he mentions that the Canadians were especially brutal, particularly they would rarely take prisoners. Almost the whole book is done from the author's memory, (its an autobiography) so is that actually true of Canadians in general during the war or was that just his personal experience?

(Elaborated question) Did the Nazis march Jews/Untermenshen through cities (in front of crowds of civilians) on the way to concentration camps?

I ask because it happens several times in the fiction novel. It's so hard to imagine people being able to stomach that. As opposed to all the stories I've heard about German citizens having "no idea" what was happening in the camps they lived by.

Whenever I hear about ancient cultures, especially those from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age there are always a hodge-podge of different naming styles. On one hand you can talk about the Minoans or the Hittites or the Sumerians, but on the other hand many cultures, some important or influential have rather uninspired, clearly descriptive names like the Bactria-Margiana Agricultural Complex or the Neolithic Funnelbeaker culture.

I know that the naming practice is generally to name newly discovered cultures after the first site that they were found at. The obvious answer is that historical cultures are identified by what they called themselves when we know that information, but that does not explain how the ancient Cretans who's language we cannot read are Minoans rather than something like "Knossos Palatial Culture" or why archaeologists talk about the Villanova Culture when they were infact early Etruscans.

I know this is a really long set up for the question, so why do some ancient cultures discovered by archaeologists have "their own" names and some are simply named for where they were first found or given some purely descriptive names? Is it essentially arbitrary based on when and where they were discovered? Or is there a system for identifying newly discovered cultures with names from the historical record? Or does it depend on the context that you are talking about each culture in?

In the USA, we've never had a president who was a member of an independent party (unless you count Jackson). What in German culture or the political structure of the WR made voting independent viable?

An open-ended question, I know - but it's nice to have more space for interpretation.