If so, how far would they have gotten and what would they have found?

I've been seeing conflicting sources on where the great Haitian revolutionary and Emperor was born. Some say he was born in Guinea and transported to Haiti as a slave, and other say he was born on a plantation in Northern Sant-Domingue. So, which is it?

I'm taking a greek and roman class in university and I have started to wonder when the city-states started to develop the sense of nation we have today.

Like in popular movies such as Troy and 300. In 300 they talk about fighting in order to protect all of Greece, but they were still a city-state. And in Troy they talk about going to troy as the nation of Greece. I understand that its not really the case in the time period that the movie are showing. But when would it have started to have them refer to each as greeks?

I know its widely accepted that Christopher Columbus discovered the americas in 1492 but, there is speculation over if that was true because some believe the vikings discovered the americas much earlier around 1000. Any help?

If the concept of the trinity plays such a small role (or any?) in the Bible, why is it such a big part of Christianity?

Expanding on the title, I have recently gotten into cryptography which invariably led me to the Enigma Machine. One thing that does not make any sense is how the Germans communicated the new key settings each day to all their operators. And in hand with that, why couldn't the Allies have just obtained them?

I was reading a book on Swiss-South African relations, and in it, it talked about how it had apparently been a long standing idea of the top brass of the National Party for when the time for Democracy came, having it be patterned after the Swiss.

Is there any truth to this? Apparently the Swiss Government even sent people to help the process along, seeing it as an honour.

Like the title says, from John Wayne to Band of Brothers, I have almost never seen a soldier wearing his chinstrap. Is this another case of movie magic obscuring reality or was this actually factual and, if so, why did they choose not to wear them?

My grandfather just recently passed, and not much is known about his service in world War 2. My family and I would like to know more.

Questions I have:

1. Am I in the right place? If not, where should I ask?
2. What information (company? Military ID? Where he was stationed?) do I need to find out about his time in the military?
3. What websites/books/archives would help me find this information?

Thanks ahead of time for any information you can give me, my family and I appreciate it.

So after reading recently that King George III was quoted as saying that, if Washington turned down kingship he would be "the best man in the world" or something along those lines, it got me to thinking: after America won its independence, what was the earliest interaction (be it letters or meeting in person) between a Monarch of the U.K. and a President of The United States?

Depending on how early it was, was there any controversy or excitement over America dealing with a Monarchy it had only recently escaped? Did any King or Queen hold one of our presidents in contempt or respect? Were there even any attempts (foolish though they may be) to convince America to join a Commonwealth of sorts?

The most extreme example being the 2 million or so German women and tens of thousands of Hungarian, Polish, Austrian and Jewish women who were raped by Russian troops at the end of WW2. But not just raped, gang raped, sexually mutilated, blunt objects inserted into their vaginas etc.

And to think that was my grandfather's generation.

In ancient/medieval times I know rape happened but it wasn't anything like WW2. It wasnt on nearly the scale or as vicious. I, obviously, could be wrong though.

I ask this because oftentimes the guerrilla forces, even if they win in the end, tend to have a pretty negative K:D ratio by the end of a war; but in the IRA's case, they fared quite well. I mostly am asking for the tactics and strategies employed by the IRA that made them effective against the British forces.

And a bit more than just 'bows,' if I may ask?

[deleted]

There's a story in particular that fascinates me. At around Chapter 40, a captain arrives at an inn and describes his time in Algiers, then part of the Ottoman Empire. In his account, the captain talks in great detail of both Turkish and Moorish mannerisms, dress, culture, and even arcitecture. Is this description at all accurate? Did Miguel de Cervantes actually know what he was talking about?

I was watching a program and the narrator made mention of the "The disaster at Sibirskaya Nuclear Power Plant"...and then added nothing to it.

So I decided to do some of my own research on it, (I googled it) and didn't really find a lot of information on it, other than a short summary of the events that didn't explain a lot and TIME Magazine calling it the one of the world's worst nuclear disaster. The most detailed the short excerpts get is "A tank blew up inside the plant, dispersing a cloud of radioactive material".

On the historical timeline, this was after Chernobyl. So what exactly happened at Sibirskaya? What were the consequences of the disaster? How did it affect the local population?

Seversk is still has a population of 100,000+, but an article in the BBC had a short entry that said several other villages had to be evacuated and remain empty. They're still uninhabitable because of radioactivity.

Does anyone have a more detailed explanation of what happened?

I saw this "WTF Fact" posted by a Twitter account that is pretty trustworthy. (Any time I check a fact, I do find backing for it.) This one is a bit vague, so it's hard to find information.

I know that some European royals would have bedding ceremonies and the like around the middle ages... but what early societies is this fact referring to? How would they go about doing this and why?

You need no medical knowledge about that, just create a chart, put in some symptoms and relevant data and compare treatment vs no treatment.

So since this seems so obvious (you only need basic math skills and know how to read and write) why did no one ever do that? Or did they?

I understand how, when, and where meth was invented, but my question is, why? Was it made because the inventor wanted to be high or stay up all night? Or was it some sort of scientific accident?

If I'm posting this in the wrong spot please let me know.