I got into a pretty nasty argument about this at a bar. This gentleman (who went on to rant angrily about many other things including Obama and libruls, but I'll leave that for another post) swore that Iran was a bastion of amicable West friendly government before the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

He even suggested that the Shah supported Israel and if it weren't for Khomeini and the clerics the two countries would have stayed pals and allies.

I objected (which enraged him), and proceeded to contest that while Iran was on much friendlier terms with the West at that time, and did have trade relations and other dealings with Israel, there's no way you could count the Shah as an active supporter and proponent of the Israeli state. In fact, I said no iteration of Iranian government has ever really cottoned to the existence of Israel.

It's one thing to do business with them, but it's another thing entirely to endorse and champion them.

So after a bit of google fu research, I'm not as sure as I was when I made the initial statement. It seems that there may have even been enthusiastic economic dealings between the two during the Shah's reign after all, and that could maybe kinda sorta be considered active support by some metrics. But I only got as far as Wikipedia, so yeah.

So did I have it wrong? Was the Shah a good guy who liked Israel and worked to bring them into the fold?

EDIT: Khomeini Khomeni Yoheinie

It lies on a peninsula(salient?) of France that juts into Belgium. Wikipedia mentions 1678 and french wikipedia mentions the treaty of Nimègue but doesn't specifically mention Givet.

I know that the British developed this tactic but was wondering how important it was in winning certain battles and how important it was for artillery tactics in general.

Any estimates on a ratio of infantry to cavalry? What about other nations, such as Prussia, Austria, UK or Russia?

I just always thought it was such an odd idea, to have an address like "New York, New York". Why did they decide to name the city this?

I'm writing this novel and I need help with a bit of the technical history.

So there's this guy, Matthias, and he was turned into the Nazis by his wife, Sigrid, after she caught him sleeping with a man. Now Dachau, where Matthias was imprisoned, has been liberated and he wants to go see his daughter. So he goes to his old apartment just to learn that Sigrid died while he was in the camp and his daughter was sent to an orphanage, so he goes to get her back. Here is where my question comes in. Would he have to adopt her or just prove that he's her father? And what is the process he would have to go through to do whatever he had to do?

The autonyms the two countries use (Zhōnghuá and Nihon, respectively) are completely different from what western civilizations call them. I'm wondering how the western names came into existence.

Hi historians,

it's been a long time since I learned about history and anything between 0 AD and 1800 AD is quite foggy, so I am looking for some good books to fill in the gaps. If possible, I would like to read something that would take me from the Roman Empire to the world as it is today, at a pleasant pace.

Thanks in advance!

I am reading through the Cambridge Ancient History Volume 10 on the Augustan Empire about the provinces. It explains a lot about how the cities/towns/communities within the province self-goverened themself. What was the role of the governor?

Portugal did not join UK in WW2 although cooperating. Neither has overseas colonies anymore. And it´s the US which maintains presence on the Azores. Both are NATO members. Is the Alliance still a thing, or mostly history, surviving in name only?

In addition, were the Trotula texts valued contemporarily for scientific contributions or were they well known mainly because so few women were publishing in science and medicine at that time? What was the reaction from her (predominantly male) peers to her discussion of male infertility and other taboo topics?

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Prompted after I attended the 'Churchill's Scientists' exhibition at the Science Museum - I hadn't known beforehand that Britain had a nuclear programme that predated the Manhattan Project.

Does anyone have info on this? It was supposedly a gathering of natives from Hawaii, Guam, and the US mainland to put the US on trial for war crimes, but I can't find any other info besides that.

When I was reading about the rise of Mesopotamian city states, it was mentioned that a written language was needed to organize a community with a population of more than 2,000.

Yet in pre-Columbian Americas, there stood the Aztec and Inca Empire, even though they didn't have written languages. And the population of Aztec cities could approach 200,000.

When we talk about the Aztec Empire or the Inca Empire, does the word "empire" has the same meaning as it is applied to the political entities in the old world, such as the Roman Empire, the Islamic Empire, etc.? One would think about not only the Emperor, but also the bureaucrats, taxation records, written laws, etc.

Without a written language, were Aztec and Inca simply alliances of tribes? And how could they manage a city of 200,000 without written records?

I just want to make sure I have a clear understanding. So the FT contest the germ theory. The Germ theory insist that the reason America was how it was back when it was first being colonized was because of European antecedents. The Frontier theory suggest that the European settlers were transformed by the colonization of the new land which formed a new mind set and social behavior.

I'm really interested in the nuts and bolts of U-boat tactics and considerations. I can't find anything about real encounters, the distances/times involved, what parties did and why. I've watched most of what I can find and it doesn't really explain it to me.

I'd love something that can describe in detail an encounter from first sighting. Things like, why did the boat do this? Was it surfaced, submerged, how deep? What could they infer from sensors? If they were hunted by the enemy, how and why did it go down?

There was a WW2 infantry doco I watched a little while ago which had kind of what I wanted. I forget the name, but they used the Red Orchestra engine to simulate visuals for the battles. It paced out the fight, how it went and why. I would really enjoy something like that for naval stuff.