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I've always wondered what life would be like for a teenager in Nazi Germany just before the war truly broke out.

Thanks.

Why were the inhabitants of 'The New World' hit so severely by disease born from Europe? I understand that many native inhabitants of the Americas had never been subjected to the same bacteria as those in Europe - but why was this?

I'm currently watching WWII in Colour on Netflix, and in the episode "Red Sun Rampant" they depict thousands of Japanese sailors stranded after the Battle of Midway. It seems impossible that the US ships could have captured all the stranded sailors. Was it?

A Vietnamese guy recently asked me how long Europeans have worn white at weddings. I assumed it had been for hundreds of years, but wikipedia tells me it's more modern. On the other hand, I've read that the Romans and Greeks wore white wedding dresses (the same source claimed the Romans wore a wedding ring in the same place as modern women). Can someone tell me whether Greek and Roman weddings had white wedding dresses, and the same for medieval weddings? Also, whether it's true that we get our ring tradition from the Romans.

From Will and Ariel Durant's The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage... "One of his disciples concluded that Buddha would approve of suicide, but Buddha reproved him; suicide would be useless, since the soul, unpurified, would be reborn in other incarnations until it achieved complete forgetfulness of self." What is the primary source of this story? On a side note, what do historians think of Will Durant?

By contemporary racism, in this case I mean racism based on skin colour and other physical differences, and as I've understood it, racism used to be more related to nationalities than anything else. Did this rise from the USA's slave trade and its attempts to justify it, or did it arise from other factors or places?

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Why not West Eastward where the sun rises?

I've been listening to the musical, and I really like it, but I was wondering how accurate it is to Hamilton's actual life and experiences. Some things (such as his relationship with Aaron Burr) seem highly unlikely to me. I would love to read up on Hamilton's life, but simply do not have the time right now, and I just want to know what I should take from the musical as fact, and what is more fiction.

Both the cork and the corkscrew seem like they depend on each other to exist. Were there just easy to remove corks at some point, or did "corkscrews" predate them and have a different purpose?

How did people seal their wine? (Cheers to Friday night! 🍷)

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This was meant as a preamble to teaching us about the industrial revolution

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Or any fossil for that matter. Before they were being put in museums and indentified as fossils, what did people back in the day think of Dino bones?

^ I know that the Greeks used to use figure-eight shaped shields but when did those give way to the perfectly round styled shields?

So I just watched an "Ancient Black Ops" episode about the Spartans & their ultra-elite Krypteia. It said that the Spartan 300 fought near the shore of Thermopylae that was connected with a narrow path to the mainland. The writers & historians on the show also said that Leonidas held camp there & fought for 2 days, including fighting the Immortals, before they were killed with enough arrows to blot out the sun. I remember the movie "300" depicting a fight on the side of a narrow mountain path. Obviously, I take any "based in a true story" drama/ action movie with a grain of salt, especially since the Persians had elephants in the movie, which doesn't seem too plausible.

So, which one is the real story of the Spartan 300 & how do we know that's what's really happened?

Edit: Yes, the "17th Century" was a typo, I meant the 1800s. I will continue to insist that the xth century format is stupid and should be abolished.

I'm looking at creating a fantastic version of Ancient Greece for a game. In the process I've been doing a bit of light research on Greek culture, law, entertainment, etc. While I've found interesting things about law and courts (Draco being a nice highlight) there hasn't been a lot of articles on the other side of things.

Did criminals organize in any significant way?

I found a single reference to a group of criminals called 'Kakoujrgi' but wasn't sure if that was just a class of extreme crime or what?