Saw people talking about Biden being VP for Sanders and wondered if that's happened before.

It seems like were setting more fitness records from running to lifting every year and that the over all health of the public is much better fitness wise. Is this true? Like could athletes in the Ancient World compete with our current athletes ?

I've seen some backlash on Twitter about this statement, but is Obama ultimately right? Or factually wrong?

Either as a cultural custom, or a one-off dynastic alliance? (Yes, I know this skirts the prohibition against cherrypicking historical anecdotes, but I figure this is such a vanishingly-rare-to-nonexistent occurrence as to limit the effects of cherrypicking).

I know that breast plates would not have stopped musket fire, but why didn't British soldiers ( for example ) issue breast plates from the 1600's - late 1800's? Most fighting happened hand to hand with bayonets. Couldn't these have been used to protect from melee? And during British conquest of more tribal regions that still fielded bow and arrow and relied heavily on melee weaponry?

Edit: Grammar and spelling

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Hundreds of thousands of books were given out to the common public as rewards and wedding presents. So what happened to all of the copies? Did the government confiscate them or did everyone just kind of forget their existence? Where did they all go? I'm aware that the book was illegal to sell, but was it illegal to have? Please give me a source for any information you have, if you can. Thanks.

I'm guessing the word Axis came from the allied side describing their for.

Was it simply because of a lack of manpower and supplies to send to the front?

And in the case I did miss anything earlier, I'm talking about the European Theatre.

I was thinking today about how an incredible number of the items our society produces exist purely because they don't make any sense. Did ancient cultures have anything analogous to the "plastic yodeling pickle" or t-shirts with joke slogans on them? If not, when did novelty items start becoming commonplace?

I recently read a book called "Mennonites, Amish, and the American Civil War" which mentioned that the Swiss-German Anabaptists opposed slavery partly because they were never exposed to it prior to emigrating. Is this true of other German immigrants to the US?

A common theme among Medieval Fantasy games, such as Skyrim, and movies, such as The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, is to give different groups of people a form of Scale mail(Hold Guards in Skyrim, Rohirrim in LoTR). Both of these are based on Germanic peoples, but I was unable to find any information regarding its use by Germanic Warriors. What groups would have used Scale Mail? Also, did any Germanic People use it?

Something I've always found odd about the US is that we seem to change every food we come in contact with that isn't from our mainland. Pizza in Italy is not what we eat here, the "Americano" supposedly came from US soldiers watering down their coffees in Italy, we have Tex-Mex restaurants like Taco Bell, Chinese places that apparently serve mostly things no one in China even eats in that preparation, and let's not talk about Olive Garden. What led to these changes? Who tended the be the one who changed them? With that, is this why I can buy croutons, cheeses, and breads that are supposedly styled as "Italian" or "Mexican"? What is the basis for these terms? If not, what was the reason?

EDIT: A followup from /u/Boneyabba, does this happen in other countries as well? If you get a pizza in Holland, is it "Hollandized?"

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Also, are you aware of any modern equivalents for comparative purposes?

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Was Mozart as childish and vulgar as he is portrayed? Was Salieri really his conniving, underhanded enemy?

All the powdered wigs and pompous clothing - is that historically accurate?