I found a book in a rual Missouri town last spring "History Of The Word War" by Francis A. March, who appears to be either the son or daughter of General Peyton C. March (Chief Of Staff, US Army). This book has, for me, been by far the most engrossing book on WW1, I have ever heard, but have not heard of it before or after. Does any one know just how actually authoritative it is, or if has been unduly colored by the closeness of the author and the subject.

Native Americans in California had some of the highest population density in any part of the current United States. However, its Native American occupants never created a civilization or cities of any kind, and did not grow crops. California has a number of natural advantages which could provide for a civilization:

• fertile land for agriculture, fertile enough to provide large percentages of the food grown in the U.S. today
• two large, navigable rivers that today provide irrigation up and down the Central Valley
• coastal and interior areas ideal for founding large cities, with water, navigable harbors/rivers, and location in possible trade routes
• natural defensive barriers to prevent invasion from outside groups (the Cascade mountains in the north, Sierra Nevada mountains in the east, and desert in the southeast)
• large forests in the coastal ranges and the Sierra Nevada for lumber production
• great wealth for possession and trade, including large quantities of gold, otter pelts, whales, abalone, etc.

Native Americans in the Southwest were able to found small cities with agriculture, despite many of these natural advantages. Wikipedia says that California's Native Americans did not develop agriculture because of the great food resources available, but their main food staple was acorns, which are small (requiring the collection of large amounts to feed a person) and difficult to prepare. Corn/squash/beans spread from Mesoamerica to the modern United States, and although California is protected from the outside, it is not impenetrable to outside visitors, and those plants could have reached California.

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From what I hear, the Lombards were as Romanized as barbarians could get and had a stable if decentralized system of government. What caused them to go from being fairly powerful to falling to Charlemagne in a short span of time?

After WWI unfair treaties were forced on Germany but what was it that they were made to do/sign to get out of WWII?

Other than language, were there other major factors that delineated these groups from one another?

I know there were other tribes wandering Europe in late antiquity/the early Dark Ages, but these three seem to have had the most impact -- their languages pretty much make up all of Northern Europe, with a few exceptions.

It seems like the major downfall of the phalanx was its inability to protect its flanks and rear from attack. Why did they never think to turn the men on the flanks 90 degrees and the men in the rear 180 to form a square of pikes? Movement may have been further restricted, but then walking backwards or sideways slowly doesn't seem like that much of a feat for trained soldiers. Maybe I am missing some key point but having islands of heavily armored men with 18 foot pikes sticking out on all sides seems like a much better system once the weaknesses of the phalanx became clear when fighting the roman manipules and legions.

During world war 2 I was under the impression infrastructure and war related target were some of the main targets of air raids on both sides. What I don't understand is it takes months of not years to build bridges and factories, which I would assume could be destroyed in seconds with a handful of bombs. Wouldn't a single bombing run of a city be a huge devastation to a country's ability to produce weapons for the front? How affective were these bombing missions? Sorry if this is too vague or broad.

It seems every movie i've seen regarding Bobby Fischer always showed him as a celebrity with Night Show appearances and News broadcasts, but today we hear nothing of the leading chess players. Why?

My grandfather died when I was real young, so I never was able to really have a relationship with him. He was in VMSB 234, other than what is online I know very little. Is there a government agency with information on where he was stationed during the war?

Since Japan was closed up, were there any translators within Japan who knew English? Why would they study English if they were closed?

On r/nba, I've seen several posts looking at basketball forums from as far back as 1986. However, in my own research about the internet (I did a small project on how it was invented in high school), I read that it was originally only available to academic researchers, and used as a means to advance research. When did online communities like anime or sports forums start forming, and what were the factors that drove this formation?

Hi

I've read up on different accounts theories about if this was ever possible. On one hand, something like the Battle of Hastings seemed to show that the Norman knights weren't able to break the Saxon shield wall, and IIRC some anecdotal evidence from reinactment indicates that horses are spooked by even a line of normal, non-pike spears.

But there are well documented cases of heavy cavalry smashing through enemy lines (Battle of Magnesia etc), so I wonder how this could have been even possible? How do you get a warhorse to charge against a line of men with shields?

Hi -

Apologies in advance if this is too vague for the purposes of /r/askhistorians.

I've recently been captivated by Den of Thieves and Connie Bruck's The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the JunkBond Raiders, as well as the story of Dr. John R. Brinkley and his exploits as a fraudulent doctor and radio maven.

I'm trying to amass stories of these kinds of outsized characters in American history who commit massive/ongoing fraud and get their fingers in a lot of pies - the Michael Milkens, the Wilson Mizners, the John Brinkleys.

What sorts of figures would you recommend looking at, and what sources and biographies do you think would be worth looking at?

Thanks in advance.

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Yes, he was indeed the trigger cause, but how much of an impact do you think the man himself, and his co conspirators actually had in the grand scheme of things?

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