I was raised in a strict household where saying 'gee' got you a time-out because you were taking the Lord's name in vain. A bit more extreme than the norm, but everyone knows there's words not to say in polite company.
I guess you could say all bad words are demeaning, whether using them demeans something holy, someone else, or yourself, but I'm wondering if cursing was ever seen in a totally different light, or if what's normal now has always been more or less the status quo.

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I am watching Narcos, which has an air of accracy to it. It suggests that cocaine wasn't present outside South America before 1979. ...as a recreational drug anyway. I know about how it was considered medicinal (though oft-abused) at the turn if the century.

So what about all those rock stars of the 70s? I am thinking about Mick Jagger's aquarium of coke when recording Exile on Main Street in 1972, David Bowie's Columbian flu on the Dick Cavet show in 1974, and Neil Young's nose residue on The Last Waltz.

Wikipedia's article on the history of cocaine has a big gap between 1922 and the 90s... Was cocaine perhaps just for the rich and famous before it hit the mainstream in the 80s?

In Khmer, the words for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc., literally translate as Moon Day, Mars Day, Mercury Day, and so on. While it doesn't seem unlikely to name days after planets, it does seem odd that they would coincidentally line up in the same way. One obvious answer would be that when Cambodia was a part of French Indochina, the previous names of the week (or whatever system existed) was replaced with a system modeled after French. But if this were the case, why wouldn't the names of the week be t'ngai (Khmer for Day) lundi (French Monday), t'ngai martes, etc.

Is there a logical reason why the planets, sun and moon would be organized in the same sequential order?

Or, for that matter, are there any significant occurrences of two cultures having developed the same concept independently?

For example, I learned recently that Italian and Sanskrit share a similar word for snake: serpe and sarpa, respectively. From this, I could conclude that there must exist some greater language connecting them (which, if I understand everything correctly, is the Indo-European family of languages). However, in the absence of other historical context that may link the two cultures together, it can also be concluded that this is a simple coincidence, rooted in the fact that snakes hiss and it would make sense for words that describe them to make use of the "s" sound.

Is there any reason to suspect this might be the case? Have two cultures developed something completely independently of each other, or is it always the case that cultures with some significant commonality must share an ancestor? Is it possible to distinguish between these two cases in the absence of further context? If not, and maybe this is too vague a question, but is there a well-established or widely-accepted notion of "enough" context to link the two together (outside of hard evidence)?

By the homefront in this question, I mean the pre-conquest territories of the Kingdom of Macedon, the capital and surrounding areas.

Not too long ago I was talking with a friend of mine, who has a degree in history, and he seemed to believe a German invasion of Britain was absolutely unfeasible at any stage of the war. I believe his main arguments were that we (we're English) had air superiority and that the Germans would be slaughtered wherever they landed, (indeed he said the paratroopers would be attacked by farmers with pitchforks as they landed in the fields), not just the beaches, which I assume would be the main points of assault (the beaches, that is), where they'd be cut down by machine guns. I'm sure a lot of the nuances of his points were lost on me in my inebriated state, but it's something that's had me thinking ever since.

Which led to another question popping into my head recently - what is a modern example of an island nation being successfully occupied? Cursory research suggests it was Grenada. But are there any modern examples of island nations being overtaken? And if not, when was the last?

Which leads me to ask a third question: are island nations inherently far easier to defend? Obviously they are to some degree, I mean are they much, much easier to defend?

I don't have much of an education in history beyond what I've read myself, but I'd much appreciate an answer to any of these 2 and a half questions. I'd particularly like an answer to the first question though (regarding a German invasion of Britain).

Thank you to anyone who takes the time to respond!

Following his triumph over Pompey, Caesar had no serious power rivals who could challenge his supremacy and he was given official dictatorial authority by the Senate. Why is it then that Augustus is almost universally considered to be the first emperor and not Caesar? Is it because he was assassinated? Is it because Augustus did not inherit his powers directly and had to fight a civil war? Is it because Augustus gained additional powers?

Did he choose the name himself? Was it a nickname others started calling him? Is there any particular reason for "Sun King"?

I'm only interested in anything that happened up to the late 50's.

How did the armies of the Bahamanis, Ming China, and Morocco compare to the armies of England, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire during this period? Was the Ottoman success against the Arab states facilitated by their European technology?

What do we know from the archaeological and historical record about societies in which women were in political authority over men (matriarchal versus matrilineal)? Herodotus et al mention "Amazons," and philosophical writers (Gimbutas et al) have speculated a great deal, but what do we really know?

I read somewhere that Franz Ferdinand, more famously known for his assassination setting off WWI, was a hunting enthusiast. Actually I've heard that he was positively voracious, using special rail cars to hunt from.

There is this line in "To the Reader":

The books are divided into chapters, for the ease of the reader, who may thereby the better pause and breath when he thinks fit; and to supply a chronological table in the ten last books, the distinction of times is observed in the notes, both by the olympiads and the Christian era; for the relations in the first five books were long be­fore the olympiads began, and the history is so ancient, that the cer­tain times of persons and things there related are, for the most part, unknown or very uncertain.

For example, did the Romans see the Celtics and Egyptians and Mesopotamians, and noticed they had similar gods with similar abilities and stories as theirs and thought these were the same gods just in different cultures and languages?

Or did they think, like religions today, that only their beliefs were real and the others were lost?

I think of horseback riding as pretty dangerous nowadays so yeah

Smithsonianmag.com reported that this bible was just discovered in the Cambridge Univ. archives from the early 1600s. Are the archives so large or unorganized that discoveries are still possible? Or understaffed? Seems like after centuries of existence, nothing would be unclassified or unknown? (Although to be fair, I still discover things in my garage I didn't know I had!)

Or was it more of an independent - kingdoms united only nominally situation?

I was watching the Sofia Coppola movie and they had an elaborate dressing ceremony. I know from other books I've read that there were elaborate meal rituals but would getting dressed each morning be so elaborate? If so, what other everyday tasks would be ritualized?

Mining? Trade? I don't fully understand the vastness of the ancient egyptian empire or their influence, but gold seems to of been abundant.

I'm reading Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy. The book is obviously about one specific event, but author David Roberts gives some background about various aspects of Mormon culture.

He introduces the Danites as, "The most nefarious organization ever to coalesce within the Mormon church... a devastatingly effective cadre of assassins." But less than a page later, he references Leonard J. Arrington's work, Brigham Young: American Moses, which denies that the Danites were much more than "western fiction."

So which is it? Mormon assassins or figment of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's imagination? Thanks in advance for any kind replies.

my experience of internet discussions gives me the impression that many people are depressed or reluctant to accept the light speed limit because of apparent limits in places on space exploration

a few years back I remember when some, likely faulty, results at CERN suggested particles had moved faster than light. I saw more than one comment stream started by someone expressing delight at the idea