Who, what, what, when, where, why? Maybe also a point of historical reference(s) to go along with it? What civilization did they belong to? What was life like then? Those are some of the questions I have after watching a program about cuneiform/Babylon/etc.

I was just reading about this and was wondering why the French didn't flank the English. The Wikipedia page just quickly said that the forests hemmed in the battlefield, but I don't understand why this would have stopped them unless the forests were very dense. Any military historians out there to educate me?

I'm a Junior in HS and sitting though another run-through of the Russian Revolution, and I suddenly realize that Lenin's demise is pretty suspicious. We know that Lenin died at 53, that Lenin had written that he didn't trust Stalin/preferred Trotsky, and that Stalin was more than capable of killing political opponents (see Mexican ice pick). How likely is it,directly or indirectly, that Lenin was Victim #1 of the Great Terror?

A student asked this in class. I was legitimately stumped and am having a hard time finding information. We discussed the pros and cons in class (hard time arguing you're a free country if you keep people from voting, but Southerners might be inclined to vote McClellan to end the war, difficulty of counting votes during war, what this means for the legitimacy of the North and South). It generated really good conversation, so I was hoping you might be able to help shed some light!

I'm very curious about plagiarism and its interaction with folk music. I can't imagine information about authorship would be as important as the tune or lyrics to popular songs.

A few examples that come to mind:

In Emma, upon hearing a lot of unexpected news, her father says something like “good God, after all of these surprises, I think I should go and lie down!” And Emma says “you really should, father, you don’t want to make yourself ill!” I recall the father in The Marquise of O by Heinrich von Kleist being similarly ill after discovering he’s false accused his daughter of scandalous things.

And I’m currently reading The Brothers Karamazov, in which Katerina Ivanovna is experiencing fainting spells and “hysterics” after finding out her fiance’s brother loves her.

I'm thinking about 1770-1810 time period wise to be more specific

I already know that the Latin spoken by most of the population of the Roman Empire and the Latin used in more formal circles were different(The former being Vulgar Latin and the latter being Classic Latin).

However I am interested in knowing how different they were, were they considered entirely different languages?, or was the situation equivalent to what happens with Standard English and the different dialects(Ebonics, Irish, Australian, British, etc) of it?

I have heard that slaves would box each other but I was under the impression that this was an activity confined to the slave quarters. Did southerners actually force their slaves to fight to the death? Was this widespread or considered sport? Who would spectate these bouts?

It strikes me that people of antiquity would have had lives strongly dictated by whether the sun was up or not. Sure in your home you could have a fire going on the hearth providing heat and light but where candles and lamps affordable enough before industrial revolution for common people to work outdoors during the night?

If you lived far north enough that your winter daylight hours where 3 or 4 if any would you simply have to do all your outdoors work during those hours?

After reading about some wars Sweden was involved and one thing caught my attention. Often the Swedish army was able to defeat a larger enemy. At Fraustadt the 20000 man strong army of Saxons and Russians was broken by a Swedish army half its size. At Narva something similar happened (although weather and bad positioning had some influence there). And at Poltava the cut off Swedish army charged the Russian ranks without ammunition against three times as many enemies.

Although they were utterly defeated it raises the question why the Swedish forces were so much braver than their enemies. Even at Breitenfeld the situation did not look that good but they still managed to win that battle. What was the secret of the Swedish morale? Or what were their enemies lacking?

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Were the Romans better prepared? We're the Arabs not interested? Were the Sassanians in a more vulnerable position?

It seems like by this point they had given up all pretensions of the senate mattering, so why not just proscribe them all and confiscate their wealth?

Also, if they didnt, was it a hindrance to the manufacture of quality products?

I'm aware that there are a couple different linguistic traditions in Japan; there's the indigenous script, adopted Chinese characters, and a variety of pronunciations. What I want to know is how prevalent real Chinese language skills were among Japanese elites during the Warring States period; would Oda Nobunaga be able to read the Confucian Classics unabridged? If so, could he have a conversation with Qi Jiguang, or were Japanese elites only trained in native pronunciation, grammar, etc?

Someone who i assumed had a rather heavy bias claimed that this was the case and even claimed that Zhukov is credited with saying that "american Spam saved us". Since I could not find this quote anywhere i assume that the rest of their claim has little merit? Am i wrong in this?