I like the decimal system because I find it easier to work with. Take the number 1992. I can say "One Thousand and Nine Hundreds and Ninety and Two" out loud, and you know which number I mean. All I need to do is count the total number of digits, to know that I am starting from Thousands rather than Ten thousands or whatever. But in roman numerals, the same number is written (I believe) as MCMXCII. I'm sure a Roman would have been able to answer questions about this number, but how would they say this number out loud. Would it be (translated into english) something like : "A Thousand and A Hundred less than a Thousand and Ten less than a Hundred and One and another One"? That's how I read it - is that what romans had to do as well?

My grandfather was a navigator in the Lancaster Bomber towards the end of World War II, and I have recently been getting interested in aviation history. Therefore, I have been wondering what the conditions were in inside the bombers during raids. Such as:

• If they needed to go to the toilet, how did they go?
• What food did they eat?
• How did they stay awake during raids?

It's a general broad question sorry. I was just wondering if various time periods had control issues with weapons and how it was handled?

You hear about these whaling expeditions where the sailing ships would be gone from home for two or three years as a matter of course.

Would the men on board really make that much more than if they stayed and worked at home?

How much could the officers expect to come home with? How would the ordinary crew members actually make out with at the end of so long a cruise? How about the actual owners/investors?

[deleted]

I read an article on an online publication a while back (I forget which) that claimed that Japan had a history of multiculturalism and the idea of a monolithic "Japanese" identity is just a myth. I know that in the modern era, only around 1% of Japan's population is immigrant, but I was wondering if there was any historical basis to this claim. To my knowledge, prior to the Meiji restoration, foreigners were only allowed into the port of Nagasaki, and that during the Imperialist era, Koreans and Taiwanese would be brought to Japan as labor, but I'm not aware of much regarding immigration to Japan in other timer periods.

This was found by my dad in the desert where I live and we have found more of them around arrow heads and stuff like that just wondering what this would have been used for. It has a sharp round edge and a place to put your thumb.

Before ISIS destroyed this monument I have never heard of it, I tried Googling and could find much of the history. Why was it built? By whom? What year? So to honour this lost piece of history I would like to learn about it.

The quote is from Wikipedia but I've seen the battle described that way before. Was Vicksburg the last major crossing point of the Mississippi that the Confederacy controlled? Also I would think that if there were enough soldiers west of the Mississippi to make this a serious blow, then there would be enough soldiers to try and retake one of the other crossing points. I'm just looking for a little context on this battle.

Lately I've become interested in the intellectual hoops that early modern Europeans were jumping through to justify their colonial expansion. Specifically I'm thinking about how rationalism and the scientific method were central to theories of racial essentialism and, by extension, racism in the modern sense. (I'm mostly getting these ideas from having read "A Genealogy of Modern Racism," so I guess my first implicit question is whether most historians accept that Dr. West was onto something...)

Based purely on depictions in popular culture, it seems like ancient Egyptians or classical Romans or medieval Scandinavians would have felt no need to justify conquest or enslavement of people beyond "because we can." Is this accurate? Or is there any literature suggesting that Romans or Vikings felt some need to defend the practice of slavery?

This question isn't limited to the events mentioned in the title, but counties tend to name wars after who they see as the enemy or the location of the fighting. Are there any cases were the same exact event is named something entirely different relative to a country's point of view? (example: The USA calls it the Korean War, does Korea call it the American War?)

Sorry if I sound ignorant asking this question.

[deleted]

Or perhaps how Yuri Gagarin delt with the cccp space program after the soyuz 1 failure.

Hey guys, I've overheard some of my professors speaking about a school of historiography they specify as Marxian, but for everything I can tell about it, it seems more like social history than anything. Can anybody with a better grasp of things clarify this for me, and possibly supply some sources?

Basically the opening question. WW2 is generally described in terms of its leaders. Hitler wanted control, he allied with Mussolini and Stalin, Churchill saw it so he teamed up with Roosevelt etc.

The exception to this is always Japan. Japan is always Japan. "Japan allied with Germany, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, etc." There never seems to be any prominent figure associated with leading Japan's militarism and aggressive expansion. There is, of course, Emperor Hirohito, but my impression was always that he more or less remained aloof from political matters.

Japan's aggressiveness seems to have been a cultural trend that was a long time building, but surely that could be said of many nations in WWII. Who might be considered the most instrumental figure in terms of 'leading' Japan's military expansionist agenda?