Many cities gave in to Alexander and welcomed him whereas others were willing to die before giving in. I'm just wondering why Tyre and Gaza were more loyal to Persia than the other cities of the region.

The author of the biography I'm reading pretty much chalks it up to those cities thinking they had a "chance" at defending against Alexander. Did those cities just fear the Persians more than Alexander, and think that giving into Alexander would mean destruction later on, or did those cities have some kind of special affinity with Persia specifically?

In videogames and movies we see torches used like lamps. They're everywhere, plentiful, easy to make, and apparently last quite a while. How accurate is this?

We didn't have a US president go visit the pope until 1919, and the pope didn't come here until 1965. I know that there were anti-Catholic fears expressed during Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign. Was the pope greeted by a lot of hostility in 1965?

As the title implies, I'm interested in recommendations of good recent summaries of what we've learned about prehistoric populations through the recent genetic studies.

I read Cavalli-Sforza's "Genes, Peoples, and Languages" from 2000 and found it fantastic but I'm sure it's really outdated now; still I found the statistical viewpoint really powerful.

I also read Bryan Sykes' 2006 "Blood of the Isles" and found it bothersome (I really didn't need all the potted histories) but useful.

Hopefully this is an ok question to ask!

In my genealogy I have a French relative that came from Xaintes, Santonge, France and traveled to Montreal, Canada sometime around 1710. In his description they say he was a "soldat de Marigny." I think this means soldier of Marigny? I was wondering if anyone new if there would be a reason for him to come over to Canada around this time. Was there a war going on? Or maybe he just came over for a better life?

Not that this will help, but his middle name was "dit LaFleur." I've read that some of the soldiers had middle names like this.

During the Vietnam war, the draft was active. Were young men drafted into the Marines, or did the Marines remain volunteer only? I ask this because the Marines are a lot harder for recruits to handle during boot camp than the Army, for example. It seems like it would be "less fair" for a young man to be forced to go through Marine boot camp, when others were only forced to go through the Army bootcamp.

Was the draft present for the Marine corp? If so, how did it work?

How did those dictionaries become the most respected like Webster's? Is it still profitable for them considering there is online dictionaries now? Also are different dictionaries more popular in other countries? Is there any non English dictionaries that are equivalent to Websters.

I was pretty baffled the other day when I found out that in pre 20th century Britain anyone who was born there would be granted citizenship immediately no matter what the nationality of their parents was. So why did they change the law in the 1900s?

How, operationally speaking, successful was the NLF in urban centers of South Vietnam, especially during the Tet Offensive? When one hears about the success of the Vietcong in waging its insurgency, you think about the application of Maoist doctrines of rural encirclement rather than how their strategy applied to places like Saigon. What sort of attacks were carried out against what targets in urban environments during that time, and how disruptive were they?

How did they rate those weapons in combat and in comparison to their own?

The US and Canada had fertile land and furs, India had popular consumer goods such as tea and spices, Africa had precious metals and exploitable populations, and Australia was barren but was a very useful penal colony. However New Zealand seems to lack any significant draw for the British Empire, so was their a specific reason I am not aware of, or was it simply a matter of "Empire"?

As is my understanding, not only did the Japanese used some outlandish tactics during WW2 (Kamikaze), their whole approach to warfare seemed to be somewhat of a cultural shock to their Western opponents (fighting to the death, banzai charges).

My main curiosity isn't so much aimed towards the 'who and what' of that difference (as one might pose the counter-question: can we really speak of a 'European military culture' to compare it to?), but rather mostly aimed towards the historic roots of modern (1900 - 1945) Japanese military culture. What kind of continuity is there, compared to earlier periods? Was Japanese military culture purposefully transformed by Jingoist Japanese elements?

An answer to these (especially these last two) questions would be much appreciated. Though I'd also love to be referred to books on the subject, as my historic knowledge concerning modern Japan really is quite thin.

[deleted]

This is a bit of a tricky question to convey and I understand the wording is very weird, so I'll try and explain in better here. I am basically wondering what the earliest time period, date or whatever, a piece of history, mythology or religion mentions or lays some claim to.

Now obviously most religions or mythologies have a point of creation or the 'beginning of time'. But what's the farthest back in time that can be discerned as some form of historical period.

For example, I know Indigenous Australian oral history has stories going back as far as 7000 years or so. I guess I am interested how far a real or claimed or imagined historical memory goes.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense but if you have any information that you think is relevant I would really appreciate it, thanks

[deleted]

When you look at the population figures for Rhodesia, it's obvious that whites were a miniscule fraction of the Rhodesian population - at one point the population of white Rhodesians was smaller than that of Newcastle - but they still fought, with great effort, for a fifteen years to keep the Rhodesian government in power, even as Portugal's colonial holdings crumbled around them. What was their master plan? How did they expect to win with such a tiny proportion of the population onside?

The wikipedia page says: "The site was selected in 1947 by Lavrentiy Beria, political head of the Soviet atomic bomb project (Beria falsely claimed the vast 18,000 km² steppe was "uninhabited")."

The USSR apparently knew that their tests would impact the people in the area. Why did they choose to damage the health of all these Kazakhstanis?