Looking at a map of where Arabic is the native language, I notice that Afro-Asiatic languages were already spoken in most locations (sometimes alongside Latin or Greek) before the Islamic conquests. Conversely, Arabic today is not the native language in places which had unrelated languages beforehand: the Caucasus, Iran, Iberia, and part of south-central Asia.

On the other hand, I notice that most Arabic-speaking regions are arid or semi-arid.

I would like to know if either of these are significant, or if they just coincidentally overlap what was easiest for the caliphates to take over and govern.

Wondering about Arabic in particular may miss the point, with a better question perhaps being why Afro-Asiatic languages are mostly spoken (natively) in arid and semi-arid areas.

Why is that eggs have always been an integral part of the American (if not the Western) breakfast diet? When did this start and what was the root cause?

I was just watching the documentary, The Last Days in Vietnam, and I wondered why did President Ford let South Vietnam fall while we have protected South Korea?

In many of the religious debates I enter, I consistently hear that claim that Jesus was just one of many self-proclaimed Messiahs during/around his time. This claim will come from students and professors, but I've not been able to pin them on a source for it. I went and looked back at my freshman Western Civ I textbook (Western Civilization: Beyond Boundaries - Seventh Edition; Noble, Strauss, Osheim, Neuschel, Accampo, Roberts, Cohen) and found the claim there as well, but nothing for further reading was there. Do we have any kind of evidence/sources that would back up such a claim? Do any ancient figures make remarks about it?

I assume it entered the larger consciousness due to slapstick vaudeville shows and early movies in the early 1900s, but how much earlier than that does the idea of someone slipping on a banana peel go?

I was wondering if historians consider Napoleon part of the French Revolution. I know that he is taught with the French Revolution in school or is Napoleonic France a stand alone era.

Obviously religion was an important part of Russian life before the Soviet Union. Did they attempt to provide some kind of secular alternative, or did they discourage their celebration altogether?

How far back can we reasonably continuously trace her bloodline?

How far back is it recognized officially?

EDIT: today's Queen, I ought to have specified.

I know there are some examples in the American Civil War (The "University Greys" Company A of 11th Mississippi comes to mind), but in later wars was it common to lose entire units? In the Civil War, it seems that units that were totally lost were simply in a bad position, in a salient, totally cut off, or easy targets for artillery. I was reading "Dispatches" or "A Rumor of War" and a Colonel responded to a Captain's complaint sustaining thirty casualties on a patrol by saying, "My Company sustained that many casualties a minute on Guadalcanal." 30 or so casualties a minute isn't really fathomable to me. That's a staggering loss of life. Obviously, some units sustain high amounts of casualties, but do we have records of any units being totally destroyed or having 100% casualties?

I see a lot of praise for him on the Internet, which is commonly followed with the opposite. How good of a commander was he?. Is put in a higher place among WW2 german high official because of how he treated prisoners and people in general. Sorry if I rave on a little.

Honestly, I'm just trying to find a reason to kick my "smoking while playing WW2 combat sims" habit.

The only languages close to Finnish are from the countries below it: Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian. But why does it bear almost no similarities with the countries right next to it? Where did Finnish come from?

I used to be an officer in the Royal Navy, and during the Strategic Studies part of our training we were taught that although the numbers from the Battle of Jutland don't look great for the RN (6,000+ dead and 3 battlecruisers lost, as opposed to only ~2,500 German dead and 1 battlecruiser lost, for example), the battle was a pretty much a conclusive strategic victory for the RN in the sense that the German High Seas Fleet spent the rest of the war in port. Other than the "U-Boat menace", the RN retained control of the seas.

Having being told this, I was surprised to see this morning in Sir David Cannadine's excellent book on George V that the author had described the battle as "disappointingly inconclusive".

So, what's the general consensus on the outcome of the battle? Bad day at the office for the RN, or conclusive sea power retaining victory? Or something else entirely? Was I being fed the RN party line?

Were! Not where :)