This might be a really dumb question, but I can't seem to find a direct answer to this. Was there a specific moment when the Soviet Union and the US agreed to jointly occupy Korea? I'm writing a paper about MacArthur's role in the Korean War, and wanted to start it off with background on the conflict before his involvement. I saw somewhere that this happened at the Potsdam Conference, but I don't see much mention of Korea in anything I'm finding about the Potsdam conference. Is there a definitive answer to this, and if not, can someone help me understand how the division of Korea took place? If you know of any resources I can look at, that would also be awesome.

I came across the haunting and powerful memorial to the merchant marines in Battery Park, NYC the other week. I am wondering who the men of the merchant marines were during wartime? were they typically older than the average solider/sailor (given the conscription?) It takes some background to have proper training to work on a merchant marine vessel, but did they lower their qualifications? Did those hoping to avoid combat try to sign up for the Liberty ships?

I tried asking this in /r/askscience but with no luck, so I'm trying it here.

So I've been reading up on space-history, reading about several "firsts" like the sputnik and Salyut programs.

I know I have quite a bit of reading ahead of me but it would seem to me that the USSR was well underway at winning the space-race.

Then America comes with Apollo and soon after the moon landing,

Was it just that America got more serious? Started spending more money? Did the USSR had economic trouble that prevented them from going to the moon? Did I miss some historic events that explain it better?

Kinda curious given the fact that classicists really a ton on secondary sources for major events and archaeology, and there job consists mostly asking new questions at old sources.Compared to a americanist who has a large volume of primary sources on particular people (enough to form things like the papers compilation books) and a good proportion of the buildings were there ''characters'' walked in survive.

Or how could I find out? I cant seem to get any answers wherever I look.

I'm curious about the state of Russian history around the turn of the 20th century. How did Russian historians approach national and world history? What historiographic shifts took place as the Russian empire transformed into the Soviet Union? How did historians under Nicholas the Second interact with foreign academics? Did Russian historians under Stalin have access to their colleagues in other nations and did this change under Khrushchev? Thank you for sharing anything you know.

I read an article on the "Hapsburg Jaw", and I was wondering when theses families started having children with deformities, how were they viewed? When did the concept of inbreeding come into the social consciousness?

My family is cleaning up my grandmothers house and upstairs we found a small box with little red circle chips called mills my mother said at one point they were like cash (We are in Missouri) What are they?

Just watched a show, seemed pretty questionable, that stated that there is a cave in the Grand Canyon with ancient Egyptian relics, because they had traveled there. Apparently, some guy made a boat out of papaya to test to see if it was possible, and I guess it was.

Is there any indication this actually happened?

I know that western cultures used to view ghosts and spirits as dark or black (hence the term "shade" and the pejorative "spook" for black people), while modern American culture and West African traditions have ghosts being white (there was even at least one unfortunate incident in which an isolated group mistook European explorers for ancestral spirits). Was the switch in American culture a cultural import from West Africa via the slave trade?

The nature of money - or at least the understanding of its nature - has evolved considerably over time. In our current era of fiat money there is no intrinsic constraint on the money supply that would inhibit commerce. Were there any times in the past when an acute shortage of currency, rather than deeper underlying economic conditions, had adverse effects on trade? If so, how were these circumstances overcome?