I understand that the British government took over all Indian territory and trade held by the East India Company. Why did they choose to this task onto themselves instead of outsource it to the EIC?

What I'm trying to understand is whether they were literally sailing into uncharted waters, or perhaps had some advantage from maps or crew captured from the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch. And also, if other nations maybe had all the best African harbours, so English fleets were at a bigger risk that way too. Or was the hazard fairly uniform for any nationality who attempted it? Thanks for any insight.

Disclaimer: I in no way support the Holocaust, i'm fairly sure nobody does. I don't like Hitler in any way, just always wondered this...

So the goal of the Holocaust was to get of people who were not of the Aryan, or German race, correct? It seems like they did it quite inefficiently. Couldn't they have just rounded up all the people they wanted dead and shot them on the spot? It seems like they kept people alive? Why is that? Why did anyone even survive?

You can read about it in history books, see it on TV, or hear about it some other way. I'm wondering if there are any documents about which civilisation started it all, and if there is something on who the first person was that people lowered themselves too.

I've always been curious about the history of animation, and I thought someone here might know more than me.

I understand that in Appalachia and other regions that weren't great for cash crops there was dissent to slavery and secession. Could yeomen and other non-slaveholding farmers eventually voted out slavery, or was there too much regional support to see slavery end within a matter of decades?

And what would be the ethnic break up of the area?

I have been reading Madigan's excellent new survey of medieval Christianity and one rather off-hand statement struck me as fascinating:

The wife of Clovis II (r. 639–657) was a woman from the lower orders of Saxon society in Britain; it was customary for men from the Merovingian line to ignore matters of “social class” when selecting wives.

Madigan, Medieval Christianity: A New History, (Yale University Press, 2015), p. 240.

This particular woman was Balthild (d. 680). Why would a Merovingian monarch choose a wife from among the 'lower social class' - especially of another gens? Was there a particular political aspect to this union? Why might Madigan note this as particular feature of Merovingian kingship and, if correct, why did it not continue into the Carolingian or Ottonian lineages?

I know it's not uncommon for NFL teams to try out non-football players, but I find it strange that a football team would pick such a notable player from another sport....

I know he was involved in a civil war with Pompey, but I wanted to know if it was exclusively this that caused him to become dictator.

I understand that during the Early Dynastic period there was the phenomenon of "hyperurbanism" in which, due to the usual cocktail of reasons, rural settlements were abandoned in favor of the rapidly swelling urban areas. I heard one time a jaw dropping 50% urbanization rate, which flies in the face of much of my experience with ancient demographics. But is this population shift "real" or does it only seem to be because of the central place that urban tel sites have in archaeological research?

Is Prussia never allowed to exist again?

Are people not allowed to identify as Prussian?

I know that the Allied forces in World War 2 were able to decipher the German and Japanese radio codes with the help of a stolen Enigma computer. What other interesting secrets were keep from the public during World War two but reveled for years to come?

Most talk about voting rights is centered (understandably) around minority struggles. I wonder how the common (white) man ever got their suffrage. Why would the elites give up that power?

I have watched tons of videos and read a ton of books on WW2, but I've never really seen or read about how effective those guns were at actually deterring or shooting down enemy fighters.

Once the P-51s could escort the bombers most if not all the way to their targets, were the turrets still necessary or manned?

Like, is there a specific occupation called 'Historian', (if so what do they do?) or is it just a broad term for anyone who has a degree in history, and is actually in a job related to history(i.e Museum Curator),or actively studying history?