I brought this up in one of my history seminars the other day and of course had no means to prove I wasn't talking complete rubbish because I couldn't find the post on Reddit. Can anyone help? It's driving me nuts!

Or is that just an idea from Ubisoft?

Hey /r/askhistorians

I was wondering about Ninjas. They are quite popular in modern media, i see them everywhere. so I was just wondering a few things.

Firstly they are almost always portrayed as highly skilled people who infiltrate a palace or some kind of castle to kill an important person and they seem to have a lot of ways to do that: shurikens, some kind of short versions of katanas, different poisons etc. etc. you know where im going with this. I was wondering did they actually send a dude to literally sneak in a freaking castle ? why would someone train all their lives to sneak in a castle and kill a dude? to me it would make a lot of sense if ninjas were like spies per say. They get nice and cozy with some kind of important guy and then i don't know poison them or something. but if they were mainly spies, why did they need like 70 different kind of weapons i keep hearing about? basically i need for some smart dude to tell me what ninjas actually did and how.

I know its kind of selfish to ask someone to write down what they know and spend their time for my satisfaction.. but, oh well.. don't you historians wanna show off your knowledge tho? ^^

Currently confused. My history teacher says that Christianity is one of the biggest reasons that the Roman empire fell, but a lot of other sources say that it wasn't that big of a deal, and it would have fallen regardless of Christianity's existence.

Whether or not it was especially prevalent, at least a few Pharaohs of the Ptolemaic dynasty married their sisters and produced offspring with them. What were the origins of the practice? Did it have any long term health effects on their offspring and the dynasty itself? And since the incest taboo is almost universal, how did they justify it?

Or sailors from earlier times for that matter who could be relevant to this question. Did they try and prevent it with a balm of any sort? Or was it just more of a 'man up and deal with it' thing?

You hear references to the spread of urban roman society, but how urban was it? How about in Italy proper versus Gaul?

I once had a history professor mention offhand that even before Persia was conquered by the Muslims Zoroastrianism was dying out, and Christianity and other religions were spreading quickly in the region. Is this true, and if so, why? Are there examples of prominent leaders converting to Christianity, or was the ruling class still mostly Zoroastrian?

There appears to be nothing from North America that could truly be compared to the Inca/Aztec/Mayan cultures.

So, I've been doing some reading lately about the CIA, the red scare, JFK, etc. Naturally, I've covered the Bay of Pigs from a couple of different sources. I did some wikipedia reading about the Naval base at Guantanamo, but nothing really gave me the answer that I was looking for. Why wasn't the base closed in the 60s when the Castro came into power? How was it kept open these 50 years despite the horrible Cuba-US relations? Couldn't Castro have taken it? I suppose I don't understand why the Cubans would allow it to stay open on their island during the embargo after the Bay of Pigs.

Any details would be nice.

Edit: Thanks! I guess I never bothered putting the act of removing Gitmo from the map in context before. Oh logic, you so silly.

I was recently watching the show "Mr. Selfridge" and in it, the employees (who are English) are regularly given tea breaks. It reminded me of the fact that it's regular in the US to have a coffee break while at work, and it has always seemed as if hot tea has never gained the popularity that coffee has in the US. Are there any historical reasons behind this development?

I was having a debate with a friend about the cultural practice of marking graves. He seemed to be of the opinion that this practice only became widespread with the introduction of organized religion and that it was something of a way for the church to claim ownership over the dead as well as the living (his words). Marking graves seems to be a common, but not completely universal practice. But is it known how ubiquitous this practice is throughout history and across cultures? Also, does anyone know the oldest known grave marking practice?

Thanks for any help that you can provide.