Also, how did the number of people who believed in the literal interpretation of their particular holy book in the modern age wax and wane?

AFAIK Germany's invasion on Belgium is considered a huge mistake.

From my POV Russia started mobilising forces after the Austrian ultimatum had been declined by the Serbians. From Dan Carlin's broadcast Germany wasn't allies with Russia anymore so it's not farfetched to predict Russia eventually warring against Germany from the East.

In the West we have France who got embarrassed by decleration of German Empire in Versailles so chances are the French wouldn't hesitate to take revenge.

From this information a preventive strike - quickly defeating France to shift focus to the East - seems like a sensible choice. And since the French-German borders were heavily militarized and fortified, blitzkrieging through the Benelux states seems like a good choice.

So my question - why was it such a huge mistake? What were the alternatives?

I'm looking at 1.12, 15-16, the fart joke. And I'm trying to find its original cuneiform, and have struck out so far. I came across a gimmicky translator that had trouble putting the English back into the original language, so I'm wondering if images of the original are out there, or if there is a way to translate the shorthand...

nij2 ud-bi-ta la-ba-jal2-la	ki-sikil tur ur2 dam-ma-na-ka ce10 nu-ub-dur2-re

back into cuneiform. Thanks for any help.

After the failed Munster revolution, which is recorded in history, how was the religion of anabaptism able to flourish and survive?

How were they able to attract new converts when the two anabaptist prophets Bernhard Rothman and John Leiden proved themselves to be such ineffective leaders and lead to the people of Munster nearly starving to death and turning against Leiden?

We are talking about 1400-1500, of course

Edit: Sorry, technologically advanced, not civilized

It seems like in the event of war, the entire fleet would be occupied in trying to take the Bosphorus, which I imagine would have been nearly impossible considering the location of Istanbul. It just seems like the entire fleet would be constrained to just the Black Sea.

I guess what I'm trying to say is it seems like it would be a very long time before this fleet could be brought to bear in the Mediterranean or Atlantic and by then these areas would be strongly secured by members of NATO. So what was the purpose of the fleet? purely defensive?

If i were to go back in time and take an extensive walk around ancient Rome, say during the time of Trajan, how likely would i be to get assaulted, killed or robbed outside of the better areas? To which modern cities could the danger of such a walk be compared?

Were there changes in police policies that hadn't been announced before the King verdict? Did neighborhoods change significantly? Did the relationships between street gangs change?

To us the idea of a monotheist easily accepting the idea of other gods, is ridiculous. The are probably millions of people around the world who would willingly die rather than worship any god besides God.

Did the Romans get that the jews felt that strongly about the issue?

Most sources that I can find say that even when America withdrew its forces that South Vietnam had significantly more troops and equipment than the North. Why was it that despite this advantage they were quickly overrun by the North?

Full quote,

"War was rarely launched against the Romans and they always waged war at a time and in a manner of their own choosing on those whom they regarded as most convenient."

The other reason is because the Romans thought war as "the only art" and devoted "mind entire and all their thoughts to its perfection." He said,

"Never has a nation made preparations for war with so much prudence and conducted it with so much audacity."

I read this in Paul Rahe, "Empires: Ancient and Modern" in Wilson Quarterly.

It seems like especially in Nordic Europe, the vast majority of people speak English as a second language. How did this come to be?

\

This (admittedly crudely calculated) profit margin for the types of highly-valued luxury goods from halfway across the world to me seems too low, especially when factoring in taxes, tariffs, loss at sea, and the artificially low invoice values. Can anyone comment or shed some light on this for me?

My source is tables 3.2 and 3.4 in Niels Steensgaard's essay "The Growth and Composition of Long-Distance trade of England and the Dutch Republic before 1750, in James Tracy's edited volume "The Rise of Merchant Empires".

My understanding is that many thousands of freemen joined the North's armies. How important were those extra soldiers to the outcome of the war?

e.g. Super Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Mario games, numerous 90s action shows where the characters need to travel unseen underneath a city (although I guess for a lot of these shows these are actually storm drains, like the 50s movie Them!)

I know some ancient sewer systems had the walkways on the sides that are commonly depicted. Did the Romans feature the Cloaca Maxima in any of their stories or poems?

I've read that it originated in Egypt, but between Parmenides, Plato and the Bhagavad Gita, they got lots of metaphorical mileage. What is it with chariots and the ancient world that would give rise to this? I imagine that it was fairly imposing technology for the time, is there anything else that might have made them merit such a significant role in thought?

I've heard that there was an organization called ODESSA which was former high ranking officials of the Nazi Regime who escaped the downfall of Germany and they're ultimate goal was to help create a fourth reich in Germany. Did this organization exist?