I've noticed that a lot of people in the world default to room temperature for their drinking liquids. I always thought they were the weird ones but it turns out The US is the anomaly. Why is that?

I'm interested if there were restrictions on certain weapons depending on a soldiers standing/title etc. And what weapons were most likely to be used by the higher ranked/ lower ranked.

Apologies for how general this question is, I'm willing to hear information about any areas during this period.

I'm having trouble locating sources that are in English - I can read German, but not Yiddish or Polish. Perhaps some of you kind folks know where I can start?

I have been watching Band of Brothers recently and wondered if they felt ashamed of their country of descent's involvement.

I've heard mostly anecdotal evidence that Americans would frequently shoot at their allies in the second world war. For example, the saying: "When the Germans shoot, The British duck. When the British shoot, the Germans duck When the Americans shoot, everybody ducks."

Is this reputation justified and were Americans more likely to shoot at friendlies than the other allies?

Especially interested in England and France.

Im mainly interested in how the British went about the process, and information on how long would it take once a service member died and in what format the notification was issued.

A bit more specific but i would similarly like to know the above in contex to those who perished aboard HMS Sheffield.

Secondly this was the period where British soldiers were given the choice of being buried where fallen or back in the UK. So I would like to know how long it would take for the body of a fallen service member to get back to their respective families.

Thank you

Here's the background: I'm organizing a history study meetup, we're about 30 people now, none of us are historians, we just like discussing and want to learn more about this topic.

So we want divide the topics between ourselves, meet once per month and take turns presenting to the rest of the audience, so that would give each presenter about a month to prepare.

The format we're thinking about is a 1 hour presentation and 1 hour discussions on some theme or key questions which would lead to the next session, and so on.

Our key goal, I would say, is to understand why Europe looks the way it does today, what are the key historical drivers behind its current achievements and predicaments, and how might we apply these learnings to understand possible future developments.

As you can imagine, we're not really sure where to begin, so it would be really great to get some help in structuring our next 12 sessions!

Didn't anyone have a problem breaking treaties with the native Americans over such reasons as land? Like the Sioux in the black hills. They got rid of them when they found that the hills had vast mineral deposits.

Furthermore, what is your favorite historical recipe or cookbook? Have there been any attempts to modernize instructions which might call for things to be roasted on a fire to things being cooked in a stovetop?

I know that it comes from "chef," the French word for a head person (like in a kitchen), and that many of the early accounts of aboriginal Americans were written by the French. Still, why did they choose that word and not another, and why did speakers of other languages pick up the French word (if indeed that's how it happened)?

Is there, e.g., a good medieval French cookbook? A pre-Columbian Mexico cookbook? Have any such texts been translated into English?

Proper nutrition and adequate energy intake seem crucial for troops marching and carrying heavy gear in the field, but weren't the MCIs too cumbersome to be carried in higher amounts? 3 MCIs weight 3,5 kilograms and consist of twelve different sized cans.

Were 2 MCIs per day a sufficient amount of food during like a week-long patrol?

I know they practiced slavery and was curious if they did prostitution or some form of it. Most of the searches I have conducted have come up with only modern day human trafficking articles. (For people who don't know "Pre-Columbian" means before Europeans arrived in the Americas).