Captain Jack Sparow's autobiography Captain Jack Sparrow: You Have Heard of Me details an elaborate escape from the British Navy at Port Royal. This is confirmed in Captain Barbosa's The Code: A Set of Guidelines but the later alliance between these two Captains taints the veracity of such a confirmation. Official British Navy documentation could verify its truth, but as of yet I have been unable to find any such records.

Came across this line in my textbook - it was just an aside so not really important to the chapter, but I'm' curious what it means. I'm aware of the different mores they had in their culture regarding homosexual activities, but the different class thing threw me for a loop - I have no idea what it means.

Long have historians perceived the military power of the Padishah Emperor and his armies as absolute and far more advanced than anything that stood in their way. Rigorous training, combined with their fearsome weapons, made the Sardaukar all but unstoppable and many planets have fallen to the Emperor’s armies. This success has been attributed to an unique trait within the Emperor’s military apparatus: their combat style was instantly recognisable (The Kwisatz Haderach saw the Sardaukar battalion during the invasion of Arrakis for what they were, even though they were disguised as Harkonnen) and their weapons devastating. In Geoffrey’s Parker The Military Revolution, he argues that the Sardaukar’s training combined with superior weapons and technology allowed the Padhishah Emperor to expand its territory and become the ruling force in the Known Universe. This military approach to the question “How did the Empire come to rule the Known Universe?”, a relative new approach to a question made famous by Eric Jones, has never truly been challenged. At most, it has been adjusted, with different historians emphasizing planetary fortresses, starships or geography. But I would, with the aid of the rest of /r/askhistorians, try to challenge this notion of a perceived superiority of the Empire over other cultures.

I would like to use the Fremen of the desert planet Arrakis as prime argument against the Military Revolution Theory. Long categorised as “backwards”, “savages” and “underdeveloped” they managed to fend off a combined force of Harkonnian troops and Sardaukar. Although their weapons (the famous Crysknife and their use of the Great Worms) weren’t as advanced as the Empire’s or Harkonnen’s troops, they were quick to adapt to the introduction of the Weirding Module and later during the following Jihad spaceships. Their technologically before the invasion didn’t have to be at the same level as the Empire, because the Fremen fought different enemies: the weather, worms and each other. United against a common enemy, they were quick to pick up weapons provided by House Atreides and proved to be more than capable with them. Technologically not as far developed? Yes. Technologically backward? Definitely not.

Sure, some might point out that the Kwisatz Haderach guided the Fremen, but in my opinion this would not make up for the technological difference that others are so fondly of describing.

What say you, /r/askhistorians, is it time to discard this Empire-centric way of thinking? Have you found more evidence of technologically less advanced subcultures in the empire that successfully resisted the Sardaukar or the Jihad? Except the Tleilaxu, Bene Gesserit and The Guild of course. I call for an Arrakian Military Revolution to disprove the “superiority of the Empire”.

I'm doing research for a satirical paranormal radio show I host, and I like educating my listeners as well as myself--but I think picking dreams was a bit of a mistake as finding facts about the most important part of sleep is hard.

What is the oldest dream? The only "good" source of information that keeps coming up for me is the wikipedia topic on Dreams when I search myself and then 10 freelanced websites on lucid dreaming and if I pay Ricardo McPonytail 500 monies he'll teach me how to control my own dreams.

If finding source of the oldest recorded dream is not possible, where would a good source be for me to find any kept documents that would have translations of dreams from ancient history ? I know many cultures respected dreams as amazing things--so they had to write them down.

For some reason it seems they became a naval power over night, so I was wondering - how? The Arabs (who are praised in popular history as good sailors) couldn't, but the Ottomans just seem to pop up on the map, conquer Anatolia and Thrace and move directly to besieging Constantinople with a full force of a naval blockade. I was reading somewhere that before that Genoa helped them around the battle of Varna (I may be very wrong on that example) so I was wondering if they helped again.

Hi folks, I was sitting around today and got a little upset about the fact that we haven't gotten any new great pyramids in a little while. Any word on when the aliens are coming back to help us build them? Those rocks are definitely too big to move on our own.

How much historical evidence outside DC is there for the existence of Batman? The only sources that seem to exist are from DC followers, but if he really existed then surely contemporary, non-DC historians would have mentioned him right? To me, the Batman Myth Theory seems spot on.

I'm asking because I'm an Andal, and I honestly think all racism against the barbaric First Men died out centuries ago. This annoying Maester (I live in Oldtown) seems to disagree though, and I need sources to back me up. Oh and I have lots of First Men friends, and they validated my opinions.

All in the title.

I've heard it suggested that we tend to exaggerate time here in Westeros and that there's likely only really been half as many Lord Commanders as we tend to think there were. Any ideas about this, fellow maesters?

Also if there's time, a discussion of his unorthodox helicopter cavalry tactics, including the use of German classical music to affect morale.

This has always been a burning question for me; the evolution of its society is almost invisible besides the introduction of a "Ms. Pac-Man." What role did the ghosts initially play as, and what would become of them? How did families come to be? This topic is seemingly limitless in unsolved questions.