I'm looking for courses on Japanese History. YouTube lectures / online courses / books etc etc.

I think I'm in the clear on the 20-year-rule because the movie/book Jarhead covers a period of time more than 20 years ago. Nonetheless, I know it's based on a memoir (and I read it a time ago) but can't remember if this particular incident is in the book, nor how accurate it would be regardless.

How common were training exercise deaths from live ammunition in the US military in the late 1980s/early 1990s? I'm particularly thinking of modern (completely arbitrary but 1960-early 2000s) American military deaths from training exercises using live ammunition, but would love to hear about the frequency or lack thereof of training exercise deaths not involving live ammunition or from other countries or from other time periods.

Was the Viking blood only prevalent in the upper classes or was it well spread throughout the common folk too? Would they have still been majority French (ethnically) too or were they mainly Scandinavian at that time?

Were there any pre-modern societies that recognized mental illnesses, specifically more drastic ones such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as physical maladies vs spiritual? At what point did the view on these illnesses change to something resembling how we view them today? Also, I sometimes come across figures in history who appear that they could have disorders such as schizotypal personality disorder, bipolar, schizophrenia, and depression, but I haven’t gone across any descriptions of historical figures with OCD or Tourette’s. Were these less common or were there simply few to no people with them who made it into history? Thank you

I'm just wondering, because socialism took another meaning perhaps later in the 20th century, where it is not as frequently seen by the same types of people.

George Orwell used to write anti-communist books, yet seemed to be Socialist, H.G. Wells appeared to be socialist, but loved by (very non-socialist) Winston Churchill and Einstein wrote a paper "Why Socialism". Others like Bertrand Russell were also seen as socialist.

My question isn't a matter of the 'rights or wrongs' of the beliefs, as much as whether there was a historical reason, pre-WWII/Cold War reason for this common belief?

During The Pestilence, there was of course an unimaginable wealth of proposed cures and treatments for the disease. While now we have effective antibiotics to treat it, what, if any, period treatments could have worked? Either for dealing with the disease itself, or simply helping reduce symptoms.

The USSR had notoriously drab architecture and a dull color palate. Did they actually enjoy this style or were they using it to psychologically manipulate thier citizens?

Did the citizens' and the government's aesthetic tastes differ? Was all of the USSR's architecture bland or was it just government buildings?

I swear I saw someone ask about this yesterday but they were told it broke the 20 year rule?

We invaded in 2001, right? Doesn’t that make questions about Afghanistan at the time within bounds?

If it does can someone help me understand why Afghanistan was targeted? I thought most of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi. I never did really get how the Taliban and Afghanistan were targets instead of al-Qaeda and Saudi Arabia. Was it just another political lie or was there a legitimate reason?

I read a book on the tenth legion as a teenager (15-20 years ago) and a statement in it about Roman soldiers pay has always stuck with me. The book stated that a soldiers salary banding never increased over 100+ years. Due to the fact that the costs of goods never really rose from one year to the next. The example the book used was that if a harvest was reasonable, a loaf of bread cost the same one day as it did a generation later.

Was this true?? If it was why, what was different about the Roman economy to mean inflation wasn’t really a thing??

I honestly am baffled that the spanish sole goal was to find gold, and silver and so they looked in the America's but they honestly could have been more rich and more powerful if they have colonized Africa. Why is it that they didn't do that?

Upon reading about the wives of Muhammad, I was taken aback by how active and well educated many of his wives appeared to be. Particularly the scholarly background of Aisha bint Abu Bakr. Given that foundation, how then did certain sects of Islam come to demonize the education of women?

In most movies and tv shows the Vikings are shown as being far superior to the English in fighting ability, tactics and basically everything in between in fact I think the only thing I've seen that indicates an English strength is that the weapons were higher quality than their Viking equivalents, But if this was all true how were the English able to defeat the Vikings on so many occasions and push them out of England?

I realize Gene Hackman plays The Bad Guy in both these examples, but I know I've seen other westerns where this trope plays out. Is there any basis in reality? Were there towns in the late 1800s run by a bad man (or bad men)? Bonus points for examples where any of these men were, ahem, removed from power by, say, a mysterious, wandering cowboy (or girl!) who doesn't want anything to do with the town's problems until...

Thanks!