Did scientists and academics in the two countries have any direct contact with each other? Did they work jointly on projects? If so, to what extent? Did the level of communication/collaboration vary based on the field of study?

A pivotal idea in both Catch-22 and Memphis Belle is that American bomber crews were only required to fly x missions before they went home.

How true is this, and if it was the case, how widespread was it? Was it Army Air Force policy? Or a particular bomb group? Did it apply to British crews as well?

If they went home, did it mean a discharge? Or rotation to the rear?

Reading suggestions welcome.

[Edit: Thanks everybody for these great responses.]

I've read that in medieval times, an older husband was considered a good match as he would have someone to care for him when he aged, and was likely to leave the woman a well-set-up widow. However nowadays large age differences seem to be looked at with a mixture of amusement and suspicion. When and why did this U-turn come about? (I'm thinking specifically of western marriages where the husband is older; I think older-female marriages have always been scorned, although if anyone can give me any insight on that or views in other parts of the world, I'm very interested to hear it too).

Is there a biographer that anyone could recommend? Someone who is at the forefront of academia on the subject of abolition in the pre-American Civil War era.

I'm looking for a gift and will probably be getting the Kindle version of the most commonly recommended. The Kindle version being for myself.

As John Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize winning author on Andrew Jackson...I seek the same for John Brown.

Wouldn't the German people grow suspicious of their own king considering he was related to Victoria ect. ect.

This borders on biology, but I figured it was closer to historical biology, so I decided to post this here.

I was watching a documentary about Alexandria and they discuss Galen. He posited that the brain is responsible for thought and senses. Apparently this was a new idea in ancient Alexandria. However, when I think something, it really feels like that is going on inside my head. Is that because I grew up knowing the brain is responsible for thought or because that's an actual sense humans possess? Did Ancient people ,without brain theory, feel their feelings somewhere else in the body?

I get most of my books second-hand, so they tend to be slightly older books. Sometimes this concerns me.

I'm interested in historians views, up to and including to what extent history is a progressive field of knowledge or one where viewpoints and interpretations are key. Here are some questions though:

Would you usually pick a newer book over an older one?
What are the problems I might have?
Would you say that older 'classics' are fine, but for general histories newer is better? Or are dated classics just liable to mislead the non-specialist reader? (eg. I recently finished a general history of japan and I'm currently reading the classic The Age of Capital by Eric Hobsbawm. Both were originally written about 40 years ago.)
Are there specific issues in your particular field that mean older books should be avoided (or the opposite)?

Such as White Pine, Red Oak, etc.

...or did any other South Asian cultures do this? What traits did they value most?

Because after learning that major powers were still fielding calvary even towards the end of WW2, I wondered a little.