I somehow found myself on /r/holocaust for a few minutes tonight after I read somewhere that it's filled with a bunch of holocaust deniers and got curious about what was on there. A user on one of the top posts stated that the facilities referred to as "gas chambers" were used as morgues and that using the gas chambers was actually an incredibly inefficient way of achieving mass extermination. I feel extraordinarily skeptical towards this idea. If this were actually true (or if there was much legitimate merit to it at all), I would assume it would be relatively common knowledge. Furthermore, I feel like if it were true my really quick google search would have turned up some more reputable sources.

This seems like a load of bullshit. Is it?

I have always known William Shakespeare as this larger-than-life, almost incomprehensibly genius playwright but realize that maybe this wasn't always how he was received. Was he respected in his own time?...and how has his reputation changed through the centuries? Was there a specific time or moment when it was decided that he should be the most highly revered english language writer in human history?

It really seems that this makes little practical sense, as it would be harder/more awkward to draw the gladius from the right left for most legionaries.

I've wondered this for a very long time. I'd like to consider myself a Roman military history nerd, and yet I still have not gotten a concrete answer to this from either historians or my own research.

One answer I recall stated that it would be difficult to draw the gladius if a legionary's shoulder was pressed against his scutum, and that against an enemy line, so the sword was kept on the right side. This make little sense, at least in my mind. Are there any concrete answers to this question, or is most of it speculation from scattered sources that can go either way?

Sorry for not being more specific. I was mainly looking for information on prison in America's southern states. I am wanting to know about general living conditions, healthcare, food, etc.

I was reading the wiki page for the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury and it said he was the last prime minister to head his administration from the House of Lords. It is my understanding that Salisbury was not elected prime minister as a MP, but through his seat in the Lords. When did the prime minister start being selected from the House of Commons? Were any laws passed preventing a peer from being prime minister thus forcing the PM to come from the commons?

Maria Theresa (1717-1780) had 11 daughters and all of them had names like "Maria Anna," "Maria Carolina," Maria Elisabeth," etc. Many other relatives also seemed to have "Maria ________" names. Why is this?

I was just reading an item about an Alaska execution that discussed a Montenegrin man's links to the "notorious European terrorist organization 'Black Hand'" and was curious if modern Islamic terrorism in Europe has a historic parallel.

Were slavs actually the primary sources of slaves for the Byzantines? Is that why they were given the term? Or is it because the words just happen to be similar between the Medieval Greek word for slave (Σκλάβοι, Sklaboi) and the various Slavic language words to describe themselves such as Slovene or Slovenin?

Why did the Koine Greek term for slave change from (δοῦλος , Doulos) to the Medieval Greek term (Σκλάβοι, Sklaboi)?

They dont seem that similar for a mistake to be made, so if it is because they were the primary sources for slaves why do we still use a term in English that refers to them as slaves? Shouldnt it be changed to something like Slovene or Slovenin?

I'm familiar with the Trinity test but were there any others?

International debts, loans, contracts, war pensions, that kind of thing.

In McCullough's "Truman", he discribes a scene where Stalin says that Truman should chair the Potsdam conference as the only head of state present. Obviously, the UK's Head of State was the King. Who was the USSR's head of state? Why wasn't the Premier of the Soviet Union also the head of government?

Thanks!

What were most likely the methods behind the first spoken languages that were cultivated? Did early people just assign sounds to words? How did they 'stick' the words together (words like 'and' or 'to') You know, as an afterthought I could really probably just Google this, seeing as I haven't put any research into this and instead just asked reddit. But hey, getting personalized answers from people is nice!