I've been reading up on the expansion of European settlers in North America, and I keep coming across this idea that North America was "stolen" from the native people. So my question: Is there any place on Earth that hasn't been "stolen" from the original occupants at one time or another?

I hear this a lot, but I wonder about peoples in Iran and Anatolia with such strong cavalry traditions.

I've heard a lot of talk in the ancient history forums infrequent about Alexander the Great's pikemen, and nobody seems to agree as to their effectiveness in combat, and who the pikemen were deployed against in combat. As best I can tell, they were some of the most dangerous infantry units in the ancient world, and very hard to kill with missile weapons. But some people in the SCA I know saw that they were meant as the anvil in a hammer-and-anvil tactic, with his cavalry being the hammer. The reenactors on RomanArmyTalk.net say that there is not a single reference in any original source(including all the years after Alexander that pikemen were used) as to the cavalry ever engaging infantry. Could someone clear this up? Or do we just not know enough? Thanks!

Reading Russia's War by Richard Overy, there were tables comparing the industrial output of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. From 1941-1944 Germany vastly outproduced the USSR in Coal, Steel and Aluminium. Only in Oil did the USSR maintain large superiority.

Yet in terms of military output, the USSR produced vastly greater numbers of planes, tanks and guns than Germany throughout the war. How?

English in French is anglais. Greek is Αγγλικά. In Russian, it's английский. An alliance between England and another country is Anglo-country alliance. Did English and England used to be called Anglish and Angland? If so, what happened, and why did we switch to Eng-?

So I was thinking about the 1950s conservatism in America last night and recalled that I had read that most of the 'God stuff' in the trappings of the US government (One nation, under God, indivisible . . .) was made official or resurrected in the 1950s. With some quick wikipedia-ing I was able to find that

In 1956, the nation was at a particularly tense time in the Cold War, and the United States wanted to distinguish itself from the Soviet Union, which promoted state atheism.[17] As a result, the 84th Congress passed a joint resolution "declaring IN GOD WE TRUST the national motto of the United States." The law was signed by President Eisenhower on July 30, 1956, and the motto was progressively added to paper money over a period from 1957 to 1966.[14] (Public Law 84-851)[18] The United States Code at 36 U.S.C. § 302, now states: "'In God we trust' is the national motto."

Here are my questions: Why was state aestheism (or as I understand it, more correctly, a religion of the state) in the USSR so contentious that the US had to prove its own contrarian tradition? Does this reaction feed into the rise of the New Right's Evangelical wing later in the 1960s and 70s? Or was this spurred by the already-present roots of such political evangelicalism? Can someone speak more widely as to whether this 1950s/Cold War religiosity opened the door for more explicit political agendas for faith-based groups? (Is there any link to the brouhaha about asking for religious preference on the census?? I forget what year that happened, but I know Sarah Igo totally mentions it in her book Averaged American)

Many thanks to anyone who can satisfy my curiosity!

Is Ghengis Khan responsible for causing more death then Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin?

I read about how in one city Ghengis captured, he had all of the prepubescent young girls brought in to a public square and publicly raped. He also once forced men and women who were related to rape each other or be put to death, according to the secret history of the mongols. Sorry that I do not know the names of these cities in questions, I am not a historian.

While reading history I have often heard of how in the middle ages there would be several popes at the same time. Logically there would be at least two popes, one for the catholic and one for the orthodox church but the texts always claimed that there were even more popes than that.

Could anyone tell me anything about this? Where would these popes be situated and what led to this situation?

I'm very lacking in knowledge the minutae of politics in this area of Euroe at the time, but there was a socialist revolution in Munich (that was quashed b the Freikorps).

There was (as I understand) nearly one in Glasgow in Scotland, which Winston Churchill placed machine guns in Georges Square.

How come Austria or Hungary didn't succumb or experience unrest/civil war by communists? It seems like it had all hallmarks of a powder keg;

-defeated in war

-decadent, discredited monarchy

-ethnic conflict

Most of how I envision life in ancient China to be is mostly influenced by Wuxia serials and the few Chinese classics such as Water Margin, Journey to the West and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Out of all them, I feel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is one of, if not the most, popular source of information a layman might have about 170-280 medieval China. Considering that the writer, Luo Guanzhong wrote said novel almost a thousand years later, how accurate is his portrayal of the times?

I'm currently reading the Bully Pulpit, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. In it she mentions the strain the Civil War placed on the marriage of Theodore Roosevelt's parents, Theodore Sr. (northerner) and Mittie Bullock (southerner). It got me thinking that there had to have been many such marriages. Are there accounts of other notable examples, or an otherwise general treatment of the effect of the Civil War on marriages between Northerners and Southerners?

I have been trying to find information on this question, but without success. As Hitler's stated intention was living space for the Germans and access to natural resources, wasn't attacking the Soviets first a more logical choice?

• Was this ever considered?
• Would the Western democracies possibly have found such a push eastward more palatable, or would this still have resulted in war?

Many thanks for any insights you can share.

An heir that wanted their inheritance right away; or one who was supposed to be king but fought for it early on; did this happen often?

Do we have evidence of any states or smaller societies building border walls or establishing checkpoints? Were armies ever permanently stationed around clearly-delineated territorial borders?