Overthrow the Qing and establish a new government? But did they have any plans on what kind of government they wanted to establish? Did they have any plans for economic reform? What was their policy on the different ethnic groups in China?

Was Zoroaster a historical person?

I was writing my extended essay and the paragraph I am on right now discusses how the Nazi Party weren't socialists since they used state resources for their own political endeavors instead of redistributing the wealth (traditional socialism). I wanted to use the example of the Dachau concentration camp since it was the first one but I can't find any information related to how much it cost to build/maintain. Help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

I know they had like a mounted one that they used on the field and ships and bigger ones in sieges to lunch rocks. But my question is, did they ever try to actually build a mini ballista for the legionaries to use? Basically a Crossbow.

If their mounted ones where so powerful I found weird that they didn´t even try to use it in a everyman's weapon. Like the Chinese did.

Anyways thanks for your time!

A lot of powerful states like to treat powerful states that came before as a source of legitimacy and prestige, I'm thinking about how Rome has been used by all kinds of countries in Europe and Asia Minor to the modern day, or how the Aztecs considered the Toltecs and Teotihuacan to be the forerunners to their state.

I'm just wondering if the Inka did anything similar with the Wari, it seems like the closest thing to an empire like theirs in the region and was probably within reasonable historical memory for people building the Inka empire, did they have a strong interest in connecting their state to the Wari with that in mind? And how similar was the Wari empire to the Inka empire?

I read "A Most Holy War" by Mark Gregory Pegg recently and he mentions several times that a town gets conquered by the crusaders but then switches back their allegiance to count Raimond later. From the way he writes, it seems like switching allegiances was no big deal. Almost like the crusaders would besiege a town, tell the villagers Simon de Montfort is their lord now and then leave again, after which switching allegiances is just a matter of the villagers saying "actually, no, we think count Raimond is our lord".

That seems so weird to me, so I think I'm missing something.

I would think this would be a major difference and would have been used as a way of defining the "other"

I'm assuming the language of the the Muslims in contact with Europe was Arabic

​

Note: Re-posted after minor changes

I've been reading A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani. It's been a solid read, but naturally because it covers such a large swath of history, many things don't get fleshed out. In chapter 2, he writes:

​

This was also a period when rulers of outlying provinces of the empire became virtually independent, and in Iraq itself the power of the caliph was threatened by a large and protracted revolt of black slaves in the sugar plantations and salt-marshes of southern Iraq: the revolt of the Zanj, 868-83.

There is no further mention of it, so I'm curious to know some more details about this event.

My entire life I was a commoner, the child of a poor baker. However, I soon met the child of a wealthy French general who’s family held significant fame and prestige. We soon fell in love, and we’re married.

How different will the clothes I wear now be? I left this prompt purposefully unisex; I’m curious about both male and female clothing here.

Were the framers of the constitution referring to the people residing in a state, or the government of the state they reside in?

There seem to be a lot of names in Roman (Republic/Empire) history that have a numerical origin, for example:

Quintus (5)

Sextus (6)

Septimus (7)

Octavian (8)

My question, I guess, is what's the deal? Why did Romans have a habit of naming their children after numbers? Why these four numbers (5,6,7,8) (are there others?) Why don't we see this practice continued in Western Europe/former Roman colonies?

Why did they burn crosses? Moreover, why did they crucify black people's bodies, who they hated, in imitation of Christ, their saviour?

I hope this wasn't worded in an insensitive way.

Why is that they were so easily able to defeat the Chinese, but then struggled once they met the Russians?

Out of curiosity of Napoleonic tactics in general, I’ve been reading diaries and books from soldiers who took part in the wars. I’ve read some from the French, British, and Russian perspective. In many of them, the soldiers casually talk about aiming in combat for the best effect.

Particularly I read the autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence and he mentions not just personally aiming, but that on certain occasions his entire unit was instructed that when forming square to oppose cavalry, that they were to aim at the larger unarmored horses rather than the soldiers to achieve more deadly volleys. This isn’t some skirmish action where you’d expect marksman to be employed, these are battalion or higher level squares which would be predominantly, if not entirely, line troops. I’d also like to note that the unit leadership having to tell the soldiers to stop aiming at the riders indicates that telling them to aim at the horses isn’t some exception to the rule, but that previously it was common practice to aim in the first place.

Similarly on the French side, while I can’t recall specific examples of aiming in combat off the top of my head, I do recall that the Grand Armee had regular marksmanship competitions, which seems pretty silly to do if you didn’t expect your soldiers to aim in combat. This surprised me because another claim I’ve often read in books is that soldiers of the age very rarely received lived ammo training, much less training on marksmanship.

These are just two examples that come to mind. I’ve read many others that also mention marksmanship in combat.

And yes, I’m aware all nations employed light troops that were expected to perform aimed shots more deliberately, in both examples above they’re of or include regular line soldiers rather than just the lights.

I just found out that during the cold war, West Berlin became a 'safe haven' for Germans who planned to avoid conscription. I wanted to know why and when I look it up it says that West Berlin was except from conscription because it didn't formally belong to the FRG. If this is the case then who did West Berlin belong to? Was it an International city?

Thanks for any answers I'm super curious!

Today I learned that the Indian astronomer and mathematician Aryabhata found an incredibly close approximation to pi as the ratio of 62832/20000 which he described as:

“Add four to 100, multiply by eight, and then add 62,000. By this rule, the circumference of a circle with a diameter of 20,000 can be approached.”

This gives an approximation of pi as 3.1416... really darn amazing.

As a modern student of physics (raised with a base-10 numbering system), this ratio and calculation doesn't make much sense. I'm sure it must have something to do with the numbering system of the time and several other factors of which I'm unaware, but I don't know what they might be.

It's a fantastic approximation... but can someone PLEASE explain that approach to me???

What was the cuisine like in Medieval Europe? Specifically, places like Italy who's modern cuisine relies heavily on things from the Americas such as tomatoes.

Carpenter lived openly with his lovers and wrote extensively on gay rights (although he coded this by talking about "heroic friendships", which I love). Given that he was well known in Sheffield and had some national profile why didn't this land him in jail, especially because he was also a dangerous radical? I mean anyone who knew him at all would have known he was gay, he made no secret of it, and yet the law left him alone. Why?

The Arms Of Krupp by William Manchester contains the little gem of information that the German arms company Krupp billed the British government after the Great War for using their patented rifle sight to kill German soldiers. They calculated how much the Brits owed them based on how many Germans were shot with them.

A lot of western industrialists were appeasers because they had businesses inside Germany. Those same industrialists were buying politicians, of course. So how many of the political leaders who were appeasers of the 1930s were motivated by their own corruption and blinded because they thought Hitler would never actually upset the apple cart?

Munich makes perfect sense if you are beholden to the giant industrialists and don't give a damn about Czechoslovakians.