I teach in China, and recently gave my students a passage to parse about the Mandate of Heaven, and none of them (high school students) had heard of it. I asked more friends, ranging from 18-30, and almost none had heard of it. When I went to translate it into Chinese, my dictionary actually had an example sentence of "大破天命观", which translates to "eradicate the concept of the mandate of heaven". What was the actual process used to eradicate this concept?

I was looking through the book list on the wiki (which is a great resource, by the way) for some Russian history, but it's entirely concentrated on Russia after the Revolution.

I'm a layman interested in Russian history before the Revolution, especially the Russian Empire and how it came into existence from whatever the geopolitical situation was before it existed. What do you guys recommend?

I understand that army size, precise time period, and actual combatants would have been factors, but I'm just curious and looking for more of a rough estimate.

I didn't see this question in the faq.

Also, feel free to chime in on different time periods if you like, the more the merrier I suppose!

Prior to the 17th Amendment, why did candidates running for office have debates in front of common people? If they couldn't elect them, then what was the use?

A college professor mentioned this during a lecture once, and the idea haunts me to this day. Is it factual? Is this based on eyewitness accounts of sailors?

I know that she was about 10 and he was like 30 - but from what I've read, they did interact. In the disney movie, the magical tree lady helps Pocahontas and Smith communicate through their hearts - but what really happened? Did Pocahontas learn English?

My friend and I are having a competition to see who can learn the most about the history of France from the beginning of the 10th century up until the start of WWI. Do you guys have any suggestions; like what events I should focus on or books, podcasts, documentaries, websites, movies, basically anything that will help me learn more about France during this time period?

I was having a conversation with some friends about Nobuo Uematsu, who wrote a lot of the music for the Final Fantasy series, and we got to talking about how one would address him in english, since a lot of Asian cultures put the family name first. This lead to a debate about whether 'Nobuo' or 'Uematsu' was what people would call him in person and that got me thinking of this question.

What titles would you recommend for the following upper elementary school units of study? The units will be interdisciplinary but history-focused. I would like to pique student interest without being corny or cliche.

• The Middle Ages
• European exploration and colonization of North America
• Lewis and Clark Expedition + California Gold Rush + Pioneer Life
• United States History (late 1800s through Great Depression)
• United States History (WWII)

I hope my question complies with your subreddit rules. Thank you for the help!

EDIT: Added units.

I find myself increasingly fascinated by books about military failures I've read about Stalingrad, Barbarossa and Midway.

I'd like to learn more about Market Garden and was wondering if you guys had any good books to recommend?

Hey, I've recently taken an interest in the military of the Kingdom of Italy, and noticed they had a surprisingly organized and satisfyingly simple designation system for tanks. The tank would be named "xy/z" with "x" being "l", "m", or "p" for "light", "medium" and "heavy", with "y" representing the weight of the tank in tons, and "z" being the last two digits of the year in which the tank entered service. So the L3/33 tankette was a light tank, weighed 3 tons, and entered service in 1933. I quite like this system.

However, the system of naming fighter planes seem much stranger. Let's look at the CR.42 biplane. "CR" stands for "Celestino Rosatelli", the designer of the aircraft, and I have no idea what the "42" means. Another example is the C.202 monoplane. The "C" stands for "Castoldi", the last name of Mario Castoldi, the plane's designer. Strangely it doesn't use his full name like the CR biplanes. I have no idea what the "202" stands for.

Does anyone have any knowledge of the system that was used? Did it vary from manufacturer to manufacturer? Thanks!

It seems like there should be

Ok, so one of my crazy conspiracist friends was just telling me that we had a couple presidents before George Washington came into his presidency. Is this true? I've never heard anything about it until just awhile ago.

I know this is sort of an odd question, but I'm curious as to why a pie to the face is so closely tied to comedy, specifically to clowns.