Russian colonies in America are often mentioned as a little "fun fact" when taking about the colonial period, but I'd like to learn more about their experience on the continent. What were the pushes and pulls that attracted Russians to the New World? How did their expectations compare to reality? In what ways were they forced to adapt? How did they interact with native peoples? Why did Russian colonization efforts ultimately fail?

We often talk about how "privileged" we are to live in the developed world, as if it was just luck that we wound up with a higher quality of life than other cultures/religions/ethnicities.

I can't help feeling that our ancestors must have been doing something right.

There's a continuous archipelago from Indonesia to Easter Island. Polynesians were (are) fantastic at wayfinding. No one tried to spread Islam to some local natives and hear stories about people on another island and rinse repeat all the way down the island chain? Or just, go exploring? Wash adrift and try to find their way back home? If they did, why wasn't contact maintained?

I am writing a novel, and I got a good portion into it before I realized that I was still calling it a driveway, despite the fact that there are no cars in this novel. It just seems a bit out of place, but maybe I am wrong.

While there is no set time period or location, I think it would be safe to say it's modeled around England, and they do use carriages for transportation, if they are not walking. So what would this long path for carriages and people on foot be called?

There are a few obvious answers to this question such as a lack of support from foreign governments and lacks of arms. However, there was such unity among the Spanish people and the international brigades against fascism. So how did the fascists win?

I am writing a research paper to which this is relevant. I have seen many references that refer to the sexualization of stockings, but none really analyze why or how this came to be, even though many of the sources I have seen go back pretty early. Hell, I think even The Wife of Bath from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales sexualize her with the red stockings she wears.

Here is the relevant essay The World's Last Night

The doctrine of the Second Coming is deeply uncongenial to the whole evolutionary or developmental character of modern thought. We have been taught to think of the world as something that grows slowly towards perfection, something that “Progresses” or “evolves.” Christian Apocalyptic offers us no such hope. It does not even foretell (which would be more tolerable to our habits of thought) a gradual decay. It foretells a sudden, violent end imposed from without; an extinguisher popped onto the candle, a brick flung at the gramophone, a curtain rung down on the play — “Halt!” To this deep-seated objection I can only reply that, in my opinion, the modern conception of Progress or Evolution (as popularly imagined) is simply a myth, supported by no evidence whatever. . . .

The idea that the myth (so potent in all modern thought) is a result of Darwin’s biology would thus seem to be unhistorical. On the contrary, the attraction of Darwinism was that it gave to a pre-existing myth the scientific reassurances it required. If no evidence for evolution had been forthcoming, it would have been necessary to invent it. The real sources of the myth are partly political. It projects onto the cosmic screen feelings engendered by the Revolutionary period. . . .

The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment: say, before you have finished reading this paragraph. This seems to some people intolerably frustrating. So many things would be interrupted. Perhaps you were going to get married next month, perhaps you were going to get a raise next week: you may be on the verge of a great scientific discovery; you may be maturing great social and political reforms. Surely no good and wise God would be so very unreasonable as to cut all this short? Not now, of all moments! . . . The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned, if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne’s question “What if this present were the world’s last night?” is equally relevant. Sometimes this question has been pressed upon our minds with the purpose of exciting fear. I do not think that is its right use. . . .

What is important is not that we should always fear (or hope) about the End but that we should always remember, always take it into account.

An analogy may here help. A man of seventy need not be always feeling (much less talking) about his approaching death: but a wise man of seventy should always take it into account. He would be foolish to embark on schemes which presuppose twenty more years of life: he would be criminally foolish not to make—indeed, not to have made long since—his will. Now, what death is to each man, the Second Coming is to the whole human race. We all believe, I suppose, that a man should “sit loose” to his own individual life, should remember how short, precarious, temporary, and provisional a thing it is; should never give all his heart to anything which will end when his life ends.

What modern Christians find it harder to remember is that the whole life of humanity in this world is also precarious, temporary, provisional. . . . Frantic administration of panaceas to the world is certainly discouraged by the reflection that “this present” might be “the world’s last night”; sober work for the future, within the limits of ordinary morality and prudence, is not. For what comes is Judgment: happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years hence from some great evil. The curtain has indeed now fallen. Those pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against White Slavery or Governmental Tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory. No matter; you were at your post when the Inspection came. . . .

I do not find that pictures of physical catastrophe—that sign in the clouds, those heavens rolled up like a scroll—help one so much as the naked idea of Judgment. We cannot always be excited. We can, perhaps, train ourselves to ask more and more often how the thing which we are saying or doing (or failing to do) at each moment will look when the irresistible light streams in upon it; that light which is so different from the light of this world—and yet, even now, we know just enough of it to take it into account. Women sometimes have the problem of trying to judge by artificial light how a dress will look by daylight. That is very like the problem of all of us: to dress our souls not for the electric lights of the present world but for the daylight of the next. The good dress is the one that will face that light. For that light will last longer.

Source:“The World’s Last Night” (orig. 1952), in The World’s Last Night and Other Essays

By 'huge fight' I mean political pressure, influence used, grassroots campaigns, those sorts of things.

Thanks!

Was mentioned in passing recently, did a bit of research and was really confused. What were the motivations that caused such willy-nilly side-switching throughout the war(s)?

Hello i come from AskReddit, i was told this might be a better sub for my question. Theres not much info on this together and well id like to know more. Thanks in advance!

I understand that there probably weren't nearly as many nuns as monks, but I still can't seem to find much information about what happened to them. I think it must be fascinating to ask what happened, when you have a large number of educated, self determining and skilled women suddenly dispossessed. Did they become entrepreneurial and start craft guilds? I can't find very much at all really...

Was it totally arbitrary or was there something to do with the way languages that use this alphabet evolved?

Why them, instead of the Prime Minister?

Follow up, have they ever used the powers granted under Commander and Chief, or is that title mostly symbolic as well.

Here's how I understand that battle very briefly: Caesar was outnumbered and being pushed-back/defeated. Pompey sends in his cavalry to crush Caesar's men and start a route. But Pompey's cavalry runs into an unexpected line of Caesar's infantry and - brilliantly - Caesar has ordered his men in that line to use their pila against the horses (as soldiers would traditionally use spears). The horses are spooked, and Caesar's men win.

I understand that the pila wasn't a traditional spear. But even so, my question is: Why was it so unexpected/successful to use a spear-like weapon against cavalry? Wasn't using spears against cavalry and horse-mounted-troops a known tactic?

I know that West Berlin wasn't legally part of the FRG, but was there de facto control? How was the city administered exactly?

I recently learned that my grandfather, who was a US Soldier during WWI, was gassed at the battle of Ypres. He died young. We know little about his experience. Which battle of Ypres would this have likely been, and what might his experience have been like? What gas would have been used?

On a grander scale, how was gas used in these battles. How was gas delivered? Were they strategic or tactical strikes? How targeted were the strikes? What would the experience have been like for those delivering the gas vs those impacted?

Below is what we recently learned about him.

Battery A., 102nd Field Art. 26th Div. Being severly gas- sed at the battle of Ypres was re- turned to this country as instructor in the Signal Corps at Camp Zach- ary Taylor.

Thank you!

This is a long shot, but does anyone know where the origin of age-related discounts comes from? Like how kids get reduced movie tickets or travel tickets?

And senior citizens as well? I get that the seniors' discount might be because they're retired and don't make as much.

I've read two theories.

Both theories follow the eruption of Thera, but one is, the Mycanean's came in and took over the temple at Knossis, but another theory is the Sea People's drove the Mycenaean's into the mountainous regions, and then maybe the Mycanean's took them over afterwards, or were already destroyed themselves at that point.

I've also read that the Minoans's continued to write under their new rulers the Mycaneans under a new written language since their rulers didn't have their own language; however, after the fall of the Bronze age... writing stopped until Greece. So there is a point where civilization fell apart. I'm trying to figure out where.

Hollywood nearly always depicts the Roman Aristocracy as white people; is this accurate?