From what I've heard Canada was a leader in biological weapons research during WW2. My uncle worked at Connaught Labs which was suppose to be involved in that research. In 1942 while working at the lab he volunteered to be injected with various serums that were kept secret. He died suddenly that same year of something that took his life in 2 days. The death certificate says it was encephalomyelitis. He was buried in a sealed copper coffin never to be opened again. His brother and sister have always thought his death had something to do with what he was doing at Connaught Labs. I'd be interested to know what people here think about that. Or whether they think he probably just died from some bug that caused the encephalitis.

I've always assumed that among the Napoleonic wars, the Peninsular was singularly vicious. No doubt things like Goya's "Disasters of War" have compounded this assumption - but I've never seen art or literature from the other theaters that quite match the ferocity depicted. To be fair, Goya's a sort of singularly brutal artist, but most of the (admittedly wikipedia) reading I've done on the Peninsular war seems to confirm this. So: is it true that the Peninsular was was particularly violent? And, more importantly, what about Spain made it this way? Sure, guerrilla combat is always exceptionally messy, but why was Spain the place where this really seemed to take place?

Any book recommendations on the peninsular war would also be greatly appreciated.

I keep reading novels that mention it so much and After reading about it, it seems that it was a normal battle involving England. How did this affect the world today?

So, as part of the hundredth anniversary of WWI, my town organized three conferences with local scholars about how the war unfolded in our region and what it meant for the people that lived here. Yesterday's conference was about aerial warfare, but one thing the speaker said didn't convince me: he said that working parachutes existed in 1914, and that they were issued to those poor souls that crewed recon baloons so they could bail out as soon as they saw an enemy plane approaching, but that they were not issued to plane pilots and observers as it was believed that having an 'easy' way out of the fight would have made pilots less willing to fight. Is there any truth to this?

Thank you all for any interest and answers to this question!

Identifying oneself with a certain town like John of Edessa or Augustine of Hippo seems to be a normal occurrence, but it seems to be different with Philip the "Arab", who identify with a larger area.

Did Philip, or anyone else during the long period of Roman Empire, ever thought of being something akin to "proud" for being born/lived in the place they identify with? Something that extend beyond towns/cities, maybe similar to how today's Southern Italians see themselves as different from Northern Italians, or people in the Bible Belt USA proud of being the part of religious Americans, or people in Central Java sees them as a distinct Javanese, etc.

Something like, "Hey I came from Arab. It's a really nice place and the people there are cool, proud of being a part of them." Regardless how flexible/fixed the boundaries of the said Arab region.

What I'm asking is given that languages tend to lose declensions, inflections, and these sorts of things over time, how did they come to be in the first place, given they ostensibly didn't exist at the beginning of language.

For example, English has over time lost much of the subjunctive, and most languages with this conjugation tend to do so as well; we've lost our declensions, as did Dutch and most romance languages. Languages with the dual case lose them over time; and irregular verbs tend strongly tend to become regular over time (see the evolution of Latin into, say, French).

If this is such a strong trend, it seems to me that the state of ancient languages as being highly synthetic is highly unnatural, and constitutes a grave violation of this trend. Either language popped into being with a high morpheme-to-root ratio, which seems very odd and requires explanation, or there must've once existed a trend to increase morphemes-per-root over time, which is also very odd.

To make an analogy, by my understanding it's like a car on a hill. It is easy for it to roll down (decreasing syntheticness) and it takes energy to push it up. We know that the car was once very high on that hill. How did it get there? Did it pop into being at the top of the hill or did people push it up? Why would they push the car up a hill if it takes energy to do it.

It's really perplexing me and most people that I've asked. Please help.

(X-Post with /r/AskAnthropology)

A small group of 12 year old girls have been asked to make decorations for, and decorate, a Christmas tree to be displayed in a small manor in southern Virginia. They were thinking of stringing popcorn and making paper chains, but is there anything else to keep in mind? Were feathers, fruit or foil decorations used? Were small presents hung from the tree? We do realize that this typical family's Christmas would have been quite humble.

For additional information, this manor was built in the 1790s, but is currently furnished in the 1830s period.

Thank you, greatly, for your expertise.

Background is as follows:

A coworker has been invited to publish her dissertation, however central to the work are some maps that were gathered from an archive holding the primary sources.

The applicable copyright law is 70 years after the authors death, 70 years after creation of the map if the author is unknown, all of the used works are well outside this timeframe and therefore should be within the public domain.

The archive however demands royalties for gathered works in the event of a formal publication.

Can this be safely ignored since they are not in any way copyright holders or are there complications.

I Imagine that this problem has occurred to some professionals here so i formally ask for some clarification or advice.

Thanks in advance.

Dear Historians, looking for a agreed upon, evidence supported timeline of who has inhabited Palestine from as far back as possible. Were there any non-jews there before? Trying to get my head around the modern day conflict. Thanks in advance.

Seems like the germans didn't really invade the Soviet Union with much more tanks. planes, trucks etc than they did France. I would think after capturing France that production and resources would nearly double.

Hello. I'm a big nerd and like painting model soldiers. Soon I'm getting some mounted men at arms and some footsoldier models which are based on War of the Roses era English troops.

Since I'm from Manchester I thought I'd paint then up as Lancastrians.

I'm really keen to make them fairly authentic, so I'd like some information on how an army of that era, specifically a Lancastrian one, would have looked.

Would there have been a uniform of sorts? Or would each man have brought his own equipment? If so, would they have tried to wear the right sort of colours for their army?

Would a unit of troops have been led by a lord they were affiliated with? If so, how many or few troops would a lord lead? Would he go mounted with his fellow upper crust guys, or join his foot soldiers in battle? Were the soldiers professionals, or were they drawn from local populations by an indebted lord?

I would also love to hear about any particularly famous lord type leaders of the Lancastrians as I would like to paint models to represent these also.

Finally. What would the army have looked like? Are there any paintings or such which give an idea? Or any first hand descriptions of how the armies of the time were outfitted visually.

I realise it seems like I have a lot of questions here, but really it boils down to; How would a Lancastrian army in the war of the roses have looked, been led, and been organised.

Thanks!

Or did anyone ever advocate it or suggest it?

Was there a steady progression of technological development (such as metallurgy) that had to be completed in order for other key inventions (such as the movable type printing press) to be created?

Was it more a matter of no nations of the medieval era having the time and resources to spend on things other than survival and warfare?

I know the arrival of Byzantine scholars in western Europe following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans played a role, but I get the impression that their contribution was to bring in their library classical knowledge, which could (hypothetically) have been done at any time had the circumstances warranted it.