Might be quite an intangible thing. But were there any decisions by nationalist movement leaders that were influenced by gamble that the Japanese were going to lose soon?

so this post was prompted by the fact that a few hours ago i fell into the rabbit hole of reading the top posts of all time on this subreddit... for several hours... adding books to my amazon wishlist... going into the rabbit hole of wikipedia articles... having a couple dozen tabs open in my browser...

"back in the days" of actual hard copy bookstores and libraries i loved going randomly through the history section or even on a lazy day picking up those compendiums like "1001 most important history factoids ever"..

on the one hand, i guess it's a shame that fewer of us are reading entire in-depth books... but on the other hand the amazing availability of information gives me a broader overall knowledge of history and then allows me to hone in on my biggest casual interests. and in moments like this i'm not sure what to do with my excitement. i want to absorb all of this info so much.

and then that made me think about the [world renown experts-on-their-topic] college professors i had who actually wrote the textbooks on specific subjects, who looking back i wish i could ask questions of as casually as we ask them here... rather than just reluctantly doing their assigned homework...

so hats off to all you historians and thank you all for contributing to this subreddit! without this place, i would have forgotten about so many topics that i subconsciously come across every day but i realize it's this place that helps keep my historical perspective and critical thinking sharp.

How would Romans refer to it?

I want to say first that I hope to leave aside for now any question of whether Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, the Kims' North Korea, etc. are "really" Communist or actually something else; that's a subject that seems to derail any thread about this sort of thing, and I'm just not interested in it here. I'm asking about those nations that have really recognizable shared cultural-political-aesthetic attributes, which have all claimed to be communistic, and which have all been called communistic by both their allies and opponents. I hope that's alright.

So, what is the deal with this, exactly? Why have we seen such a wide variety of cultures suddenly going over to public aesthetics that involve giant portraits and posters and statues of living people, that involve millions of copies of small books containing choice quotes from certain leaders, that seem to see the rulers of these nations take on (in some cases) almost a quasi-divine authority? It all seems very much at odds with what's going on with the rest of their politics and I have to admit to it seeming way more weird to me for there to be gigantic heroic iconography of "secretaries" and "speakers" everywhere than to have the same kind of thing for an emperor or a king.

What made me ask this question was coming across a copy of Mao's little red book, which is basically a collection of quotes by the Chairman on various situations and ideas. I was struck by how unlike it was to anything else I'd ever encountered outside of an ancient religious text, and also, if you'll forgive me, how absolutely boring and unuseful almost all of the quotes were. What was it about something like this that was felt to be so important that hundreds of millions of copies of it have been printed to distribute around the world?

This is a sort of long odd question, and I will gladly withdraw it if it's inappropriate. I'm not sure how to put it more briefly than the above.

It seems like Christians (not sure about other major religions, but I assume it's not much different) have had a relatively easy time converting those of indigenous religions. but I've never heard of a missionary who was converted to paganism (for lack of a better term).

I was looking up the old Titan II and NIKE missiles and it got me thinking about what would happen to the soldiers that were stationed there. Do they go to a fallout shelter, stay in the base and wait for instructions?

American accents differ from English accents. How?

I'm reading 'Gods and Generals' by Jeff Shaara. When Lee is stationed in Texas before the war, the book describes a scene where Lee and his commander, General Twiggs, are called in to speak with Sam Houston.

Is there any documentation to suggest this happened? I've heard on r/askhistorians before that Shaara might have a bit of Lost Cause slant. (How much salt should I be taking while I read this book?)

I'm asking this cause I didn't really find an answer to this in the wiki page.

So, let's say I belong to one of the major groups that used to or still live in South America, maybe a Guarani, a Mapuche or one of the many ethnic groups under the Inca, what sort of pet would I have? A llama, a monito del monte, a colocolo? A dog, something close to that?

I am trying to find an image of the back of Euthymides' Reveler's Vase where he inscribed "Euphronius never did anything this good." There are tons on images with the scene of the revelers, and I have searched everywhere with every possible search phrase for an image of the inscription to no avail.

The Japanese attacked the US pacific fleet at pearl harbour.. but why did they not attack the actual island also with ground troops? were there many infantry units based there? Would controlling the island not have been better as it would have denied the US an important base and been an ideal point from which to defend attacks by the US deeper in the atlantic?

Could I have rocked up to Hampton court and told the staff I was the duchess of Suffolk? (I'm assuming not, but you catch my drift.)

Long ago during the early days of the internet, I was told by someone that as the Norse people began to convert to Chrisitianity there would be some syncretism between local pagan beliefs as the new faith took hold. One of these would be the spreading of "crossover" where Jesus encounters members of the Norse Pantheon and, depending on the attitude of the tales' originator, either humbles or is insulted by them.

The only one I remember in particular is a supposed story that begins with Jesus being on a boat in a middle of the lake when Thor leaps from the waters upon the deck and challenges to a wrestling match. Christ refuses, to which Thor scorns him and leaps back into the lake.

I've never seen any evidence of a story like this or anything similar actually existing during the transitory period between the pagan norse religion and Christianity despite some occasional searches, and i'm wondering if anyone with more authority/experience can confirm or deny such things.