Hello. I was thinking about prisoner of war films like "The Great Escape" and "The Password Is Courage" . I assume it is based on fact more or less. How did the prisoner get such fantastic mining skills ? They seemed to be very talented in tunneling. How much is fact and how much is Hollywood type stuff ?

I'm not sure if this question belongs here, but I'm curious why police departments started to adopt semi automatic pistols like glocks and sigs in the 70's and 80's and start to stray away from .38 and .357 revolvers? Semi auto pistols had been around for decades, but what changed? Was it cost? Round capacity? What was it?

In World War II, a large number of leaflets were dropped by both Axis and Allied forces, urging enemy troops to surrender (or at least attempting to deplete their moral).

For example, one of the American leaflets was a "Safe Conduct Pass" which German soldiers could show to Allied forces to surrender. I'm fairly confident that similar methods were employed against Japanese troops.

My question is this: How effective were these psychological warfare techniques? I'm especially interested in America's propaganda leaflets, but I would appreciate information on similar methods employed by other countries.

Thanks in advance.

So I need to write an essay to argue if Shakespeare did or did not have syphilis. Some said he did due to his abnormal amount of referrence to venereal diseases and the fact that his later works are inferior to his earlier works because of brain damage caused by syphilis and mercury baths.

Hey this question while partly answered by the wiki is very interesting to me (perhaps a bit science based). Any info appreciated!

Polynesians spread quite far, and were very accomplished with with seafaring. But as far as I know, there were no contact between Australian Aborigines and Polynesians, although Polynesians reached New Zealand and became the Maori. Is there a particular reason why they stopped expanding?

While China pushed the US back when it invaded its ally in Korea, why didn't China protect Cambodia from the Vietnamese invasion?

I recently re watched Master and Commander today and was wondering if the tasks performed by the crew would be possible f they're so far away from friendly ports (replacing a whole mast for example)

Quick bonus question: would a "Movie inaccuracies" thread be allowed here? Would love to discuss MaC with qualified historians

Sorry for the broad question, my ignorance is limiting my ability to formulate a concise, pointed question. I know a little about the Black Seminole, but I know there were multiple incidences of independent settlements of escaped slaves forming throughout the Americas.

I'm interested in how maroon communities were organized. Were all escaped slaves welcome? How did their culture evolve over time? Did they ally with neighboring Native American populations or did they need to fight to carve out territory? Did European colonists know maroon communities existed? Were there efforts to raid and re-enslave members of maroon communities? After the abolition of the slave trade did maroon communities come out of hiding?

Any recommended reading would also be appreciated. Thanks.

I assumed everyone just used a french press until my grandfather said he had never seen one.

Hi there fantasy fans.

[DISCLAIMER : I am not a native speaker so please forgive my mistakes.]

I would like to gather all available infromation about the fantasy genre, especially high fantasy. I’ve looked through the basic sources (wikipedia, targeted google searches), and I’ve found lots of useful information, but I must go deeper! My final goal is to gather every book and article written in this topic that could be considered important. Any bits of information would be highly appreciated.

Lunatial

Inventions are generally dependent upon other inventions, techniques, and social conditions before they're brought about. For instance, we don't see steam engines until 18th century England because of metallurgy and deforestation. With that in mind, what were the various factors or necessary prerequisites for the invention of the bicycle?

While watching the original 1954 Godzilla, they claimed dinosaurs lived 2 million years ago. This isn't true, but then I considered that maybe in the fifties they didnt know the truth. I know we didn't know about tectonics until the 20th century.

Please mods allow me a bit of background before going into the question itself!

Since I've studied quite a bit on the subject (although I'm no expert) I'd like everyone to know that today we celebrate the day when we decided to make our own very first national junta, taking advantage of a number of factors like the Spanish King imprisonment by Napoleon, and the economic allure that the english kept showing our forefathers, should we decide to break the spanish monopoly and trade with them.

It is a day when we decided to embrace the doctrine that says that "If the Viceroy rules because of the Kings authority, without a free king, the viceroy has no authority to speak of, so it comes back to the people" (doctrina de la retroversión) and named our very own representatives (curiously enough, the president of that First Junta was from Paraguay, Cornelio Saavedra). It was our first stepping stone towards our full independence which would come soon enough, on 1816.

But this subreddit is not just about history but also about asking questions isn't it? so here it goes:

To any experts out there, is it true that the south american revolutions of the early 1810's were funded and promoted in secret by the british? I see clearly that they would have had very strong reasons for doing it (getting more markets, having more commodities available for manufacture, expanding their influence on the South Atlantic since there was no Panama Canal yet, further weakening the decadent spanish empire, etc.), but are there any serious sources that say that they were actively involved, even in contact with some of the key revolutionaries from the time (Mariano Moreno, Manuel Belgrano, Artigas, Cornelio Saavedra, Juan José Paso, etc.)?

Kind of seems like a dumb question, but I've been curious since watching the Cosmos episode about the stars (S01E08). Was it just like, one guy made up a story about something and everyone just kinda agreed? Did they see the stories in their dreams? Was peyote or any other hallucinogen involved? I suppose this question can be related to almost any religion or culture, but I guess I'll just keep it simple and focus on Native Americans.

I just took my last history class last semester, and was disappointed because we did not spend much time covering Prussia - a country that I have been interested in for some time now. I would like to read about the social/court lives of the aristocracy, or perhaps something about the Seven Years War. I really enjoyed the movie Barry Lyndon, and it's depiction of Prussia. Also, I have always been a little confused about the political situation of Prussia, Brandenburg, and the Hohenzollern family. How exactly did Prussia form and break from the Holy Roman Empire? So maybe something about the rise of Prussia would be good, also.