I've often heard that people mainly drank alcoholic beverages for much of history because they were safer than water. If this is true, did Muslim societies find some way around the forbidding of alcohol? If not, did they find some other way to protect themselves from disease?

I assume England is one of the only places, since I only know English, but how far back in time would I be able to still be able to talk to people?

I am aware that a lot of the opposition leaders were jailed, exiled, or worse but what about the rank and file? Now in their 40's have they started to take leadership positions in business, community and political positions?

I was having dinner tonight, somebody dropped and broke something, and I immediately thought Mazel tov! But now, I'm wondering why I thought it.

edit: typo in title, deal with it.

Several of the northern Slave States seceded once Lincoln called for troops following Sumter. Why did the other ones stay? And more specifically, even after various bills were introduced in Congress during the Civil War to end slavery, why did they stay with the Union?

I was curious if there were ways that people or thinkers were protecting their ideas during antiquity around the world, or was information generally free and accessible and something was culturally agreed upon.

Could someone take the Histories by Herodotus around 300 BCE and say "Actually I, Claudius (I guess that's not Greek) wrote the Histories"?

If there are any sources I would love to know more. Thank you.

Navajos have until recently been the largest tribe in the US, Ojibwe are the largest Indigenous ethnic group north of the Rio Grande, and the Iroquois Confederacy had a longer and stronger impact on the development of the United States. Why exactly are Cherokees the only tribe that seems to be taught about in US History?

If you were taught about other tribes in school, I'd love hear which ones!

Child labor was not ended by legislative fiat; child labor ended when it became economically unnecessary for children to earn wages in order to survive - when the income of their parents became sufficient to support them. The emancipators and benefactors of those children were not legislators or factory inspectors, but manufacturers and financiers. ~Effects of the Industrial Revolution on Women and Children, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

How much truth is there to this?

Why aren't they all the same? Did things used to be turn differently?

When does the concept of space as three dimensional — that is, the notion and acknowledgement of three-dimensionality, became commonplace in the West?

What were the events that allowed for and spreaded this knowledge among "common folk"?

It was obvious that Hitler's ideological beliefs did not look favorably upon those of African descent, but I have seen very little explanation as to what happened to them in Germany during WWII.

I prefer narrative histories, but all suggestions are welcome. I didn't see any books on this place and time in the Resources section. Thank you!

Backstory - for a novel I'm writing, I'm fabricating a nation between Austria and Hungary, a relic of the AHE composed of Burgenland and part of East Transdanubia - a nation which, after WWII, was split into two nations, East and West. So the towns, castles, noble families of the region, etc. will be the real thing, only the "nation" will be fake.

Sounds like it was incredibly important. Where else do you get to practice your nationalist movements?

So I was reading about Japan's economy and I was struck by the strength of their economic relationship with the United States. Did the United States have an implicit (if not explicit) priority to Japanese capital markets? Are there any rough estimates we can make of the wealth this relationship generated?

In particular, my idea (and I'm very surprised this wasn't on the wiki for the debate over the bombings) is that the United States likely would have been able to predict the benefit of establishing such an exclusive economic relationship with Japan. Could it be possible that the desire for this economic relationship (and for Soviet Russia to be excluded) motivated them to drop the atomic bombs?

(I certainly don't think it was justifiable at all, but I am curious about Washington's motives.)