It's a story that gets mentioned in various books on North Korea, some accept it as fact, others as hearsay. What's the real deal?

What area be it Greece or Anatolia etc. had the largest population and income in the Byzantine Empire? Another question was Constantinople always the richest city in the empire?

How difficult was it really to defeat someone in full plate armor?

Could for example a sword thrust pierce the chestplate or would you need to look for weaknesses around the harnesses like some movies?

Would a sword be of any use at all, or would you prefer an axe/mace/hammer?

What kind of a tactic could an unarmored man use to have a chance of defeating someone wearing heavy armor?

I'm curious about the extent of support the National Health Service Act of 1946 had in the UK. Also, whether there was a significant opposition to it and what their arguments against the establishment of the NHS were.

My only knowledge of Julian came from Gore Vidal's excellent book of the same name, but while he supposedly researched it very thoroughly, it's still a work of fiction.

Vidal (no apologist for Christianity) seemed to suggest Julian turned from Christianity to a pagan mystery religion because he fell under the influence of a svengali who exploited Julian's sincere belief in his religious experience. Is there any evidence of this?

If Vidal's angle is mostly fanciful, what is the true character of Julian's conversion to paganism and his stance against the church?

The examples of major changes in types of government (monarchy to republic, etc.) that I can think of always tend to involve bloody conflict (as may be the nature of the human condition).

Are there many (any) examples, beyond passing the torch to a child or something similar, where a government saw a major shift without conflict - i.e. a peaceful transition?

Hopefully that was clear, I've just been thinking about this for a couple days and am pretty bad with history, unfortunately.

The unemployment rates decreased, but a few years before WWII they rose to 14% again, which is very high.

I've been reading "Fingerprints of the Gods" and with a lot of the new findings in Central and South America as well as that recent article of the Archeologist theorizing that the Pyramids of Giza were power sources for an older civilization found by the Egyptians and used as tombs for their pharoahs. Is the view that human civilization stretches much farther back and his idea of a very great early civilization(s) becoming more commonly accepted? If so, what other new developments have come to light since the early 90s when the book came out.

Could it possibly be that one of the other homo contemporaries (probably not those Javanese little humans all those people stories describe them as being dumb as shit) be this early culture he described going about the world bringing civilization to the various peoples we think of as our earliest societies?

I've read that when we were nomads, promiscuity was normal.

Holy, Shitsnacks, I just got home from school like, This was a tiny question didn't except it to be big thanks guys

When researching the Black Death most records mention the impacts upon Europe, and occasionally Asia. I was wondering how the Black Death affected Africa. I know from Ibn Battuta that it reached Damascus, and that it was recorded in Alexandria. Was this the extent to its impact in Africa? Did it have an impact upon Sub-Saharan Africa?