So I'm on my phone right now and can't link to the picture but on the Wikipedia article for Pegasus Bridge it shows traffic driving on the left after capture by the British, however surely it would have been in the allied interest to have all traffic on the continent on the right? Sorry if I'm speculating but could anyone shed any light on this?

In Belgium and France (and elsewhere) there are of course some huge war graves dating from WWI. When the Germans over ran these in 1940, how did they treat them? Did this treatment change at all over the course of the war, until they were driven out 1944-5? Thanks in advance.

I'm talking about quality of life, standards of living/rights of workers, economic prosperity, levels of political corruption, education, justice a-day-in-the-life, etc - especially compared to the rest of Europe at the time, as well as the later Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany

So this sub seems to be down on Jared Diamond, but most of it concerns him, his methods and conclusions of his book instead of the question he was asked.

Pretend JD doesn't exist at all and you happen to be the person JD's pal in New Guinea asked that question to. What do you say?

I'm wrapping up Caesar's "The Conquest of Gaul" and keep noticing the narrator talking about sending parties out to collect timber and corn. I was under the impression that corn had been domesticated in the Americas though. Is this a mistranslation or am I really wrong about corn?

Also on a side note, why does the narration switch between first and third person so much? It is constantly changing between I, we, and he.

If it helps I'm reading the Penguin Classics version.

I'd assume by force, but would there not be an incredible backlash everywhere?

Or, were some people happy to see their children go to the Janissaries?

Hello,

Did the disaster at Chernobyl have any negative effects on the view of Nuclear Energy? Or rather, did the near disaster/disaster of Three Mile Island do that instead.

It is said that when Bill Clinton became president he said something like,

"First, I want to know who killed JFK and if aliens exist"

Considering that the intelligence community is so vast and operates under the concept of compartmentalization to keep secrets on a need to know basis -- is there one person or group (like a committee) that do know the truth regarding covert operations, assassinations, intelligence, etc.

How was metal mined in before the industrial era? Like gold and iron. Dod ancients know that certain rocks contained it? Or did they dig up large chunks of it ? How did ancient Germanic people's like the Visigoths and Swavi mine iron for swords ?

We've all read and seen countless movies about mobs. Particularly the Italian mafia but also Irish, Jewish, Russian, and more recently Mexican mafias. Was there ever a white Anglo-Saxon mafia? Or more generally a Western European Protestant type? If not, why did what were at the time minorities form criminal organizations unlike the Christian WASP majority in the States?

My idea is based on a couple things

• Russians most likely knew about the U2 flights over Cuba, and could only assume that the USA would see the missiles sooner or later
• Russians should have assumed that nuclear missiles within range of the United States would not be acceptable to the US and would demand the upmost level of urgency for the US.

So were the removal of the US missiles from Turkey and guarantee to never invade Cuba the sought after strategical outcome for the Soviets, or was it truly first-strike capabilities in any conflict between them.

i guess this is taking for granted that the USSR did not want to use to bomb just as much as the US didn't.

Read about some of the failed pre-Jamestown settlements in America and this intrigued me the most.

I am reading Tolstoy's War and Peace (which is far more entertaining than I expected). There are several characters who are referred to as Princes: Prince Bolkonsky and Prince Kuragin to name two. And while I realize they are fictional characters, I can't figure out how they would have figured into the scheme of Russian nobility. There was the Tsar who Tolstoy refers to as the Emperor. Would these characters have been related by blood to Tsar Alexander I or were these titles of a different sort?