So I was reading the Wikipedia article about the Battle of Vimy Ridge, and there is mention of the fall of the town of Thelus. What was capturing a town like in the time of WWI? Was there even a battle for the town or did the defenders just withdraw? Was it a house to house combat situation?

Also, could anyone point me in the direction of some WWI literature? I'm looking to understand the actual war itself a littler better.

I've heard this old adage that ww2 was won with russian blood, american steel and british 'intelligence' (ie:spycraft)...

I understand that is a pithy but ultimately ridiculous statement, but I was curious about how the idea of intelligence services became formalised and how that whole part of society and culture evolved in the 19th or early 20th century (or maybe before!). Obviously 'sneaky' behaviour has existed since time immemorial but I was more interested in when a country first formalised such a practice.

I hope this question follows subreddit guidelines

Pretty self-explanatory, but I was wondering why long hair in the West is a girl thing.

Maybe this question is inappropriate for such a high brow group of Redditors, but I am serious. I used to love Caesar 3 for the PC and it got me interested in Roman History. I am skeptical as to how realistic it was, though.

I watch a lot of stuff about the Battle of Stalingrad, Bombing of Dresden, Leningrad, Battle of Britain, etc. Does anyone have a book or documentary recommendation about how the people and governments rebuilt all of these places? What do you do with a city of rubble? Or if this is your area I would love to know how they did it. Especially, what was it like for the people doing this work and living through that process? Thank you!

I'm interested for guessable personal reasons. But also, were people with certain names (Henry, John, Richard etc) just more likely to be king? Matthew has been a common name for a long time, but perhaps it hasn't been a aristocratic name.

I was recently informed that kilts only came into wide spread use in and around the end of the 16th century. How did clans identfy each other before kilts? Were their just flags? Or was it just like everyone knew everyone?

So in the early 1970s and 1980s and even all the way through out to the 1990s there was a huge moral panic over tabletop roleplaying games. That RPGs were blamed for making teens kill themselves. What was it like back in that era when Dungeons and Dragons and other Tabletop RPG games were the target? What did you think of it? And is it the same thing happening now with Online Game Addiction?

In this CNN article, a pro-Russian militant is quoted as saying:

[T]here's no such nationality as Ukrainian. That's an Austria-Hungarian deception. We're Russian. We're all Russian. And this land isn't Ukraine: it's Novorossiya - and we will defend it.

What exactly is he referring to? Or, to be more precise, what did the Austro-Hungarian Empire have to do with the formation of Ukraine or the Ukrainian identity?

If this has been covered already, I apologize and will delete it. I thought it was a novel and interesting enough question to deserve its own thread.

Hey guys, so I was wondering.. Charlemagne got to be the Emperor because he was crowned by the Pope. The same with the Emperors from the Habsburg-Dynasty. But, for example Prussia got to be a kingdom because the Emperor said so, and the Pope didn't approve that. Napoleon just crowned himself to the Emperor of France and Russia was also viewed as an Empire but since it was Orthodox it will not be the Pope who crowned him. On the other hand, the UK owned 1/4 of the world and always stayed a kingdom, not an Empire. And when Germany was proclaimed, it was a big dispute whether Wilhelm I. could call himself an Emperor or not. How was it decided back then what was a kingom, what was an Empire or a Duchy? Could you just go around "Hey this guys looks mighty, I guess he could make me a king"?

Many of the ancient rulers of Egypt appeared to have claimed divine status to the extent of being considered living gods, or at least of holy blood.

When Akhenaten tried to convert the kingdom to sole worship of the sun disk Aten, how was the matter of the Pharaoh's divinity handled?

I'm reading Dividing the Spoils currently and throughout the search for a single successor Arridhaeus is constantly referred to as simple. Without giving too much away (I haven't gotten far in the book and honestly have no clue what happens to anyone although if I had to hazard a guess I'd say he's probably going to end up being killed) do historians today have any idea if he really was just dumb, or mentally retarded, or maybe even autistic?

I'm looking for a good history of the Franks, ranging at very least from the reign of Clovis (preferably before) to the reign of Charlemagne (preferably after).

I have found some information about the alphabet houses in Richland being assigned based on workgroup and specialty but I haven't been able to find much on how this was determined.

Did they keep department heads together? Were high ranking security personnel placed next to nuclear scientists in charge of research?

I have heard stories and the like about it but have never been able to find concrete research to back it up.

Thanks!

How did colonists/ natives overcome such massive language barriers?