I am quite aware of the nationalist and separatist domestic threats that seek to dissolve the United Kingdom, or at the very least, seek to break away from the crown, but I do not know of any explicit foreign threats e.g. plans publicized or actions taken to carry out that goal from other nations or external/global organizations.

Thank you.

I'm an Iranian-American. I was born in the US and have a completely western accent and world view. However, i'm a bit...racially ambiguous. I'm not exactly "white". My skin tone is darker than the typical white skin tone. I have more of an olive complexion. A lot of people I speak with don't consider me white but some do.

Let's say I am the exact same as I am now. Western educated with a typical western American accent. I am in America where everything is racially segregated. How am I treated by this society?

The question pretty much covers it. I love learning about various subcultures, and the way citizens of a larger society set themselves apart and express themselves. Any examples from history?

I'm reading Dickens' Hard Times, and I'm curious about the use of "thou" in Stephen Blackpool's dialogue. I'm aware that "thou" was the second-person singular pronoun (corresponding to "tu/vous or tu/voi in French and Italian), but I was under the impression that it had died out in the vernacular by the nineteenth century, and used only in particular circumstances – say, in poetry for the purposes of establishing a sense of intimacy with either the reader or the person the speaker is addressing (for example Keat's "When I Have Fears": "And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, / That I shall never look upon thee more"). In this particular instance, I had the thought that it might be an affected use – say, the organic beauty of the speeches of the lower class is used to highlight the monotony of Bounderby's diction – but I have no idea if its use was creative artifice or simply mimicry.

Basically, when did the use of "thou" die out in the vernacular? Was it dropped first by those in the upper class, before it was eventually dropped by the lower? What's the story here?

Can you please tell me whether there was a (German) concept of medieval lordship as the lord/king/ruler being a joy-giving sun. Thank you

For example, southern China didn't seem to be a part of China for a while. It almost seems like China was defined by whoever had the largest mass of it under their control. So why aren't the Zhou considered the first proper dynasty?

With the new sanctions being pressed against Russia and North Korea, and the debilitating sanctions in the past against Iraq for instance, I'm left wondering if a country's leader has ever backed off on whatever he was doing that led to the sanctions in the first place?

And what are some of the strangest of these definitions?

To my understanding enough was known by 1944/5 about the holocaust and unwarranted Nazi aggression to give the Allies the upper hand in public opinion in a liberal society. Why didn't Sweden and Switzerland join the war? Couldn't they have been a thorn in the retreating Germans' side in Norway, Northern Italy, and Southern Germany? If their excuse was always that their geographical position made war futile, why didn't they join to do their fair share once it wasn't strategic suicide?

Since alchemists already discovered some acids how did they manage to store them? did they use other materials other than glass?