I'm doing some research into what role the battleship played in each major navy during this 45 year span. I have found plenty of historians telling me how each navy opted to deploy their battleships and understand how each navy did eventually use them. However I am struggling to find any contemporary resources such as reports, memoirs, telegrams etc from admirals or naval theorists during this period about the usage or how of Battleships or how they believe they should be used.

Apologies if this appears to be 'homeworky' but I assure you I understand what role they did play and how they were used differently by the major navies. It's just the actual primary accounts/reports to follow up that I am struggling to find. Any help is much appreciated.

How did the state lines get drawn and why is Missouri its own entity and Arkansas its own separate one? Is it due to population density? Company interests? Political or warfare disputes?

changed wording a bit

During WW2 how many personnel were required to support one combat soldier? I thought I had read 9/1, but not sure.

My understanding is that the ancients almost never used cloth flags but all of Europe was using them by the 16th century. What is the history there?

I guess the era I am curious about is the beginning days of European colonialism. When Christianity spread to Asia (Vietnam, Philippines, Korea etc.) was it a convert or be killed scenario or were the local population happy to convert? I learned that Japan expelled foreigners and began it's period of self-isolation because it saw missionaries as "threatening" so it made me wonder how threatening these missionaries actually were compared to the colonial governments.

I'm really curious if anyone has an answer as to why there seemed to be so many large cults between 1960s and the 1980s.

Is it media sensationalizing a more common event or were there factually more large-congregation cults in those years than in the past and in more recent decades? When I think of cults I think of violent/suicidal cults like the Manson Family, Jonestown, Waco Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate, (Scientology?) but also some of the more "benign" cults like alien worshippers the Raelians, Christian cults like the Moonies.

Almost all of these movements began, reached their peak, and petered out between 1960 and 1980, I know of them survive to contemporary times, but if I'm not mistaken those are the outliers. Are there any ideas as to why this is so, or is my perspective a little skewed?

What was going on in England during the Roman Empire? Was the land inhabited? Were they a formed State? (If not when did "England" as we know it start?) And what did they call themselves?

Sorry, lots of questions! I just never hear about this area while talking about the Roman Empire, and it is in an area that would seem to be relevant.

In the United States, Obscenity is one of the types of speech purportedly not protected by the First Amendment. It is defined as material with "no redeeming social value." Nudity and sex, however, can be considered not obscene if they have political, literary, or artistic merit. Justice Potter Stewart stated that "Hard-core" sexual conduct is considered obscene.

How exactly did courts define "hard-core" sexual conduct? What kind of nudity or sex had artistic, political or scientific merit? Who decided this "merit," and how did they decide?

Sorry if this question is too open-ended, and feel free to direct me to a different subreddit or ask for clarification!

Mostly looking for a cultural divide, not necessarily a date

I thought about posting this to /r/linguistics but the answers there tend to be a lot less historically focused and much more to do with the science of linguistics which often just confuses the heck out of me. I'm interested in the historical background to this.

Edit: to clarify- I know Afrikaans comes from Dutch not English, I want to understand why it is not still Dutch, while people in some former British colonies still speak English and not a new language descended from English.

I always thought Japan was quite anti-communist at the time, and they already had a bad past with Russia (the war in 1905, quite some border conflicts with Manchukuo and Korea since then if I recall correctly), so I was quite surprised to find out it was in fact Russia who declared war on Japan, and only a week before Japan's surrender. Was it simply opportunism from Russia's side or were there other factors at play here?

Did people own multiple "companies", employed people? Did they invest? Where did they get money from and how could they expand their influence? What could they own?

Or was the concept of corporations and this kind of economy not yet present in these times?

(I apologize for this poor quality question, I really found it hard to express my question in words.. I tried to ask multiple questions to hopefully convey what I mean.)

What was the earliest use of Cavalry in battle and what was it used for?

I.e. I assume if some madman suggested killing every second child in Athens to appease the gods, nobody would seriously even discuss it and nobody would vote in assembly.

So where was the line? Wikipedia says, with no sources, that

In the 5th century at least there were scarcely any limits on the power exercised by the assembly. If the assembly broke the law, the only thing that might happen is that it would punish those who had made the proposal that it had agreed to.

I asked this question about a year ago and got no answers, so I am trying again. Sorry if I worded it wrong, English is not my mother tongue and I might not know some terms.