I am interested in both the diaspora because of the history and the lore. I also am interested in the historiography and how irish history gets taught and studied.

I just read What If and it talked about how important the potato was to feeding the growing populations of Europe and it claims that without the potato many of the wars wouldn't have been on the scale they occurred. It also claimed the potato was more important as a discovery in the New World than gold or silver. So my question is: How important was the potato as a discovery?

TL;DR: How important is the discovery of the potato?

I know that prior to the first reports of ethnic cleansing, the Breadline massacre had occurred which really started to hint to the international community that something was wrong. I also know that ethnic tensions had existed ever since the Ottomans left the area.

Do you know any good primary or secondary sources for this that both argue for and against this argument (whether to a large extent or to a minuscule extent)

It's common knowledge that the Romans were quite the industrious group and that they are renowned for their engineering marvels. Are any of the sewers, aqueducts, roads, bridges, etc. built by the Roman empire still in use anywhere around the world? How does this infrastructure stand up to the stress of the modern world? And are there any historical records of people throughout the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire preferring to use Roman infrastructure rather than the building techniques of their time?

So I'm working on writing a biography for my mom as a gift for her 85th birthday. I've been interviewing her about things that happened in her life. My grandfather (her dad) died as a result of a mining accident in Germany shortly after WWII (best guess is sumer of 1947 or 1948). A large slab of coal fell from the roof of a mine and struck him in the back, breaking his spine in two places. He was subsequently paralyzed from his mid-back down. He died three months after the accident; we are assuming due to the lack of effective medical treatments and lack of antibiotics and painkillers after the war.

The thing I can't believe that my mom told me is that some time after his accident, they implanted a rod into each of his hips that protruded out of his body, the purpose of which was to allow him to be suspended an inch off the bed to allow for air flow under him. This seems absurd to me--why not just run a length of leather or fabric under his buttocks and lift him on either side like a swing? Why go to the trouble of such a crazy and presumably painful process?

Does anyone know if such things were done, and if so, why? I can't find any references to anything like this, and I'm wondering if perhaps my grandmother may have told the story wrong to my mom. Any help is greatly appreciated...

In Canada I never saw that kind of military parade.

German empire, USSR, NAZI Germany, Communist China ect.

France would be the only exception(Bastille day)

My teacher showed the video in class, and said the man was never heard from again.

Did the average Greek and Roman citizens participate in animal sacrifice? Were they frequent? How much information do we have on specific Gods and the sacrifice which was typical to them?

Did some of them just leave the field?

I direct this at more complicated armies. Not at Crusaders vs Rebels. I mean clearly you could tell a crusader and a peasant apart. How did armies with generic armor tell each other apart from another army while in the midst of battle?

Also, how did you know a battle was won? Did people kind of just look around and say "Well crap, everyone is dead" and leave?

Edit: Also, I am aiming this question more in the early periods. Not in the 1600/1700s.

Was it considered worse than death? How much did it really mean to the average person at that time period?

I have been living under the assumption that during the middle ages, most soldiers in a Western European army would have been levied peasants, forced into service. However, I have been told that many, if not most of the common soldiers were volunteers and got paid a quite good salary. So, how common was forced military service, or is it another modern myth?

How worried should French collaborators have been about the possibility of being targeted for violence by former resistance members or individual victims the Germans? It seems pretty clear that this did happen in most occupied countries, but I've never seen anything to indicate on what kind of scale we're talking.

Why does the flood myth seem to permeate cultural myth and psuedo-history? Is it just something basic we're afraid of deep down, or do scholars think that there WAS a period of flooding and that inspired much of the myths we read now.