I have yet to find a good, sourced answer for this question: why does North Korea officially call itself Democratic, as in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea? Even experts who have studied the region just brush it off as "propaganda". What rationale do they use to claim they are democratic?

What did the Church of the Late Middle Ages teach people about God and about the world? Do we have any examples of sermons from the Late Middle Ages?

Some states had to wait a century to get their shapes. Some waited 50, but question is: what took so long?

I am doing a research paper for how the nobles affected Shakespeare's work and i can't find many things on how the King's and Queens influenced Shakespeare. Most sites just say there was little to no relationship between servant and Monarch. Also Queen Elizabeth went to one of his plays and then King James liked his plays but that's all I've gotten.

Anywhere and anytime.

It's haunted me all throughout school. I'm more of a single spaced guy myself, but collaborators on papers always want to pull the trigger on double spacing long before submitting them. This got me thinking--when did the convention of double spacing papers emerge? It seems very common in high school, throughout college, and in many industries. Was it so reviewers / graders could mark individual lines more easily? Is it a relic of the print age?

The premiere of Cosmos tonight told the story of Giordano Bruno, who was allegedly put to death by the Catholic Church for believing in an infinite universe. However. it briefly mentions that he rejected several key Catholic beliefs, such as the divinty of Jesus. So what was he really executed for?

Is there even confirmed evidence of societal contact?

I'm not exactly sure if this is the correct place to ask this.

I was just wondering what is the most well done adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh? Be it film, novel, whatever.

Pick your tribe. Did any group of Native Americans have domesticated pets or working animals prior to contact with the European settlers?

Referring to American history.

---I am making this post with the hope that I can be shown that what I am and have been studying is worthwhile.

---I am in my third year of college as a history major with a military/diplomatic concentration. I dropped out of the school's history honors program after a semester because neither my professor nor my classmates could satisfactorily answer my question as to why we study history.

--Unsatisfactory answers:

"To learn from the past". ---I would argue that what the army learns from the Iraq War is not "learning from history" but adaptation. The Army going into Iraq well prepared because its generals had spent hours studying Roman Campaigns against Eastern Empires would be "learning from history".

--- Furthermore I do not think we learn from history at all. If we truly learned from past mistakes we'd be close to utopia after observing millennia of death and suffering "To understand why events and movements happened"

--- Understanding why something happened is not a means to an end. Why is it important to understand why something happened? Even if you do find an answer you will keep falling back on other 'why's, never finding a concrete starting point.

If history is so important why doesn't Barrack Obama have a cabinet of historians using their wealth of knowledge of the past to advise him?

Is there any true reality when writing history and can an event or time ever be reconstructed with accuracy? 5 people living through the same time will have 5 different views and perspectives on what happened.

I've heard we study history to understand the human condition/ humanity. This is a very vague answer, can anyone with this view expand on it? Why is it important to understand past cultures and peoples when we don't even fully comprehend the time we live in now?

Is history perhaps not about events and causes but ideas and discoveries which are produced?

Is history important just so we can mark progress we've made by comparing our society and world to ones of the past so we know that we're advancing?

If all history was erased before the year 1900, would we be any worse off?

My current view is that history largely exists for entertainment purposes- "literature based on reality"

Even if you are not a moderator I would sincerely like to know what you think/ your response.

Most of the upper class of Rome spoke in Greek a lot of the time, as it was considered the privileged language. When conquering Zela, why did he now say this phrase in Latin?

I found this question difficult to put into words. I'm reading 'A Brief History of the Celts' and I'm enjoying it for the most part. This is the first time I've looked into history outside of school for my own self interest, so forgive me if I seem vague about what I'm looking for.

I would like to know more about Iron Age Britain, the culture of the Celts and other peoples, and their confrontations and partnerships with Rome. I've seen such films as King Arthur (2004), The Eagle (2011) and Centurion (2010) and, I'll admit, I'm a sucker for the romance of old Britain and the conflicts which took place.

I prefer to learn through personal accounts rather than documentaries or historical books (though I'm very open to suggestions for those). It's clear there in fiction at least the Celts (god I feel like I'm using this word completely wrong) are viewed as savages by the Romans who, as the victors, wrote the history books and subsequently became the heroes of Hollywood's movies.

The British empire gets a pretty nasty rap these days, seems to me the Victorian Britons especially are blamed for almost every negative social trend in the modern day. While it is not the focus of my study I've always greatly enjoyed reading about the empire, quite frankly my reading has just confused me further.

Empirically speaking the British empire would appear to be among the, if not THE most beneficial government to have graced the earth! The positive changes the 2nd empire brought to being, from the abolition of slavery to the popularisation of education, emancipation and individualism to worldwide levels has little parallel on the global stage.

I honestly cannot understand it, so hopefully one of you chaps can explain. Especially when Britians imperial record is compared with, say, that of Germany or Belgium.

The basis of my thought on the matter rests on the works of Ronald Hyam and James Lawrence, with a sneaky peek or two from that cheeky populist Fergusson.

I would guess that native women who did not interact with European culture did not wear them, but were there any countries within Europe that did not adopt the fashion? Or groups of women (for instance: the handicapped, the very poor, perhaps women settlers in North America) who didn't wear them? I'm curious, I guess, about their inception and if any women refused to wear them or were unable to.