I just watched this documentary about ancient Athens and the narrator mentioned the Parthenon would have cost the equivalent of $100 million. How did they get to this number?

I get how they measure inflation and what a dollar today could buy, say, 100 years ago and vice versa. But this is based on things like CPI, unit outputs, etc. (my finance and economics background coming in handy!). Is it just the same process in this case, just taken back 25 centuries? Or is there something completely different i am missing?

Side question: What are some other interesting monetary comparisons like this?

What was the political situation like between the Ottomans, Portuguese, and Safavids?

I recently read the Ottoman Age of Exploration, which often focuses on the Ottoman conflict with Portugal. The book also references the Ottoman wars with the Safavids, and seems to imply that the Portuguese and Safavids may have had some sort of accord.

But I recently read that the Safavids warred with the Portuguese, taking Qeshm and Hormuz from them.

So is there a deeper story here? What were relations like between these powers that all had ports in the Persian gulf?

I also read that the Persians allied with the British in their conquest of Hormuz. How did the entry of Great Britain in this area change things in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean?

Watching movies about slavery, such as 12 Years a slave, I wonder what stopped slaves from revolting against their masters. It seems like the owners were few in numbers compared to the slaves. Of course, the question remains - were would the slaves run after killing the owners, but I'm still curious. Was it more common for slaves killing their owners the closer to the northern states they were?

A Zionist and a pro-Palestinian liberal are having a big debate on my Facebook wall. One of the key questions that seems to be relevant is whether the Palestinians are the descendants of the people who lived in those territories before Jews started returning, or whether they just arrived to take advantage of the hard work of the Jews.

There is no chance whatsoever of ending the debate, but for purely intellectual reasons I'd like to know the genetic and cultural history of the people who live in the occupied territories right now.

Say you are a low level noble somewhere in the Holy Roman Empire. Do you view the mongols as some sort of near apocalyptic, unbeatable threat to your way of life or as just another kingdom with an army trying to conquer land? Would you have had any warning prior to their arrival (word traveling from the east via merchants or something) or would you be totally surprised?

Throughout modern Chinese history, the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 has been mythologized to serve various political purposes. When the West is defined as the aggressor, the Boxer resistance were treated in laudatory terms. But when the West is seen as the source of modern life, the Luddite-like machine-bashing of the Boxer movement was seen as embarrassing and was roundly condemned.

The Taiping Rebellion, 50 years before the Boxer Rebellion, amassed far more casualties and lasted a decade longer. How was the Taiping Rebellion mythologized in China compared to the Boxer Rebellion?

Today in my German language class, my professor mentions that the Nazis banned collegiate fraternities. Is this true? If so, what would they gain from this?

I've looked around and I just can't find it (most of the sites I found are too busy giving tongue baths to Eisenhower). I read somewhere that a big strategy was to go after Rommel's fuel and smash it, preventing him from keeping his tanks on the field, but what happened in Africa? For some reason, the textbooks never seem to mention what they actually DID in the various theaters...

I have the vague recollection of someone mentioning that the Pope invested people with Crowns (hence the Crowning by a member of the clergy.)

But apart from that I know nothing.

Since gold and silver coins were universal mediums of exchange, and the monetary standard for many nations, how would a major discovery like the Comstock Lode effect national or international economics?

a) Although most of the lower classes in ancient rarely ate meat, wouldn't there still be enough naturally occurring sodium in their diet?

b) Many civilizations were coastal and I always figured that salt could be fairly easily mined from the ocean by collecting salt water and allowing it to evaporate in the sun.

eg. regular iron cross, then iron cross with oak leaves, iron cross with swords, etc

I was watching django and it got me thinking about slavery I am aware the films not based on facts it just got me thinking.

How common and brutal was slave punishment and is their a more perternal aspect to keeping slaves that was unleft in the movie?

Were there any free black people in america? If so did they own slaves?

What was the difference between black slaves in america and the carribean?

And what were slave owners attitude to educating slaves?

In the film it has black slaves and black children holding guns to defend a colony owner were slaves ever trusted in the states to have firearms?

As I understand it the cult of Mithra was for men only, but what about these men's better half? Was there a female equivalent to Mithraism, maybe a complementary goddess? Were these women often following an entirely different religion, like Christianity, making a sort of Roman mixed-marriage problem? Or did the men drawn to this religion typically not have wives?

This was inspired by the fantastic discussion about Henry V and his manufacturing of arrows. It makes sense that the assembly line was only viable for manufacturing because interchangeable parts had been developed earlier in the 19th century. But when it comes to something as mechanically simple as an arrow, why wasn't the concept of the assembly line not popularized in pre-Industrial societies?

I'm unclear about what the status of history/classics dissertations are once they've been successfully defended. Once a person is awarded a PhD is their dissertation open for anyone to review if you contact the university, or does this vary from institution to institution? Are their situations in which a person can keep their dissertation private if they are planning on publishing a full book on the subject soon? Or is it not possible to keep it private because it is technically "published" as soon as you get your degree?

Has a smaller number of people ever saved a larger number of people than the 500 odd BoB pilots saving the 48 million British?