Hi, Im writing a history essay on the treatment of prisoners of war throughout history and decided to use American POWs in Vietnam as a part of my study. The only part I’m having trouble finding is how or if North Vietnam was prosecuted for the torture and maltreatment of its American POWs. I’ve researched for hours and struggled to find anything, I’m assuming they weren’t due to Cold War tensions but need at least one actual source and thought I’d try here. Any help is appreciated

The downfall of Mary queen of Scots appears to have been convenient for queen Elizabeth. Are historians pretty much in agreement that it was all purely coincidence mixed with poor luck for queen Mary?

I feel it's fairly obvious that *generally speaking* the later you join in a war, the more likely you are to survive it.

But I wonder if we have statistics for any war, namely WW1/WW2 that state what percentage of first, second, etc year soldiers survived versus the later years.

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On the other hand I feel it may also be accurate that toward the end of the war, fresh recruits will be coming up against the older more experienced troops and therefore if you joined and survived the early war, you may be more likely to survive it later on.

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Thanks for any answers and insights!

I've got an upcoming history assignment on homosexuality in Nazi Germany (1930s - 1940s), and have noticed a distinct lack of information. Is there anyone here with good, reliable, recommended sources of information that they would suggest?

In the novel From the Earth to the Moon, members of the Gun Club in Verne's novel mention that they have ambitions to make contact with Jupiter, and that they had the idea that the inhabitants of Jupiter were incredibly sophisticated and intelligent because Jupiter has an axial tilt of only 3 degrees.

That said, Jupiter was discovered to have differential rotation, proving it wasn't solid, as far back as the 1690s. And I'm not quite sure what ideas they had relating axial tilt to intelligence (something to do with phrenology in 1865?). Was differential rotation not understood to be connected to the consistency of an object? Or was the idea of Jupiter being a gas giant just not there in the wider culture? I find it amazing that Verne would be aware of information as niche as the axial tilt of Jupiter, but not something about Jupiter being made mostly of gas. Today the priority of the facts certainly seems to be reversed.

That said, what else would Verne, or those between the late 19th and early 20th century have thought of the inhabitants of Jupiter?

Is it possible to know what some ancient people thought about the odd uneven shapes on the surface of the moon? What did astrologers think?

Did they have any semblance of an idea of an orbiting celestial entity?

I'm interested to know for any people group, from any time BCE.

The Enigma code and japaense code is often discussed in regards to WWII, and how it was broken. I have not heard any discussion of Allied code existing and further being broken during the war, beyond the Navajo and other native Code Talkers, and how this was not broken. Was there an Allied code that existed, and was it broken during the war?

Historically, I give up Gaza to Israeli control, signing peace with the Israelis in 1979, leading to my expulsion from the Arab league and ultimately my assassination in 1981.

I’m trying to get my head around the Israel-Palestine conflict. My understanding is that Britain conquered the Ottoman Empire during WWI, took Palestine, and gave it to the Jewish people. My understanding is also that the Palestinians living there were evicted from their homes, and the ongoing war is based on their land being taken from them.

I’m interested to know firstly whether this is correct, and also whether anything like this happened elsewhere in Europe after WWI. I learned a very sanitised version of events at school and it never went into detail about people being displaced. Many thanks!

Apparently the mujahedeen were skilled enough to shoot down Mi-24 Hinds with bolt action rifles. The only weak point of these helicopters were the rotors, so these guys would have to be super skilled to hit such a small target on a moving target. Is there any actual record of them doing this or is this a war legend?

Wouldn’t it make more sense for the Kingdom to become Brandenburg in 1701 since that is where the royal house originated?

From what I understand, the Romans (especially in their early days) excelled at stealing good ideas, technologies and concepts from everyone they came across and improving on them, like when they (purportedly) found a wrecked Carthaginian ship and used it as a blueprint for their new navy. Throughout their history, they seem to have consistently developed and reformed their military practices.

So, when they (like everyone else) started getting knocked around by the Huns in the 5th century, why did they never adopt the Huns' (clearly superior) military tactics? Specifically the use of mounted archers and composite bows? Or am I fundamentally misunderstanding something here?

From John 19:25 : "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene" Which seems to suggest that Mary had a sister, also named Mary. I've also heard arguments that Mary Salome was also Mary's sister which would suggest that there were 3 sisters all with the same first name.

What's going on time? Were they step-sisters? Is there evidence to suggest that this was a clerical error? Did one or both women change their names at some point in there lives? Was Mary used as a title similar to Caesar in Rome? Or was it common for multiple daughters living in 1st Century BC Israel to share the same first name?

During the Jacobite Era (1688-1760), supporters of the Jacobite cause produced absolutely tons of visual arts as propaganda. We can see this in the plates stamped with Stuart coats of Arms, goblets with mottos written on them and satirical prints attacking the Hanoverians. Did the Loyalists in England, Scotland and Ireland produce any such visual arts to act as propaganda against the Jacobites?

I was conversing with a trained historian from a reputed school in the US regarding how we view settler colonialism vs. extractive colonialism in public policy and we wandered into the history of Bengal. We both are left wing/liberal leaning so our political understanding is similar. This is important because while talking about colonialism in India, the right wing in India often prefers to paint Mughal rule of India as a form of colonialism, similar to the British. I understand the political motives for that. However, I am an Indian Bengali belonging to a refugee family from Sylhet, Bangladesh while my friend is an Indian Bengali from a part of West Bengal which was always a part of present India. The difference is that my family was a minority in our place of origin (Hindu minority in a Muslim majority area) and my friend is also a Hindu but has always been in a Hindu majority area. So while our politics is similar, our family history and reality is different. I don’t know if this is the correct place to ask this because it mixes history, politics and subjective experiences.

We both disagree about when Bengal was colonised. My friend suggests it’s 1757, Battle of Plassey where the British beat the Nawab of Bengal. While I believe that Bengal was colonised in 1206, by Bakhtiyar Khalji of the Delhi Sultanate and later again in 1757. The issue is we both agree that British and the Delhi Sultanate in its infancy are not of Bengali or even Indian origin. However, while I think the Delhi Sultanate was settler colonialism, my friend thinks it’s not colonialism because while the Delhi Sultanate had roots in present day Afghanistan-Turkey, they lived and intermingled as ‘Indians’ while the British did not. In my understanding that qualifies as settler colonialism.

I guess what I am trying to figure out is that despite both of us being Bengali, belonging to the same religion and similarly placed caste categories our familial histories are not the same. Is that causing us to interpret the events differently. While I see both the Turkish-Afghan, later Hindu Marathas and the British as colonisers, as people foreign to Bengal at that point in history (not now though, I think all these three communities are an integral part of Bengal now) but my friend who is an historian looks at only the British as colonisers. Is it because of familial history, subjective experiences and hence different perspectives or is it something within history as a discipline which considers the British as a colonising force and the Delhi Sultanate not as one. I didn’t want to push him much about this because most of our friend circle is economists and there is a lot of banter, I didn’t want him to feel I didn’t respect his training as a historian.