what i mean is that i don't know of many movies about the 100 years war besides The Messenger. Can you guys perhaps enlighten me ?

btw, this is my first time ever posting on any subreddit ever.

Hi, I'm researching the motives of the first Crusaders for school and I've found some books on the matter by Riley-Smith. If anybody could provide me with some ideas or suggest some texts that would help me with my research that's be great!

This question may be completely flawed, but bear with me here. The original colonists were from England, and I ASSUME that the English used the left side of the road, like they do now.

I ALSO assume that the colonists got off the boat and used the left side of the roads in their settlements.

When and why did they swap? It seems like a lot of work, changing that for no real reason. Was it a slight at the British after the War of Independence or something? Even then, it seems a bit petty, changing the side of the road you walk/ride on to make a point.

My understanding may be entirely wrong here, if so I apologize.

I've read recently that the Ottoman Empire got most of its eunuchs from one place: A Coptic Christian monastery called Abou Gerbe. The priests were supposedly renowned as experts in castration and their eunuchs fetched a high price. The method they used supposedly had in a ten percent recovery rate: in other words nine out of ten boys did not survive castration, if I read that right.

This seems like an astonishingly high morbidity rate. Is it true? Why did so many die? Was castration this risky everywhere or was it something about the methods these particular monks used?

After two medieval armies fought each other, what would happen to the bodies? Were they brought back to their homelands by surviving allies (if there were any around), were they buried in mass graves by the victors, or just left to rot? What would happen to the gear of the fallen enemy army, I would imagine some of the weapons and armor on the dead might be worth quite a lot, did they loot the bodies? What items might they have particularly looked for, and would they just sell the loot off, or might they use some of the gear in their own army?

Another question that comes to mind, how common was it for men to abandon their army and run away during battle? Did the enemy army, or even their own army, make a point of hunting down the people who ran?

Google's new Tango project is the kernel of this question.

I'm from New York City, and as such, I regularly encounter and deal with people of many nationalities, religions, and cultures. Some of them are involved in local, state, and federal government entities, and in our day-to-day lives, we get along very well.

From time to time, it occurs to me how shocking and weird this ought to be. Most countries, throughout history, have had one dominant race and culture (unless I am mistaken--in that case, please do correct me). What's weirdest of all is that now the commander-in-chief of our military is a mixed race guy, and the military itself is a very diverse organization, and is at the same time one of the most respected organizations in the US.

Yet we are not entirely historically unprecedented. The Mughals, the Romans, and many other massive Empires managed to have multinational societies and militaries, and for a time, each of them managed to survive and leave behind proud legacies. So my question to you, /r/AskHistorians, is how they managed to do it. How can you run a country full of people with very little in common? How do you motivate soldiers of different races and religious backgrounds to fight together under one flag?

I welcome all answers and would also appreciate it if you pointed me to books that address this issue. Many thanks in advance.

I'm really getting into the show, and I'd like to know. I'd like to know about the validity of the show as a whole, but here are some examples.

• The Vikings chose to attack Saxons on Sundays, knowing that they would be in church for services.

• The Vikings were literally unmatched in battle. Saxons would outnumber them 2:1, and would still be destroyed with little death on the sides of the Vikings.

• Women, including the wife of the raid leader, would join on raids to foreign places.

Thanks for the help, guys

I was given some stuff by my grandfather when he died. He was a paratrooper (503rd PIR, 168th Engineers) in the Pacific Theater in MacArthur's armies. He had 5 combat jumps and 2 Purple Harts. He left me some of his medals as well as some other paper artifacts, including an Army issued map of Corregador, some Army published periodicals, and the newspapers the my grandmother had from June 4, 6, and 7 of 1944. There is also some coin money (I think Australia) and paper money (I think Philippines and currency from the occupation of Japan).

I would like to store these items properly so that they last as long as they can. They were stored in plastic (non-grocery) bags, but the paper items are starting to fall apart. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the hardware I need in order to store them properly?

Many thanks.

Considering the proliferation of Neolithic sites and their presumed pagan roots, why did the English, or Scottish, Welsh, Irish allow the sites to remain. Wouldn't the monarchs and their governments, with many of them intolerant of other religions, not want any remnants of paganism to remain? What are the accounts of destroyed sites, if any?

Would that child have been raised by their mother and step-father? Would the child have been considered a Bastard? If it were a boy, would he inherit his step-father's lands and possessions?

Did it catch on quickly throughout Europe and were there competing names?

And a secondary question if anybody feels like answering it: How large was the Spanish Navy at the height of the Spanish Empire during the Age of Sail?

For both questions I'm looking for estimated (or better yet, concrete) ship numbers (and hopefully the number in each class/rate as well). The military/history nerd inside me is dying to know how many ships, and how many of each type of ship, you would need to dominate the globe like these continent-spanning empires did before the inventions of steam, modern communications and airplanes.

I know that my title is an over-simplification, but it seems to me that for a lot of years now, Russia has seemed to content not to have any important allies and to pursue their agenda more or less alone. The United States has the rest of the West, but Russia and China don't even really get along that well most of the time.

Would anyone that mattered come to Russia's aid if, say, the US invaded them? It seems unlikely.

And it seems they've been this way as long I can think of, since at least Byzantine times. I don't really think Serbia or Syria count as serious allies in the way that Japan and the EU count for the United States, for example.

Can anyone shed some light?

Many people observe that political power in Canada has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of the Prime Minister over course of the last few governments.

Some compare it to the days of MacKenzie King and Louis St. Laurent, when cabinet ministers had greater autonomy.

Has this trend been in evidence since Confederation? Or since parties have used the personalities of the leaders to push for popularity (i.e. starting with Diefenbaker.)

What about the courts? Or the Senate? Where do they fit in?

I'm mostly interested in Canadian politics, but insights about other Westminster-style parliaments might be helpful.

Another thing that wouldn't fit in the title is did early colonists make return trips? How much did they have to rely on the land before they could get any assistance for (I assume) inevitable shortages?

I'm curious to know how the prisoners were executed, because it would seem that beheading them all would take a long time. How come they didn't rebel as they saw they'd be killed since they outnumbered the English?

Secondly, was this a common feature of battle in the high medieval period?