Did the victor try and hunt down the remainder of his opponent's army? How did the general or king regroup and what happened to all the defeated soldiers who were displaced within foreign land?

I've done a bit of reading on the British pacifist front and it seemed that during the first stages of the war (up until about 1916) there was so much support that any opposition was confined to a few dusty corners of academia (one interesting account is is Bertrand Russell's autobiography).

Was there really so little opposition at the beginning of the First World War? Were the pacifist movements any different in France, Germany, Austro-Hungary or Russia? Did the pacifists deal any significant influence or did we have to wait later for conscription and war fatigue to kick in?

My question is concernecd with the forces at work during the period of Ottoman stagnation and to what extent it was Politics or Economics.

My understanding of the this time is that you have a series of ineffectual leaders, rise in the power of the Janissaries, a series of uprising, and trade being rerouted around Africa instead of the silk road.

I guess my question is how much was stagnation a product of outside forces like the rerouting of trade or stronger western alliances versus internal political factors?

Science in it's current form has not existed in the same way as today. I have always learned from popular culture and some documentaries that Christianity has always had a certain anti-science stance, but most of the supporting evidence doesn't hold when I learn more about those themes. Most of the time it seems to compare current empiricism with old times politics and truth searching disagreements that don't really compare. For some examples, please correct me if I'm wrong in any of those:

• Galileo was working for the catholic church and his problems were mostly from politics with scientific rivals and writing a book insulting the Pope when he was asked to write a book comparing the heliocentric and geocentric models. He could also not prove the complete heliocentric model, just that Venus orbited the Sun, not the rest of the planets.

• The dark ages is a concept completely disregarded by historians.

• The supposed burning of the library of Alexandria by Christians wasn't burned by Christians and while it was an awful lost of books it wasn't a big loss of scientific knowledge.

• Charles Darwin was buried with honors by the church of England.

• The inquisition was more about prosecuting false converts than anything else.

So those are usually the big examples of the church being anti-science that don't seem to hold. Most of those examples seem to be people having problems with their time's believes and politics more than any church actively pushing against them. So the church may have been anti-science, but which would be the real examples for that or on which points am I wrong.

I understand that currently there are some problems with certain brands of Christianity with a clear anti-science stance, but has that been true historically?

I honestly don't even know how to describe the scenario of what was going on after his death, however I'm interested in the fragmentation of his empire and would like to expand my knowledge on it. Any advice?

When I see flintlock pistols (or any kind of black powder pistol) represented in popular media, they are often fired with one hand. Since modern marksman hold their pistols with two hands, this confuses me as a matter of accuracy. Is the one-handed powder pistol a misconception of popular culture or was this an actual practice?

We now know that ancient Greek statues were not white, but were painted all over to show the color of skin and clothing. Did ancient Romans know that, did they paint their replicas and original statues as well?

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was brought up in a class I was taking about Middle Eastern Government and Politics, but it was more of a cursory glance and it showed him in a pretty positive light. While the Armenian genocide was covered briefly in the course, I am curious to what extent he was involved? My understanding is that he did not directly order it, but what were his feelings towards it? How much did he know about it at the time and how instrumental was he in suppressing it after the Treaty of Lausanne? In the same line of thought, how extreme were his views of Turkish nationalism? Thank you guys!

PS: I would love to hear some more background on the Armenian genocide in general, I figure this forum is more appropriate to ask questions like I did above, but if anyone could add more information about it I would greatly appreciate it, I am trying to become better informed on the topic.

In just a few hundred years, we have gone from agonizing and public executions to debating whether lethal injection is too inhumane. How did this shift in behavior come about? We used to be fine with gathering to watch their fellow man burn to death or be broken on the wheels, but now are queasy at the death penalty altogether. Why did we used to have no problem with such horrible ways of killing people?

I was discussing the deutero-Pauline epistles (1,2 Timothy and Titus) with our friend who is an ecumenical minister and he denied that these epistles count as forgeries. He claims that it was common practice at the time for students/followers to use their teacher's name instead of their own. Because after all, the ideas were given to them by the teacher and are therefore rightly the teacher's.

Is anyone here aware of a time when such a practice was common?

Thank you all for your time and consideration.

It is my understanding that martial arts outside of those used by the military are widely illegal in China. My question is about the cultural climate in the 60's - 70's that allowed so many films to be made glorifying something that was essentially illegal? I accept that my understanding if China during this period may not be perfect but I cannot see the government allowing these films to be made and eventually sold to overseas audiences.

I'd love to get some perspective on Communist China and the entertainment industry during the height of the martial arts film.

Can we further say that France diplomats like Richelieu, Talleyrand, DeGaulle save France when that nation was in critical danger. Without that kind of men France would be doom.

Was there any controversy surrounding the choice to portray Othello in black face? Did any prominent civil rights leaders criticize the choice to use a white actor in black face for the lead protagonist or was the decision to use Laurence Olivier well received by the civil rights community?

I was wondering, since a few Asian languages sound alike to Chinese words. When I listen to Thai, it sounds very similar to Cantonese. And I pick up several words in Filipino, Japanese and Korean that sounds the same when spoken in Chinese. I guess this would be similar to Latin developing into French, Spanish, Italian etc.