Every time I read about the Transcontinental Railroad and the driving of the golden stake, it seems like there is only one track of rail. However, this seems inconvenient (and dangerous) to traffic that is traveling both East and West.

And, if there was only one track, how were collisions controlled without major delays on stops along the way? Would the railroad owners be able to select which traffic got through faster?

Thank you in advance!

in war, or by blocking trade, blackmail, threats, financial sabotage etc.

Med. and Western Europe to be precise, drilling down further to Roman North Africa or Rome itself, Roman Empire if not.

I can imagine there being a harp at least...

Someone told me once that Marx was largely unread until long after his death. Is that true?

Assumedly there were lots of other leftists in the late 19th century, lots of other people talking about radical equality and criticizing the economic system. At what point did Marx's writings become the dominant leftist ideology? What was Marx's appeal to 19th century readers? What was so awesome about his writings that no one else was talking about at the time?

Title has the question. I have heard that late 19th century and early 20th century graft, in many local and state governments was widespread and have found many works on metropolitan administrations, such as Tammany Hall and Chicago Mayor Daley, Sr., but what about our Chief Executive office?

I don't think I can really explain the question much further.

I'm curious about the first homes that were actually purpose built, you know...not just finding a cave and taking up space there :D

Likewise, is there proof that the CIA's figures on Soviet production and the well being of it's citizens were inflated (for various reasons, including fear mongering, misdirection from the Soviets, etc)?

I don't know if it makes a difference but I am thinking pre-stuart times, where witchcraft was still "known" to be a cause of problems. Did your average layman actually believe that demons and witches were the heart of various problem, or was this a social construct to act as a scapegoat for the lack of knowledge as to why crops failed, people got sick etc. Additionally, (and hopefully not irreverantly!) how devout was the average layman. Obviously religeon played an important part in the governing of various serfdoms that made up Britain, and so were inextricably linked to peasent life, but how faithfully did people follow strict religeous tenants? Was there a genuine fear of hell?

Please forgive any innacuracies in the question, I am sure there might be a few assumptions I made that are actually incorrect, and I would love to hear what they are.

In my History class, we recently learned about a Triangular trade system. One part of the system included Europeans purchasing slaves in Africa. The people from Africa who became slaves were weaker tribes in Africa that were taken over by stronger tribes right? The stronger tribes then became middlemen by then selling the people of weaker tribes to Europeans for resources.

My question is: During this time period, why didn't Europe cut out the middlemen in this trade system? They had firearms at the time and could've created some sort of colony on on of the piers of Africa right?

Seems to be cheaper than iron. Less complicated than boiled leather. And certainly hard enough to dull a blade.

Yet I almost never hear of any civilization using it?

was the role of women in ancient history so low or was it ever equal?

How did Roman's use numbers in their everyday speech? We know that 5 is "Five", and 25 is "Twenty-Five" because of our numbering system, but with IX being "nine" and IXX being "nineteen" and IXM being "nine hundred eighty-nine", how did they actually speak the numbers they wanted to?