With Catholic mass being held in Latin, would churchgoers ever think "Wow, this is a really outdated way of talking"? Or similarly, would the priests and monks that actually knew Latin lament the divergence of local language? Was there ever any pushback to re-standardize the language?

Would people living in warm parts of the world thousands of years ago have experience or knowledge of ice or snow? Would ice be something completely indescribable to Jesus?

As I understand it, the Kingdom of Bohemia and Slovakia under the Kingdom of Hungary would have been administered separately, not to mention that until the 16th century Hungary itself was independent. Was there any sort of "national consciousness" transcending these boundaries? How did the two ethnic groups see themselves in comparison to each other and the outside world?

The computer game Europa Universalis made me realize that many of the great trade cities of the world are located at the mouths/estuaries/deltas of major rivers, and nearly every major river has an entrepot at or near the mouth, from New Orleans on the Mississipi to Lisbon on the Tajus to Hamburg on the Rhine, Alexandria on the Nile, Calcutta on the Ganges and Hong Kong on the Pearl. I gather this is because they can serve as a port for goods to change from riverboat to ocean ships, as well as fortifications to defend the river and outposts for levying taxes. The Danube is one of the most important rivers in Europe, passing through productive lands, and draining a large floodplain. Why did no major city form at the mouth? Is the terrain too marshy? The harbour poorly protected? Was it vulnerable to raids from seafarers? Was the river too long for viable trade, and the Black Sea too distant and closed off to bother shipping into? Am I being too geographically determinist about a fundamentally organic and stochastic process, seeking a just-so explanation about complex, contingent historical forces that can't be explained in a falsifiable, scientific way?

Do any of these factors apply to the mouth of the Amazon or the Yellow rivers to explain more broadly where trade cities arise or don't?

I just need some recommendations on some books on ancient Egypt

This could just be an assumption that there was a lot of guesswork involved in Western medicine up until a certain time period.

I recently had an argument with a friend of mine on whether or not History is a science, their argument for it is that they think that History is just made up of opinions, and they also think that History does not use mathematics like other sciences do.

If the use of such greases was indeed not actual fact, how did the story about the grease ingrain itself so effectively in narratives of the period? Did British writers use it as a convenient means to dismiss deeper structural causes?

I can't find anything on this.

Back when there was beheading of guillotine, an executioner would perform the execution.

When a firing squad was introduced, there is now multiple executioners.

Why is this? The only rational explanation I can think of is that it was so those people doing the execution would be unable to confirm who did the killing blow, thus they would have an easier conscience.

Thanks.

I've seen this claimed by multiple historians, but never really explained why. It's particularly confusing to me since it was Japan that attacked the U.S., not Germany.

Just 55 Days at Peking and the rebels in the film are depicted as using swords, spears and clubs as weapons. Considering the fact Chinese people invented gunpowder and used gunpowder cannons, bombs, mechanical landmines and arquebus since the Ming Dynasty, the movie appeared inaccurate for me. But I could not find any source too.

What weapons Boxers used in the Boxer rebellion? Thank you.

I've seen theories that they may have been more closely related to either the Minoans or the Indo-European peoples who inhabited Anatolia at the time; hence their collapse was due to invasion by Greek-speaking peoples.

Wikipedia states that by the eleventh century clocks were regularly encountered in towns. But watches were developed much later.

How did they make sure the time displayed or sounded by the clocks were correct and synchronized?

Did they have tables to set them by the sun, or were they only set twice a year at equinox?

Or maybe someone from a major city would travel with a set of hourglasses?

Or would they just go buy gut, as it wasn't really necessary to know the precise time?

Thanks for any answer in advance.

Time period is the 17th-18th century.

When talking about trade ships, the image one gets is a cargo hold stuffed full of barrels. Were barrels really the dominant form of storage, regardless of the goods being transported? Were they standardized in terms of shape and size like modern-day shipping containers for ease of handling and storage? Or were there different containers for different uses?

There are a lot of stubborn people in the world, so were there significant numbers of people that said ‘I’ve always voted this way so I’m going to keep doing it’ despite parties not being representative of them any more?

I know that there was a historical Jesus, but did one person say and do everything that was attributed to him in the Bible, or could the Biblical Jesus be an amalgamation of different men? I saw someone speculate on that recently and it intrigued me.