It just seems like something that would go naturally with the picture: a character to go with that picture.

Did the Spanish-America War lead to USA becoming a world power? I believe the war gave the USA many territories and thus showing the immense power of the USA thus it help USA emerge as a world power. I also think that USA became a "world power" due to the industrial age. So how exactly did the Spanish-American war help the USA emerge as a world power? Thanks

Obviously spirits, tobacco. Coffee was available, but very expensive, no?

Opium obviously, the opium wars and so on.

Did they have equivalents to amphetamines and cocaine? What uppers, what downers, what hallucinogens? Which ones were cheaper, which ones were rare?

Thank you.

The castle has curtain style walls that are thirty feet high, and of a relative thickness that supports them solidly. They are on the flatlands of France, and the Castle is occupied by roughly two hundred soldiers. What kind of siege weapons do I bring, how many men do I bring, and how do I go about successfully conquering the castle? Success can be defined as cessation of armed resistance inside the walls.

Just watched The pacific miniseries by HBO and just wondering how accurate this tactic was.

Cheyenne Mountain/NORAD surviving a nuclear war is always a common trope of post-apocalyptic fiction, and I remember reading that the facility is designed specifically to withstand "some" nuclear attacks. Like maybe a 1-2 megaton warhead that strikes nearby but not directly on the mountain itself because it's made out of granite, one of the hardest rocks in the world.

I also have a vague memory of reading that despite Cheyenne Mountain's supposed survivability, the Russians likely targeted it with several hundred missiles, to ensure overkill. This also being because I remember reading that Soviet missiles were more inaccurate than American ones, and thus they compensated accuracy with megatonnage.

So with that understanding, during the Cold War and given the state of Soviet technology, how many nuclear strikes could Cheyenne Mountain (NORAD) sustain and continue to function in some capacity?

Some of the wording here is obviously vague, but I figure that would allow space for broader discussion. Whether "some capacity" means fully functional with everyone in it surviving, partially functional with some survivors, or scavengable/repairable with a few or no survivors.

That way, I can paint a proper mental picture of my post-apocalyptic fictional world and the struggles of the survivors to rebuild civilization from out of the ashes of Cheyenne Mountain.

or is my understanding incorrect?

Now, i know that war is just never as easy or predictable as it should be. The little i've read on the civil war shows that as the north's production ramped up and the south's dried out, that's when the war started to swing the other way.

Were there a significant portion of more experienced generals living in the south? Experienced from what? Veteran soldiers (and veterans of what?)

Did the rhetoric of southern soldiers believing in their cause ACTUALLY result in battlefield gains?

Or was it simply that as far as military minds, fighting men and technology the two forces were more or less equal and the battles just happened to play out that way?

I'm trying to fight the image of the confederate army just being a bunch of yokels shooting guns off in the air and crying the rebel yell, with the north being a refined yankee military. Because that stereotype suggests a good old fashioned steam-rolling, which was not the case.

This came up in another thread, but I've intentionally left the country out. While "whiteness" in the US is interesting, I'm really more interested in Australia.

Did migrants to the two countries have similar experiences of the changing definition of "white"? How was white defined culturally and legally, and how has it changed over time?

What technologies or inventions made jazz more accessible to the masses or other such things.

In doing research I've found that Alexander the Great made a ton of cities named after himself, but I'm wondering if these are the first cities to ever go by the name Alexandria or if there were any predating him.

Many people have heard the stories of middle class rural folk being confronted by inner-city deprivation and poverty, poor city kids who'd never seen a live cow before and lived in slums being fostered with wealthier people in the country etc.

I always kind of assumed that this must have led to some calls for societal change, i.e via a welfare state

Are there proven political effects from the evacuations?

Why did it take in the north of Europe, and not the south? Was it proximity to Rome, and the fact that Luther was German, Calvin was French, etc? Perhaps because Gutenburg and his tech was German?

The Great Schism seems to make more sense since it was a jurisdiction disagreement between a city in the west, and a city in the east.

EDIT: Calvin being French is a terrible example, considering France's Catholicism - forgive me. I've left it in though, for talking's sake.

If so many of them want independence, what has kept them from balkanising?

I have been searching for a decent source of information for pre-Columbian history and especially the plains tribes. Every search I have tried triggers an avalanche of 19th century stuff and not a whole lot. Its for personal knowledge only so if its a little anecdotal or has some citation issues that's no big deal. Thanks in advance.

Specifically on the political, social and economic effects.