Other than Israel, which was created artificially to an extant.

Two questions about Japanese atrocities in World War II:

1. What motivated Japanese troops to mistreat captured allied soldiers? Reading about it, it seems to come out of nowhere. They didn't mistreat POWs during the Russo-Japanese War or World War I. Why did they start doing so during World War II.

2. How much did Japanese politicians and the emperor know about what Japanese troops were doing to Chinese and Southeast Asian civilians and to captured western POWs? Were war crimes official policy, or were they a grass roots thing?

Let's say you're a 20 year old Spartan citizen and you're sick of it and its culture. Maybe you've been disgraced in front of some people, or you want to try being a merchant in Thrace or a wandering philosopher, or you're just plain sick of Sparta and its culture. You don't like life in the barracks and you want more freedom in life.

Could you get up and leave? Would your wife and children (I know most Spartan men didn't marry until later and might not have any legitimate kids, but let's say he might) have to leave with you?

It seems like Sparta is like a police state. Could you get out of Sparta and move somewhere else?

I understand that the idea of a 7 day week is deeply rooted in the Abrahamic religions, however where are its origins?

I know they did a lot of bad things in India, Africa etc. but in those countries it was the native population in those countries but in the USA and Canada it was mainly Europeans.

So what was so bad about life under british rule in America compared to England that they revolted?

Months ago, I saw a thread or a link or something around here that listed interesting things in history that happened at the same time. Like, "A the same time when X was happening, Y was happening." It was really cool because it helped put history into perspective... but I can't seem to find it anymore.

Is there a special name for this type of relationship or anything that might help me find a cool list of interesting comparisons?

Also, did people care as much about history back then as they do in this era?

I have read that at one point 15 to 20% of the kingdom consisted of migratory Christians. Any good sources on it?

I recently have read Henry II by W.L. Warren and I plan on writing my semester paper on the changes to the English legal system Henry II made during his reign, I'm dedicating a large portion of the paper to the historiography behind the evolution of "common law" in England. However I would like to know if anyone has any suggestions for contending sources that look at the issue differently than Warren, as well as sources were I can make comparisons to his analysis. I haven't had much luck with modern sources but any including different theoretical angles would be most helpful.

And by this I mean long-distance communication, e.g. between Palestine and Rome.

Was cost the only reason? Does anyone have any sources for why they made the design decisions that they did?

While tie length, collar type, coat length (to some degree), and a few other details (commonality of hats and gloves), have changed, men's suits, it seems, have consisted of basically the same garments, in the same configuration, since at least my great-grandfather's time. You could wear a formal suit from a wedding today to a wedding in 1930 and not look too completely out of place (the style would be strange, but everyone would recognize it was a suit -- it wouldn't be like wearing a tailcoat and breeches).

It seems women's formal clothes have changed much more radically during this period (certainly they have gotten a lot racier, if nothing else), and men's formal clothes were much different, in say, the 18th or early-mid 19th century. Further, men's formal clothes changed much more frequently, it seems in the centuries before. Clothes were very different for say, Henry VIII than they were for Charles I. Or Am I imagining that?

Why has the standard three- (or two-) piece suit remained so resilient?

Also related, what was life like in a city such as Charleston during that time period?

I've been trying to understand what the title was for the head of state in Soviet Russia. It seems that there was only one President of the Soviet Union and that was Mikhail Gorbachev. And then there seems to have been different names to it. For a layman it is quite confusing to get to grips with how their system of head of state worked. What titles were there and who was actually the head of state during it's existence?

How far back have people entertained the notion of traveling to bodies seen in the sky?

What did very early proposals of spacecraft look like, and what principles did they operate on?

In the history books, there's a lot of ink dedicated to Manhattan in this era, but what was Queens like? I know most of it was farmland until that time, but l.i.c., Sunnyside/woodside and Astoria have dozens of factories and buildings with great architecture from that era.