I apologize if this question is too naive as I do not have a strong grasp on the history of the Caucasus region, but I wanted to inquire as to how despite Seljuk and later Ottoman rule, Armenia has continued to maintain a majority Christian population. How is it that despite being surrounded by majority Muslim nations such as Turkey and Azerbaijan, and also having been ruled by Muslim empires, Armenia has maintained its Christian numbers? I assume it's due to a multitude of factors, but shedding some light on this questions would be greatly appreciated.

So I'm learning about Pan-Asianism in my East Asian History course rn and in writing, it doesn't seem like it was a bad idea. I understand that the Japanese used it as a driving force to back up their attempts at imperializing Asia but are there any other reasons it failed?

The Japanese government transmitted the ultimatum in 14 parts to the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C. where they would decode and transcript it to be delivered 30 minutes before the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. But a delay in the decoding meant the ambassador had to deliver it after the attack. The movie explained that they wanted to avoid violating the Geneva Conventions, was this really a significant reason?

But why the hell didnt Hitler get his troops bullets and winter clothes in Russia? (note, i am not stating the world would be better off if he did it because he probably would have won)

I'm doing research for a book, and if there's a search term that would get me an answer to this question I can't find it.

Basically, I'm trying to determine if areas of knowledge like physics, chemistry, geography, anatomy/medicine, forging/metalwork, or even history itself was subject to any edicts regarding information sharing during the colonial era and, if so, how that was enforced. Obviously there would be the initial barrier of "the colonized people don't speak French," but eventually some would learn. At that point, you could lose the technological advantage which allows you to maintain control of the colony. This is basically what happened in Haiti, and colonialism persisted for over 150 years after that rebellion. It seems to me that the first thing you'd do is re-evaluate what information is allowed to reach the colonies, but I can find no evidence of this practice.

Were some books prohibited from being taken to the colonies? Were letters between scientists opened and checked for prohibited information before they left the nation? How did colonists with children cope with any such restrictions, if they existed, given their children still needed lessons from tutors?

Are there any incidences where knowledge spread to a population centre that had to be isolated or culled in order to maintain control over the larger body of people?

It makes me wonder if they buried human sacrifices there in the knowledge that the bodies will be preserved, or if it was just one of the many places they buried their human sacrifices.

Christian Monks had to wake up at 2am for a service but how would they make sure they woke up at 2am

So like when Japan and the west first met, how did they communicate not knowing anything about each other’s language? With no basis to go on it seems near impossible to communicate and learn.

A little while ago I read Annika Mombauer's book Moltke and the Origins of the First World War, and came across something which didn't make much sense to me.

On page 102, she says,

"In April 1913, it was decided to discontinue the annual updating of the Eastern Deployment Plan. At the end of the July Crisis [she's referring to August 1st here] such a plan might have provided Germany with a feasible alternative when, for a short while, it looked as if French neutrality, contrary to all expectations, was a possibility. In the event, this turned out to be merely wishful thinking, but the fact remains that no alternative plan existed: if France had decided to remain neutral, Germany would still have had to attack her... No matter what the political situation, military planning dictated the events."

But later on, she recounts a confrontation between Moltke and the Kaiser on August 1st, 1914, when it seemed like the British were offering to guarantee French neutrality. The Kaiser wanted to turn the troops around and only attack Russia, while Moltke famously refused and insisted that the deployment plan couldn't be changed without causing chaos. Mombauer writes at page 222,

"Eventually, Moltke was able to achieve a compromise: deployment was allowed to continue as planned, but had to stop just before the border. Depending on French assurances, an orderly move to the East could then be undertaken, rather than halting the deployment immediately and causing chaos."

I cannot reconcile these two excerpts. Clearly, if Moltke (begrudgingly) conceded that the troops could be turned around at the border after mobilization was completed, how can Mombauer state that Germany would be 'forced' to attack France in the case of French neutrality because of the Schlieffen Plan?

I don’t remember where but I heard someone explain that Columbus did not miscalculate the size of the earth(which was well known since ancient times) or it’s shape. Columbus actually believed that Asia was much larger than it really is. Is there any merit to this analysis?

"Everyone knows" that Japanese soldiers never surrendered during WW2. How truthful is this?

Specifically, someone on YouTube was talking about how near the end of the war there are accounts of the allies having some success when they altered their approach from "Hey jackasses, we have you surrounded and will light this whole place up if you don't come out, unarmed and with hands up, in the next 10 minutes" to "This is Lieutenant Smith Speaking. The United States is now the lawful government in this area and I have been ordered to request your surrender. You have 10-minutes to comply with this lawful order or I am required by my superior to bring in the flamethrowers." Basically, switching the message from threats to legal orders.

Is there any evidence of The Allies evolving their attempts to convince Japanese soldiers to surrender, and if so what changes were made and how effective were they?

I'm not really religious anymore, but I still have an interest in Ancient Near Eastern religion, specifically that of the Hebrew/Jews, and how it influenced the emergence of Christianity in the first century.

In as much as I can tell, the tribes that would later makeup the nation-state of Israel (and later Israel and Judah) practiced polygamy, much like their Ancient Near Eastern / Mesopotamian neighbors. Robert Alter suggests this was partially because of the belief in semen as a limited commodity and the proliferation and preservation of a given family line (in other words, a patriarch having as many kids as possible, but making sure they are his kids). I'd welcome thoughts on this.

However, it seems that after a rapid succession of occupiers (Assyria/Babylon/Persia) and the diaspora, Judaism became mostly monogamous. What changed that made monogamy more pragmatic? When did this occur? What were the cultural incentives?

Please keep answers objective. I am not looking for a spiritual explanation or support for anti-Semitism.

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I figure some answers may not be safe for work (such as the above explanation regarding semen), so marking this NSFW to be safe.

I hope i worded this question correctly but anyway... The popular manga (japanese comic) started in 1985 presents a young aspiring martial artist called Goku. Early on we're presented with the concept of ki (somewhat-but-not-quite borrowed from the Chinese concept of Chi) which with character are allowed to use impossible attacks like shooting beams of energy from their hands.

The most well known of these energy attacks is the Kame Hame Ha, a generally blue beam of energy released from the hands after a certain set of movements is done while chanting the name of the attack.

Recently while doing some research on the history of the song Aloha'Oe i came across the name of the very first king of Hawaii, that being King Kamehameha The First.

My question would be if anyone who knows about him more than I do knows if the browed name has some meaning behind it, or if the author merely grabbed the name because it had "kame" in it (kame means turtle in japanese, and the creator of the technique in-universe is known as the Kame Senin, or Turtle Hermit/Sage)

Recently I rewatched a wonderful PBS documentary called "Horatio's Drive" about the first two people to drive across the United States from San Francisco to New York in 1903.

It was a helluva adventure; with constant breakdowns necessitating repairs as well as replacement parts shipped in via railroad when they reached towns that had a railroad depot. Basically they followed wagon trails and other ruddy, broken paths.

But what struck me was that gasoline was clearly NOT a worry (for the most part) of the two men. In their travels through northern California, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming... they went from tiny, remote town to tiny remote town. None had ever seen an automobile; but invariably they had some form of gasoline available (though occasionally at greatly inflated prices). Apparently the entire trip took 800 gallons of gasoline.

My question is: why was gasoline so readily available? Most general resources I read seem to indicate that gasoline was mostly treated as a by-product of oil refining, that was of little use until the automobile industry took off (and often simply burned off). But there were essentially no automobiles at all in the various towns visited by Horatio on his drive. So why was gasoline so ubiquitous? What were the other uses of it at the time that ensured it would be so readily available in so many tiny, remote towns, to the point that Horatio could assume it we be available on the entire trip?

(and in the documentary at least, there's no real indication that the towns had other machinery that might need gasoline).

I only find walls of texts about this topic, but no general things as how people would dress every day.
I remember vaguely that women are to wear skirts or dresses, gloves, and to cover their head.

I understand it might differ a lot depending on social class and work. But are there any pointers such as "men wore X type of shirt and hats were common"?

In his sleep or in a battle?

who is right here Herodotus or Xenophon?

If I was going to arrive in a foreign country, I’d try to gather as much information as I could, especially if I anticipated I’d be visiting a royal court as an ambassador. Was there any valuable information about Japan and China at this time that they could have brought along?