I've just finished a marathon of submarine films, and a very common scene is where the submarine gets absolutely smashed by depth charges while just sitting there unable to do anything. (No idea how realistic this is by the way)

Which got me thinking, why weren't there any torpedo bays that could shoot upwards? Or floating bombs that went straight up? Like a reverse depth charges that exploded as they got within a few feet of the surface.

They could have released a volley of them and blown the destroyers out of the water, with a bit of luck.

Any reason this type of attack wasn't invented or wasn't possible?

The American Civil War went on for four long years, took an immense toll on local populations, and ended in the deaths of more Americans than every other U.S. war combined. But if you look at the European wars of the mid/late-19th century — the Italian Wars of Independence (the first lasted one year, the others a matter of weeks), Schleswig War (less than a year), Austro-Prussian War (a few months), Franco-Prussian War (less than a year) — they were far briefer conflicts, whose result hinged on fewer battles. The Crimean War is an exception to this, and may be worth addressing in an answer. However, my question is this: Why did the American Civil War last so much longer than other conflicts of this period? My intuition tells me that it has something to do with the sheer size of the American South, and the choice of the Confederacy to simply avoid direct conflict with a superior foe, and prolong the conflict until the Union lost interest. But that isn't entirely true, as the Civil War had many large-scale battles, plenty of which were actually won by the Confederacy early on. Does it have something to do with a difference in technology, strategy or geography?

So Ancient Greece had a famous system of philosophy based on reason. During the time of the Roman Empire, Greek was the language of the educated elite. However, today, Greek Orthodoxy (which is practiced today) has a focus on the mystical over the rational, in contrast to Catholicism in the West. When and why did this shift occur?

I've read quite a few medieval recipes from Britain, and spices seem very prevalent. I understand that in general only rich people could afford them, but they certainly seemed part of the culture and very desirable if not always attainable.

I have variously read that once spices became cheap they were no longer so desirable, that the rise of puritanism bought an end to what was seen as extravagance in using expensive spices, and that the end of cooking over fires brought an end to many British food traditions.

None of these really seems to explain why, apart from some puddings, most surviving traditional foods are very light on the spices indeed, in general only using pepper if that. Is there a further explanation that I'm missing?

Thanks.

Hundreds and thousands of Irish deaths are blamed on 17th century Cromwellian conquest, but historians often level only a few thousand directly on the man himself, who left early after a short initial campaign with a series of famous violent sieges, and left generals in charge in the actions that seem to have caused the greater number of death. How much of that indirect death can be blamed on Cromwell himself, through direction, complicity or inaction? Were there any particular individuals in his commanding officers who went beyond the norms of warfare in this period to cause to cause uncalled for suffering?

I have seen quite a number of times the date of 1096 floating around, but as far as I know that is the earliest recorded date of soneone teaching in the city of Oxford.

If that standard is used for Valladolid, then the founding date could be stated as 1085, but nobody would consider that. The generally agreed upon date is 1243, when "major schools" were already organised there. If one wants to be purist, the date to be considered should be 1346, when the pope granted the title of "studium generale" to the "major schools" that were sponsored by the Crown and the municipality.

Considering this, what about Oxford?

My knowledge on this is pretty limited, but I know the American influence on Turkey grew especially after this issue, leading to many leftist movements in the 60's to be increasingly anti-American and criticize the government for submitting to imperialistic powers.

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What I'm wondering is, did Turkey have any alternative after the Straits crisis? Would they have been invaded by the USSR had it not been for their NATO membership and US support?

As an avid summer go’er to cape cod, i’ve heard of stations meant for detecting German submarines during the war. Curious if there were any notable close calls.

I just finished watching Tora Tora Tora with my family, and one of my family members has been under the impression that the Japanese bought post cards showing off the harbor to use in mock bombing runs. When I looked this up, however, I couldn’t really find anything on it. Is this true or was it misinformation told to us?

I’m looking for an explanation on whether or not unrestricted sub warfare helped the Germans in WW1 to such a capacity that it merited allowing the US a reason to enter the war. Did it hurt allied morale or supplies enough to potentially cause an end to the war(w/o US ofc)?

Did they ever get into wars with each other? Were people allowed to travel freely between them? What currency did they use? Im so confused and i cant find this information anywhere

I'm quite interested in the way that larger parts of medieval European social and cultural factors led to the Crusades, things like notions of sin and their views on Muslims. Are there any books that deal with these topics or feature them heavily, I'm trying to look but am struggling.

17 Late Medieval 51 Mexico 6 Beauty

I had known about the Khazars converting to Judaism from games and such for sometime, but recently learned about the Himyars in Yemen converting and the dynamics it added to their relation with Christian Ethiopia.

How/why did nations relatively distant from the Levant adopt Judaism as a religion?

Were the Jews always ambivalent/opposed to conversion or was this an explicit conversion campaign?