How does my town radically shift to being Turkish-Islamic in character? Do I witness this cultural phenomenon during my lifetime?

Though it’s the unit upon which most all other units of time are based (esp. our dense and complicated years of history), it still seems an arbitrary length of... time. As something seemingly so conceptual and relative as time, how was a second determined to be what it was?

When comparing Western and Chinese history, historians usually talk about a 'Western imperialism' of the 19th century but in regards to China it's 'Qing expansion' westwards (conquering places like Tibet, Taiwan, Mongolia and modern-day Xinjiang). I was just wondering, what's the criteria to differentiate between what historians call imperialism and simple expansion?

I know they had lots of rules for composers and performers of classical music, but what about outside the opera houses, what music did the common, working class soviet person consume and create (let's say, 50's until 70's) and how was that distributed?

I hope my question isn't confusing.

I've been reading contemporary opinions of Communism and the soviet period of people from various former soviet countries. I just saw a poll that said most Russians are nostalgic about the USSR. In other countries, opinions vary. According to other polls, most East Germans are as satisfied with their situation as West Germans, Romanians are more divided on their views of the soviet period and most people in Albania seem to have a very negative opinion of Hoxha's government. Czechs seem to have a similarly negative opinion of the USSR.

I also read that Russians weren't actually living under Communism at all. The means of production wasn't owned by the workers, there was wage labor, etc. They just lived under a welfare state. Was this different in the other countries of the union?

Most other nations have dense settlements along bodies of water. Egypt, paris etc. This trend even rares its head in West Africa as lagos sits on a delta and Timbaktu runs though the Niger river. However, the modern country of Ghana has a huge lake running though the country with no dense settlement around it. The Ashanti kindgom is to the left of it and barely touches it with its capital a way away. Does anyone have a historical reason as to why that is? Due to lack of research into Africa its hard to find a reason. i was hoping maybe a histrian from Africa could answer or really anyone with knowledge of this phenomena.

I’ve recently seen maps of the world from different time periods and there were quite accurate. It got me wonder as to how they were made, did people literally sail around countries and draw how they saw the coast line? Or was much more complex than that? Thanks!

The Germans built some aircraft types in WW2 based on the operational requirement "must not use an engine in demand for other types". Two examples come to mind, the bf-110 and the Hs 129, there may be others. Interestingly, the two examples I mention are both two engine tactical aircraft, designed for roles often filled by single engine aircraft, as though the Germans knew the second rate engines they were going to have to use to fill the requirement were going to be underpowered.

This requirement resulted in some lackluster aircraft. My basic question is why did the Germans not simply ramp up production of the more valuable engines? These requirements seem to have been laid down well before allied strategic bombing was a factor.

It seems to always be a struggle to give anyone credit in WW2 who isn't an America, but at least I know that Britian and Russia were actively fighting in the final weeks of the war in Europe; was France involved or were they just keeping their forces home to rebuild and maintain order? I actually don't really know much about France's involvement in the war after liberation except vaguely about colonial forces in Africa who were fighting the Germans.

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Where does "booi aha" fall in the spectrum of forced labor/slavery? I don't understand. Let me know if this needs to be more than one thread. If you have suggestions for books about Chinese slavery, that would be good. I read about booi aha in a book that compared them to European serfs but the authors don't read Chinese.

I’m looking for book recommendations about the Spanish Civil War. It’s so overshadowed by WWII and I think in today’s climate it pays to look at how a “modern civilized” country can descend into madness.

Why did women cover their eyes/face with net veils?

I heard that in about the time of the Crusades, the Catholic monasteries would sell plenary indulgences through prayer. Kind of like saying a particular sin would take x amount of prayer, but if you hired enough monks, the sin would be prayed away in a week and the noble/knight/king can then go to Heaven. I half remember a BBC documentary talking about this, but I can't find it. Does this sound accurate?