Since when did Christians start believing in an apocalypse involving the return of Jesus and the construction of Solomon's church in Israel?

This belief is in stark contrast with Jesus' own teachings of love, humility, sharing, and fellowship.

From where and when did these nihilistic views of the end of the world start developing?

I am looking for resources to study and learn about slavery events in Africa. Why and how certain people became slaves. Would prefer to cover the topic of Chattel slavery i.e. the American slave trade or if there are any examples happening on the continent present day. However any information (books, journals, etc.) that covers slavery in general would be appreciated as well. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Surely it wasn't made to be the just entertainment capital it is now? Why would anyone build a city right in the desert like that?

I’m currently touring the Palace of Versailles in France and all this talk about Marie Antoinette’s fancy parties got me thinking … I know that people typically used chamber pots in their own homes, and peasants may have just defecated in the street, but when at a fancy party of 200+ dignitaries and royals from all over the world, what did people do when they needed to poo? Especially the ladies in those poofy dresses, how did they manage that?

I feel like today many atheist’s reasonings for their beliefs are based in science and scientific discoveries of the past couple centuries. People living in Ancient Rome had no knowledge of evolution, human anatomy (at least to our extent), the earth’s history, space, etc. What other reason than, “sounds like BS” would give a Roman citizen to think otherwise about the Gods?

In Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land (not really a major spoiler but it comes right at the end of the book), >!Omeir, a 66-year-old Ottoman who lives by himself nine miles from the nearest village in what is now Bulgaria, seems in 1505 dimly aware of the colonization of America: "He has heard [...] that the Christians have sailed ships to new lands at the farthest edge of the ocean where there are entire cities made of gold, but he has little use for such stories anymore."!< Is this realistic?

Basically I am wondering if ninjas in real life back then were similar to how they are perceived in movies, shows, books, comics, etc. How similar/different are they? Are there still ninjas today? Where they expert weapon users and martial artist? How similar to the media were their real weapons?

Did the age of gunpowder completely destroy them all, lack of need for them make them redundant, or lack of maintenance reduce them into nothing? Did they slowly get destroyed to use as building material? Or do some still stand just not as high with the development of cities?

William Shirer is an American journalist who wrote a highly extensive book chronicling the coming and going of Nazism, called The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and while his work is generally well received outside of Germany, I’ve come to learn that most historians within Germany disapprove of it. Apparently one of the major disapprovals was Shirer’s “Sonderweg” perspective of German history, as well as having anti-German sentiments and omitting important information that contributes to German history. Overall, it sounds to me like Shirer just had a rather American perspective on how things occurred, which is understandable given that he is American.

However, I’m interested in reading about the rise and fall of Nazism from a domestic perspective, the German perspective. So the question is, what equally in-depth (and single volume) work thoroughly covers roughly the same material, from a German historian(s)?

During WW2, Germany prominently made use of a variety of captured equipment, such as the 35(t) and 38(t), repurposed French Lorraine 37L and H35 and even Char B1s. They also appropriated, to my understanding, especially the Czech industry to continue the production of domestic military hardware for the German forces.

For some reason, very few such accounts exist about the Allied militaries. There are some isolated incidents of individual vehicles or aircraft captured and fielded or flown under the flag of the Americans, British or Soviets, but no large-scale appropriation of hardware or industry.

Perhaps the question is less relevant to the Western Allies, because the Americans and British just have to fight their way through France for the most part, before reaching Germany, and local industry here is rightfully that of another, if formal, Allied country, that of France, so in that sense, the Allies are appropriating French industry by giving it back to its rightful owner, France, and the French presumably use it for some minor military engagements. But in the East, the question becomes interesting.

When the Red Army enters Eastern Europe with its native military industry, there is no appropriation of factories for military purposes, there is no equivalent to the Czech or French tanks anywhere in the Soviet military registers.

Is my impression correct that this difference exists? If so, why was the approach so different? Were the Allies simply not in need of additional production capacity as badly as the Germans were? Would the local produce simply not been up to making any meaningful battlefield contribution so late in the war? Or was the progress of closing in on Germany simply too fast for any of these adaptions to be made in time? The Soviets certainly did not object to looting infrastructure in principle, as they did so across eastern Europe after the war, and also carried home large quantities of weaponry and vehicles from Germany as well, which then resurfaced in the Middle East and possibly North Korea. But during the war, it seems to have been immensely uncommon.

Circa 200BC for context. Do the Equites Extraordinarii just fight on one of the cavalry wings with the other cavalry? Are they mentioned as actually being better troops in battle? Do the Pedites Extraordinarii join the line with the rest of their alae, and if so would they be on the outer flank or inner next to the roman legions? I've read suggestions that the Extraordinarii are used to protect the camp/baggage train during a battle, but would it make sense to have your best allied troops (including cavalry?) Not be fighting the battle?

I've reading quite a lot about painters, authors and other artists who were active in Paris and London during this period and one thing I've noticed is how so many of them either frequented brothels or regularly visited sex workers. It seems like something that was almost complete normal? Is this a fair impression? Perhaps it only seems this way because artists in Paris and London lived rather bohemian lives but the frequency I come across this seems very alien compared to our current society.

So, to my understanding, a given group's actions are based on their philosophy as well as on the material conditions under which they exist, with the two often informing one another and the degree to which either had a predominant influence over the other varying from case to case. Sometimes, in pop history, we attribute one more to a group than the other; the Golden Age of Piracy is generally attributed to social concerns (e.g., the lack of upward mobility for poor sailors in Europe and its colonies) and economic ones (e.g., the end of the War of the Spanish Succession's impact on privateers' livelihoods), for instance, whereas the Reign of Terror is often attributed more to the radical republicanism and virtue-minded civic philosophy of the Mountain than on the myriad economic crises plaguing France at the time (even though a majority of provincial executions were predicated on things like price gouging and food hoarding).

With Thanksgiving on the horizon in the States, I'm feeling specifically curious about 17th century New England. The Puritans are (again, in pop history) presented as having their beliefs be the primary driving force in the development of their social norms and how they wrote their laws, set up their governmental institutions, and interacted with indigenous peoples. My question is: to what extent did the material experience of building a colonial society in New England compete with and/or contribute to their devout religiosity in relation to the aforementioned societal elements or any others which you think are significant? Did, for example, religious beliefs impact the way they approached agriculture or commerce, or did local economic life shape the evolution of their brand of Protestantism more than the other way around? Or how did the colonial impetus toward expansion interact with their desire to spread the Gospel to the indigenous groups around them?

I'm sorry if this is overly broad or anything!

I have been wondering this for so long. I love historical fiction and we obviously see so many intense battles between tens of thousands of men, just running in, slashing each other, and trying to survive.

In the heat of battle, with weapons flying from all sides, how could they tell they were swinging towards and enemy or an ally? Not only is there so much chaos and adrenaline, but wouldn't the armies have a lot common folk that wouldn't have any special armor, helmets, or markings?

Every single time I watch or read a battle scene, this is what I think about and I feel like there would just be so much "friendly fire" unless I am missing something here.

Thank you!

I am doing a personal project and find the internet's recounting of Greece from 149BCE-89BCE to be very lacking. I know a few things, like the fact that Greek culture itself was spread by the Romans after being assimilated, but how did the Romans change Athens?

Stuff like how the seats or positions of government in Athens changed hands, did roman soldiers patrol Athens, did the currency change, did the rights of being an Athenian citizen change entirely to the rights of being a Roman citizen?

Thanks for any answers you may have. Mostly, if you have any good and reliable sources or documentaries on the subject it would be a great help.

What I'm asking is essentially when scientific-naming went off the rails, from being descriptive to today were we have species named for celebrities like Johnny Cash and Beyoncé, in the latter's case a fly with a very prominently enlarged lower-body, refrencing that celebrity's own rather large buttocks.... Did Linnæus or his "apostles" name any species like that? Is it a recent phenomenon?