Now I know that the official line roughly stated that it was a response to the assassination of Sergei Kirov and other 'Trotskyist' plots. Was that what's happened, or was it just a simple case of a dictator's baseless paranoia?

Are there any accessible indigenous accounts of European colonizers that shed light on or center indigenous observations and interpretations of Europeans and their cultures/habits/beliefs etc.?

Did this feel like a score settled against Hapsburg Austria or had the national identity and modern concerns shifted far enough from Napoleonic politics?

The foundations are made from stone, so they were clearly capable of masonry, which makes me wonder why they didn't make them primarily from stone of earth, like cultures elsewhere.

Let's say that a slave was working and broke his leg, would he be given time to mend or expected to continue working?

What about conditions where they would require several weeks or months of recuperation? Would they be provided good medical care or would the slave-driver just cut their loss and kill the person usually?

I realize they were treated inhumanely, but even then the slavers would have invested money in the person that they wouldn't want to lose.

From what I can tell, at some point Islamic States started to rely a lot of slaves to run their military and other parts of administration. I think it was the Abbasid’s who used turkish slave armies? And then later of course the Ottomans were famous for them.

But that seemed to inevitably cause conflict when those slaves either took over the administration of the nations directly (Mamluks etc.) or just ended up with massive amounts of political power.

So what exactly was the rationale behind slave armies? Why were they used? How were they set up? Was there any checks and balances put in place so they wouldn’t take over? How come historically these nations didn’t see the writing on the wall so to speak? Are there other examples of slave armies outside of the Islamic world?

I'm doing a capstone about the influence of both Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian diaspora on regime stability in Armenia and while it's been kind of easy figuring out Nagorno-Karabakh's influence it seems articles on the diaspora and Armenia itself(not just the diaspora's influence in the host nations) are a bit more sparse.

The story is that King James (not sure which one) gave the land to a family named Campbell back in the 1600's. The Campbell's sold the land in the 1800's. We would love to know more about this land, but have no clue where to start. This is in Augusta County Virginia, if that helps any.

Hi - my wife and I just had our first child, a baby girl.

As she grows I want to provide her with role models of great women from history. If anyone here has a go-to book or biography of someone like this, I'd love to know about it. I feel like I need to know the info first, that way I can start talking about these people while she's still young.

If you were significantly inspired as a child by some particular woman from history, please let me know!

Was there a difference in opinion between the governorships and the general public of any colonies? Did any colonies send aid or resources to one or both sides? What about the non-Anglo peoples of the Americas? Did the French, Dutch, or Spanish colonists have a stake in the outcome? What about the Native Americans?

Soviets received multiple things from their allies in ww2, how significant were they in the war for the Red army?

I can't think of any dates, important people, or major cultural movements on this, which I find odd.

Hitler’s inner circle was obsessed with him and constantly vying for his approval. Hitler’s public speaking skills are self evident, but what made one-on-one interactions with him cause such a deep love and devotion from his followers?

I've been thinking about Reno a bit lately, and its descriptor of it being the "biggest small town in the USA", something that seems strangely accurate with regards to its prominence, despite:

-Having less than 250,000 people, and a metro area of under 500,000.
-Not bordering any river or body of water.
-Not being a state capital.
-Not having any major industries of note.
-Apart from Tahoe (which has several closer cities such as Truckee and Carson City), not being near any major geographical features of note.

The only thing I can think of is being on the transcontinental railroad, but that doesn't seem to get close to fully explaining it.

What gives?

I just read on another sub an unbelievable story about a sniper during the Vietnam War who performed multiple incredible feats and was honored for it. While I was in the Air Force we learned of many heroic war stories like these, about snipers or pilots or infantry men.

It always struck me that there is significant incentive for these war stories to be exaggerated for the purposes of propaganda and boosting morale.

Is the methodology used to verify these war stories trust worthy? Are most famous stories bunk? Is it safe to assume that the military wants the stories of genuine heroic feats to become well known? How do historians deal with the issue of veracity?

The devil is often described as having goat legs and goat horns, sometimes with a head and a human body. How did this come about? Why the goat particularly? Why not something more ferocious and well, devil-like?

(ETA: I asked the mod team and they said it was okay to post this!)