Just started reading this book and I was wondering if anyone here was familiar and could confirm/refute any of the information on these pages.

Watching Merlin and Uther let his son participate in a tourney where 2 knights died. It seems reckless from the kings perspective. Did that happen? How did kings handle such situations?

Thanks!

I just went into a deep dive about the Berlin Wall and find the entire ordeal incredibly fascinating. Looking at maps from Google images depicting exactly where the Berlin Wall was built, it appears the wall encapsulated all of West Berlin. Am I confusing the boarder of West Berlin as part of the wall? In some of the maps, it looks pretty evident that the wall enclosed all of West Berlin, in others, it’s a bit ambiguous because the map maker will use a bold, red stroke to delineate the portion of the wall that halves Berlin and a black, bold stoke to notate the permitter of West Berlin / potentially the wall...? The rest of East Berlin’s perimeter is rendered with a typically weighted, black stoke. Hence, my confusion.

If I’m not misunderstanding the map, and West Berlin was completely enclosed, why would France, US and Britain, each of whom had their own territories meet in West Berlin, allow the wall to be built in their respective territories? I understand allowing the wall to be built between Western and Eastern Berlin, and I even understand turning a blind eye to the fact that some of the sections of the wall very much encroached into West Berlin, but to enter that deep into Allied controlled territory to build a wall the Allies didn’t support seems inconceivable.

My final question is, assuming West Berlin was fully closed off, if Berlin was the easiest egress point for defecting East Germans, wouldn’t building the wall to encapsulate East Berlin be more effective in the Soviets pursuit of preventing defection? Thanks ya’ll!

EDIT: To get a head of a misnomer I repeatedly make, I incorrectly refer to the Western Powers controlling West Berlin as “Allies,” implying the Soviet Union were not Allies. I apologize for any confusion this has caused.

Hello, I want to deepen my knowledge on fascism. I want to focus on WWII regimes first (Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco). What books and/or documentaries would you recommend?

Old folk-tales mention people who fall into comas for long periods of time and wake up (for example, sleeping beauty), so clearly this is a thing that people knew happens. But how did people care for the comatose in the middle ages?

Edit: If you're going to PM me saying "you'll die" and not much else, could you please at least provide a citation?

To go more in depth with what I’m looking for in a book here is a list:

• World History
• China
• Japan
• Korea
• I would be fine with any countries history honestly but I have a preference to learn those 3 first ^
• Not very war focused
• Talks about culture/traditions

Sorry if this isn’t allowed, if a better subreddit is suited for this question please let me know!

These two bodies of water were both connected to the worlds oceans before the canal but did the connection of the two change anything for the marine wildlife of these areas?

So, i was googling if that was viable and based on the search (read as 5 min search) that was, but i hardly doubt it, is there any document or legend about someone that did this ? Like throwing on an enemy and actully killing them. Thank you for your time

Just finished Fred Anderson's Crucible Of War which covers 54-66. Looking for suggestions for further reading. The longer the better, prefer detail to overview.

I have a decent knowledge of ancient Greece. I took a class on it in college and have been into the myths since I was a kid. But the whole point of this is to expand my knowledge of that culture by looking at the oldest text we really have from it, so I want to understand what I'm reading

Was the italian army realy incopetent?

The very first Japanese legal system (or attempt at a legal system) was influenced and partially based on Chinese philosophy (mainly Confucianism) and its consequent legal thought and process.

Later, Japan decided to implement elements from foreign legal systems (mainly French and German). I was wondering if there'd been any attempts to "export" part of this newly formed system during the imperialist phase - and if so, where exactly and in which form/way.

Thank you in advance!

I just remember this being a wacky headline from back in the day. Was there any truth to this story? Would it have worked and why would he have done this? Did any other nation try anything like this? What was the Sony corporation's response to this? I would also like to know what happened to this supercomputer, but that may be outside of the 20 years-or-older timeframe for questions.

In the prologue of Valerie Hansen’s The year 1000 she gives a description of a market in the port city of Quanzhou, and says:

“A vigorous export trade financed these imports, and the most technologically sophisticated Chinese product was high-fired pottery. Low-cost competition came from Middle Eastern potters who mixed imitation glazes that resembled the glossy Chinese ceramics but weren’t fired at the same high temperatures.”

Unfortunately there’s no citation. Can anyone tell me more about these glazes, their compositions and firing methods?

I read Hassan Fathy’s Architecture for the poor a while back, about his attempt to build a better traditional Egyptian village, and he was also interested in setting up the village with low-fired ceramics, for cookware and tiles:

Besides weaving, I wanted to give the Gournis a practical way of making glazed pottery, for reasons explained earlier. The problem involved in making tiles is that there is, or was, no suitable glaze that melts at the temperatures obtainable in ordinary peasant kilns. So we had either to find a low-temperature glaze or a cheap and practical high-temperature kiln. I was told by the Japanese sculptor Isamu Negutchi that someone at the University of California had made a glaze that would run at 600°C, but although I have asked many people, no one else seems to have heard of it. I did, however, design a kiln, worked on the oil-and-water-drop principle, for firing bricks and lime. There is also, for anyone interested in this matter, the native pottery and ceramics industry of Rosetta, where once the most beautiful ceramic tiles were made, tiles that may still be seen in the old houses of Rosetta and Damietta.

I haven’t had any better luck finding info than he did. I’m also not sure what he means by an “oil-and-water-drop” kiln, unless it worked similar to recent designs for kilns that burn vegetable oil.

I’ve been experimenting with ash glazes, and I’ve found a lot of info about different ways people have sealed unglazed pottery, but surely there’s some ceramics history expert who can point me to some obscure book about 11th century middle eastern pottery or something?

Thanks in advance!

I was rewatching Viking and for the nth time saw the scene where the once Christian monk talked about how some of the stuff from his christian background still appealed to him while also some of the stuff from the "viking beliefs" also appealed to him, and his struggle to reconciliate both of those.

So that's pretty much my question, was there every any records of people attempting to reconciliate the two? If not Christianism, any other religion?

Thank you.

How was it paid? Is the statement even true?

The Lusitania sunk by the Germans was supposed to transfer ammunitions to Great Britain to help the war effort. But why did the Americans want to help Great Britain in the first place? The American Revolution had ended not even 150 years ago, I can't imagine the Americans had any love for the British?

Also, I can't find an actual source for this, but in the Great War youtube series it is mentioned that in June of 1915, the US sent 10 submarines to the British, again to help in the war, and even sent them through Canada first as to not violate their neutral stance.

Why was there such an effort to help the British? And why was it done in such secrecy when they could have just straight up declared war on the Germans?

So, two questions. I have heard that the chief lives in the great hall, is this true? And second, would the stave church double as a great hall? Or was it too sacred? Thanks in advance

I apologize if this question breaks the twenty-year rule, but I am safely assuming that any cultural connection between Romania and Columbus goes back at least twenty years.