I was watching a Geography Now video and came across the myth of the Legend of the Snake where the natives interacted with a giant snake. Could megafauna have persisted until a millennium ago, thereby forming the basis of this myth?

In keeping with the theme, I'm sort of curious at the transition of power there. When the principal wife died, was one of the other wives/concubines elevated, or did the position remain vacant until the emperor chose, or...what?

Or is it just a matter of people wanting to attribute their view to the smartest person they can think of?

What taxes and duties are expected from a single farmer? How much silver and produce I collect? By what means I do it? How much land do I need to support my family and all those tenants?

Sorry if this has been answered before, i did a search but couldn't find anything!

Seems strange how two countries that dominated the spice trade in the 16th century adopted very different culinary practices. Most spanish people i know can hardly tolerate any spice yet the portuguese are famous for sauces like peri peri that have quite a bit. You would think they would share similar tastes being so close geographically but I suppose this isn't the case.

For example, in the late 1800's, one of Farmer Smith's horses died suddenly. Without the use of modern equipment, what was the most common way of getting rid of a +1000lb carcus?

Pretty interested in the subject and wanted a clear answer.

Originally, the Democrats backed slavery and appealed to Southerners, whereas the Republicans were against slavery and appealed to 'Liberal' Northerners. Where there any major events that changed people, or particular time periods were large numbers of people swapped?

I've been thinking about stories like St. George's or Sigurd's, and been wondering: Did people in Medieval Europe think that dragons actually existed? And if they did, did they think that they were all dead, or did they fear that a dragon attack was an actual possibility? Did rulers have emergency plans for such an event? And considering how fascinated modern popular culture is with dragons, was there ever actual scientific interest in them, like searches/hunts for dragons?

How powerful were Swedish muskets during the Carolean period?

I heard by 1917, everyone was exhausted of WW1 causing mass casualties with nothing being gained, and Germany was very nervous of America entering the war (hence the Zimmerman Telegram). Then the next year, it ended.

I have just read The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the origins of the modern arms race by Priscilla McMillan.

In the book, the author states that Oppenheimer, AEC chair Gordon Dean and members of the Manhattan Project opposed a crash program to develop a thermonuclear weapon in 1949. She also says that Oppenheimer and other scientists proposed negotiations with the Soviet Union to mutually promise not to develop thermonuclear weapons.

McMillan states that any negotiations would have gone nowhere while Joseph Stalin was alive, but if a diplomatic approach had been tried then at least there would be a process started that Khrushchev and Malenkov might follow up on.

Is she right?

What is the timeline of Soviet research towards the Hydrogen bomb?

Were the Soviets committed to developing the H-bomb immediately after they had conducted a successful atomic bomb test?

Was a research moratorium possible if a diplomatic effort had been made?

I don’t understand the advantage of the dark age knight shield over a shield like the old Roman shield or Persian immortal shield. The Dark age shield is way smaller and way harder to build a shield wall with so why did they use it?

Are the genocides from fascists states, like romania and croatia, included in the Holocaust count?

Now we have amazing technology that can help locate foriegn ships or vasals from hundreds of kilometres. But before this, how did they manage the blockades? For example, the Union blocked the Confederate from selling their cotton on a coast that is thousands of kilometres long. Did they have some other techniques or did they put a ship every few kilometres? Because that seems like a logistical nightmare and nigh impossible.

Thank you for the answer