The ship itself was absolutely massive, and made for good footage.

In addition, the cost of passage was very high. Only the very wealthy could afford it, so there was a celebrity-watching aspect to it.

Finally, there were rumors that she was being used by the Nazis for spying and she was certainly being used for propaganda--any day now the US might have stopped allowing her to land at what was a Navy base, ending these flights maybe forever.

You oversimplified Herod and his relationship with the Jews right into inaccuracy.

The entire point of Herod renovating the Second Temple (built by Ezra, et al after the Baylonian Captivity--Solomon's Temple was destroyed) was to curry favor with the Jews by the raised Jewish and quarter-Jewish by blood but not considered a "real" Jew by hardliners Herod and solidify his power base. He was polishing his jewish bona fides.

He needed to keep the local populace quiet to keep his kingdom. Herod was constantly dealing with the other power cliques in Judea and Rome (look up his mother in law--you think you have it bad?) and was one good rebellion away from Octavius/Augustus deciding that someone else would be a better ruler of a fairly important border state, or at least less of a headache. Dude is not going to go and build a fake Temple on the site of the real Temple--that's what decided the Jews on overthrowing the king in that rather famous Maccabeean incident and would guarantee Rome would find someone better.

And the Essenes...that's like asking the Latter Day Saints their opinion of the Pope. The Essenes were a large sect, but they weren't exactly orthodox in their doctrine (to continue the analogy: it's asking hippy commune Mormons about the Pope). The fact is that the majority of the Jews (including the Maccabeeans, the two mainstream Jewish sects, and that Jesus guy and his followers) thought the Temple was the Temple, regardless of the rebuilding, so long as the proper rituals had been observed to consecrate it, etc.

You don't usually leave people who can recognize you and are highly motivated to do you harm in a position to act on that motivation. Especially if you plan to raid anywhere near here in coming seasons.

Plus, it encourages your next victims not to fight back (by running away as soon as they see you coming, in this case). Brutality now to prevent resistance from others later is a pretty common tactic.

First, ask yourself why the old system was the default and when those factors that caused the old system to be the default changed. The old system wouldn't persist across millennia and multiple cultures if it didn't, as a practical matter, work.

Second, I think your recitation of the state of affairs was overly-cynical and so you missed the point. Marrying for love is not the historical norm because romantic love doesn't indicate success in a life that was fairly precarious. Romantic feelings for your partner were certainly a good thing, but marriage was more an extremely involved with each other business partnership. It was thought of in terms of: you were joining your life to this other person, and joining your families (at least to the extent that you might call on them for help but it'd be nice if they could work together e.g. raising a barn for the couple), and probably were subsistence farming together (so you were heavily reliant on each other's abilities in order to not starve), and rearing children together (who would take care of you when you were old). You need to pick someone who will be at least a minimum level of successful in life or you suffer and maybe die. Plus, your pool of potential partners is relatively small...people didn't travel and how many people of marriageable age were within a 1-day walk?

And divorce was very frowned upon in the Christian West. It was a very high-stakes decision that was very difficult to undo. Romantic love was not a factor that would make this a success or not, plus it was common that most couples would grow to love each other at least somewhat over time (Ned and Catelyn Stark in the book of A Game of Thrones is a good example, though obviously fictional and nobility), so romantic love was basically a non-factor.

So, you see older-and-wiser people basically making the decision by arranging marriages because they were making the best decision for those children in light of the likely consequences for making a bad decision. And you see things like older men marrying younger women because the man has proven he's successful enough, removing the risk for her. While she would be young enough that her risks in childbirth were (relatively) low and her energy and ability to care for a large (remember: farming) family were high, removing risk for him. It's not about exploitation but about reducing risk (though, of course, people are terrible and so you do see examples of exploitation).

For romantic love to be a dominant factor, you need to see the consequences of a bad choice of partner somehow be lessened or disappear. Or, put another way, you need to see a system with romantic love making at least as good a choice for.the couple as the old system. When and what those factors exactly were depends on the culture, time period, etc., and are something you can research, but there's a reason it correlates with industrialization.

From my understanding, if a sailor or officer was violently seasick and didn't get over it after a day or two, that's a liability to the ship and was bad for morale, so it's in everybody's best interest to transfer him to a shore role (which probably limited their chances for promotion and so some refused). There were a ton of Navy jobs that didn't involve being on a ship. Some guys probably lied about how sick they were or just hung on out of sheer stubbornness, and they made it work, but that depended on their NCOs and CO letting things slide.

But, generally you'd want to figure this out before the guy was deployed somewhere where him being half-dead from vomiting the past 10 days straight might or not might matter. So, everyone went on a training cruise during basic training or OCS at least in part to see how they handled being on a ship in deep ocean. Worst case,l scenario, you find out on your first Atlantic crossing or the trip to Pearl Harbor, you suck it up and do your best until you get there, and they reassign you there.

It's kind of the same answer. You had Caligula, Nero/the Year of Four Emperors, and Domitian (and the tail end of Augustus's reign for that matter) during the Pax Romana. You also had significant internal revolts (Boudica's revolt, Judea--3 times, etc.). Those years weren't particularly stable, though they weren't as bad as the Optimates vs. the Populares or the Crisis.

Looking at Europe as a whole and the longest period of peace, I think the correct answer is that the sad, tribal apes that make up the human race can't go 50 years without trying to kill each other. The best we can do is relative peace (the Pax) or stability in a single area (e.g. England was pretty stable and secure most of the 1153 -1455 time period).

The two governing factors here are likely padding and heat. If they're only wearing one leather article of clothing, it would be under the mail to provide extra padding to both further spread out the force of a blow and to provide better protection in the event a blow got through the chain links.

If they're wearing a padded aketon/gambeson and then mail, and then a leather waistcoat, that's basically wearing two winter coats with 20 lbs/10kg of weight in the middle. The heat load is going to be severe.

In battle, if they're wearing their knight's colors or badge, you'd be more likely to see it on a shield, a strip of cloth tied around an upper arm, a light surcoat/tabard, or a hat/helmet badge. But, they're not going to be in full harness most of the time, and a leather coat with a badge could be reasonable "around town" uniform/light armor, just like they might carry a large-but-not-huge knife instead of their battleaxe when going into town. As.a garment, it's an extravagant use of leather, but it's not crazy.

"Peace" in this case was entirely relative. There were multiple civil and foreign wars as well as a couple of outright conquests during that time. For example, the Battle of the Tuetoberg Forest (3 legions more-or-less wiped out), the Great Jewish Revolt (up to 350k killed, Jerusalem sacked, the Jewish Temple destroyed, etc.) and the conquest of Britain (hundreds of thousands killed, plus conquered a lot of territory) all happened during the Pax Romana.

Compared to the period of civil wars and purges that started with Marius and Sulla and eventually ended with Octavian and Anthony, or the Crisis of the 3rd Century, the Pax Romana was pretty peaceful for the Empire as a whole, but there was not an absence of war.

FYI, alternate history and anything less than 20 years ago aren't "history" (see Rules 3 and 5 of the subreddit). You're definitely not adhering to the former and most of the discussion of long-term consequences would violate the latter.

That being said, for the New Union Treaty to have had a chance and not just be another dying gasp of the USSR, it would have needed to at least appear to fix the perceived problems of the USSR: including (but not limited to!) too much central control and the inherent corruption in any centralized power structure. But, those in power liked those "problems" since they were the basis of their power. The fact that 6 of the 15 socialist republics weren't even invited to participate in drafting it, and that opposition to the treaty (among hardliners) focused on how it might let the Baltic states and Ukraine be too independent, says to me that the same forces that led to the anti-treaty coup would have torn the government apart from the inside, probably relatively quickly (like the USA almost did a few times in the early years, culminating in the US Civil War, or how bastard feudalism in England inevitably built competing power blocks culminating in the War of the Roses).

Anything more than cleaning and oiling: not really. Airing the tires would be next to impossible without extremely precise fittings that most artisans wouldn't be capable of. Any replacement parts would require materials (rubber) or manufacturing precision (chain, spokes, etc) that would be very difficult if not impossible to reproduce.

With enough time and money, an artisan could probably figure out workarounds (like casting replacement links out of brass or bronze) but the bicycle would be more and more of a frankenstein's monster and would be less efficient and usable.

Good luck with the living under a bridge and demanding tolls. Watch out for goats.

You dragged the US into the conversation and are now attempting to make a point about the USSR based on what the US has or hasn't done. I'm sorry you can't see it, but that is classic whataboutism.

Not engaging in whataboutism would involve you trying to show how the Hungarian and Czech experiences aren't the USSR treating them as de facto parts of it/mere extensions of Moscow's will. How Poland got away with the "Polish October" in 1956 might be a good place to start. You'll also want to explain away things like overthrowing the Hungarian government that was trying to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact in 1956.

It would also involve addressing how the invasion of Afghanistan wasn't the USSR trying to expand its borders (the second part of my point). You might also want to take a detour to discuss if Imperial and post-USSR Russian grand strategy was actually different from USSR grand strategy, or whether it's consistently been a policy of Russian imperialism.

Thanks RE the Czechoslovakia date. I looked it up and still managed to type it wrong.

The Monroe Doctrine is absolutely an attempt by the US to be the sole hegemon over the Western Hemisphere. There was any question that this is/was the case? Ditto the "world's policeman"/pax americana that covers the other situations--is anyone seriously disputing that this is a hegemonic situation?

(Whether you think that it's a good situation is a separate question).

However, and this isn't an accusation against you personally, your list is a classic whataboutism. Whether the USSR and now Russia have done some stuff isn't disproven if the USA has done similar stuff. I pointed out unambiguous historical episodes of just post-WW2 USSR invading and/or treating its neighbors as if they were under de facto USSR control (I could have added current events to the list--just the involvement of Belarus and Chechnya in the Ukraine conflict is really good example of my point--but those are too recent to be considered "history"). Can you dispute that those episodes occured or that they show hegemony by the USSR?

Hungary 1956. Czechoslovakia 1963. Afghanistan 1979.

It wasn't easier to track via the moon, it was MUCH easier. How exactly do you calculate the solar cycle in ancient times? You won't have accurate-enough timekeeping for centuries to know the exact day of the solstice by tracking duration of day, you're basically stuck trying to accurately measure shadows or the angle of the sun, which takes years of observations to establish. That's a lot of effort for anyone and is very not-portable. It's something only the elites can do or will care about.

But anybody can see the moon, and it's not even 10 fingers' worth of counting from full or new to a quarter moon. It's very easy for everyone to observe and to track with. It's also not ambiguous--a full moon is a full moon, you might be off by a day at most, and there would be general agreement in a community.

And the primary thing you need timekeeping for is agriculture (because that's what 90% plus of the population do, and what 100% eat). But, due to weather variability, knowing when spring astronomically begins doesn't help you all that much. Temperature trends, rain, likelihood of a frost, all of those are more important. IIRC, lunar calendars (the Islamic calendar being a notable exception) usually start counting in the spring, when X crop needs to be harvested and Y crop planted for just this reason.

One other thing to remember is that the Armistice (with Germany) was November 11, 1918, but the various treaties didn't get signed until mid-1919. There was sporadic fighting but more importantly, the soldiers are still deployed, still training, standing guard, etc. Your great uncle probably did die from influenza, but it might have been a training accident or pneumonia or something else caused by still being deployed.

Most of "Eastern Europe" was formally independent of the Soviet Union. But, the Soviet hegemony absolutely did include Poland, East Germany, etc., (and considering Russian/Soviet ambitions have never particularly been satisfied with their current borders), making them de facto part of the Soviet Union.

Paper size was very variable, so there's no firm answer. However for a written-only journal it would probably be an octavo or smaller binding simply for compactness' sake and ease of use without a writing surface. The sizes would have varied, but an octavo was approximately the height and width of a mass market paperback (thickness, of course, varied). For anyone not carrying all their own gear (sailors, aristocrats with porters, etc), they would have wanted bigger pages, especially for maps and sketches, so it would have been about the size of a modern sheet of printer/typewriter paper.

One good example are the various notebooks carried by the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804-1806. They carried a number of 4in x 6in notebooks (approx 10cm x 15cm) with many loose pages. accompanying.

This is a good analogy, but there"s one big mismatch with the history--the eastern half of Roman Empire had the majority of the people and wealth. So, exactly what you said, except the Eastern and Western US have the others' economies and population numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism

The short version is that the popes for a while moved the court to Avignon, in France. This made the Romans (as is citizens of the city) very upset and the Cardinals elected "Roman" pope under duress. Then they went to France and elected a French pope. And then a church council in Pisa which was supposed to solve things elected a third pope.

Eventually, the Pisan and Roman popes got together and worked it out, which the French pope people eventually accepted.

You're assuming your conclusion. There's still "a difference between being unaffected and dwelling on 'what might have beens.'" IOW there is a middle ground between sociopath on the one hand and endlessly rehashing important decisions on the other. It's actually a very large middle ground where you accept you did the best you could and you deal with the consequences. Oppenheimer seems to have gotten stuck in the "endless rehashing" end of the spectrum and Truman (and many others) think/thought less of Oppenheimer for it. None of which imply that Truman was a sociopath.

IMHO, there's a difference between being unaffected and refusing to dwell on "what might have beens." If Oppenheimer was as fixated on his own guilt (or "guilt") as the quote suggests, I can see a Truman who had made the hard decision to use the bombs being disgusted by a man who had made the decision to create them and after the fact constantly second-guessed the entire idea.

[edited to fix a typo]

IIRC, there was a plan for a coup against Hitler if there had been any resistance to the re/occupation of Alsace and Lorraine. But the French backed down; so the Germans didn't launch their coup.

IIRC, they used very hard dolomite quite a bit. Might be a good place for OP to start researching further.

Indoor toilets require water on demand in every home, which is a VERY recent innovation around the world. You use the water both to flush waste but also as a barrier between the sewer pipes and the home, to prevent odors and flammable/explosive sewer gas from entering (a modern toilet is also a nontrivial industrial product--large, reliable metal and porcelain castings are relatively recent, too). Until you can use water to remove the waste, a bucket with a tight lid is the best option (aka a chamberpot) followed by an outside bucket with a door (aka an outhouse).

Also, seriously, how could the Church have possibly caused this? The majority of the world that's not Christian had and has the same waste removal strategies.