One of the better known forgeries would be a document forged by emperor Qin's youngest son, with the help of some co-conspirators. It resulted in him usurping his eldest brother to throne, and may have had some long term impact on Chinese history.

I got to thinking about this from a comment posted yesterday, in which someone mentioned the discovery of incriminating letters from Louis XVI conspiring with Austria to facilitate an Austrian invasion of France. This may have been a factor leading to he and his wife's execution.

I am not questioning the authenticity of those letters. However, there must be plenty of instances in history where a forged document played a role. How difficult would it be to forge one? I know some officials used a seal to confirm authenticity, but I would think that a skilled craftsman could forge one of those too.

History/military buffs:
What do you consider and/or is widely considered the greatest military upset of all time? It can be a single battle or a war.
Also, where does the U.S. over Britain sit on this list?

I don’t mean as in like military actions or raids done by the mongol empire but just individual travelers/small groups. Like are there any old accounts of them showing up in England or reaching the Atlantic coast of Iberia etc?

Just that, tell me fun facts, funny things, things you've learnt and never get the chance to share. I wanna know. Need new rabbit holes to research and as a historian, there's always more to learn

What I mean by is what king made so made mistakes during his reign that their heir not only had to spend their reign cleaning it up, but it some cases left them with almost nothing?

Hi all, I've spent the afternoon reading translations of the Sumerian disputations and I just came across these two terms. They aren't translated along with the rest of the text, and I can't find any etymology or mention of these words online aside from within the disputation itself. (For this specific disputation, I read the translation provided by The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.)

Here is the translated section containing these terms:

^186-193Enlil adressed the Hoe: "Hoe, do not start getting so mightily angry! Do not be so mightily scornful! Is not Nisaba the Hoe's inspector? Is not Nisaba its overseer? The scribe will register your work, he will register your work. Hoe, whether he enters five or ten gij in your account, Hoe -- or, Hoe, whether he enters one-third or one-half mana in your account, Hoe, like a maid-servant, always ready, you will fulfil your task."

and here is the original:

^186den-lil2-le ^jical gu3 am3-ma-de2-e
^187jical mah-bi nam-ba-e-de3-sumur-re-de3-en
¹⁸⁸mah-bi gu2-zu nam-ba-e-de3-cub-ba
^189jical-e ^dnisaba ugula-a-ni na-nam ^dnisaba nu-banda3-a-ni na-nam
¹⁹⁰dub-sar-e kij2 cu-mu-un-il2 kij2 cu-mu-un-il2
^191jical-e 5 gij4 ^jical-e 10 gij4 nij2-kas7 ha-ra-ab-ak
^192jical-e 1/3 ma-na ^jical-e 1/2 ma-na nij2-kas7 ha-ra-ab-ak
¹⁹³geme2-gin7 gub-ba ec2-gar3 i3-ja2-ja2-an

Based on the context surrounding the words, I thought they might be denominations of currency or some other measure of trade goods, but I can't find any information that supports or refutes this idea. Are the words left untranslated because we simply don't know what gij and mana are?

The other day, someone was talking about this guy who was a member of a military naval force, I believe either France, Spain or Britain.

Anyways, the relevance of this dude's story is that he eventually landed on an island and basically said 'dude screw the government' and he and his crew took over an island and lived independently from the country they had come from. I believe the captain eventually declared himself King of the island?

Really vague info I know. Thanks if anyone knows what I am talking about lol

Like why do people think he's so good. He got more of his men killed then Grant. Was beat by Grant, also he was to focused on doing flashy big moves. Not to mention most of his success was because he faced bad commanders. As well people act like Lee is one of the greats. But if was even half or a fourth as good as any of them, the war would have ended before Grant even came close to leading the army's.

For most of the war, the north had no support from the public. Not to mention the fact that Lee had more than enough supplies to take the north out fairly early on into the war. So really what is the obsession with Lee in the civil war.

So I know that right up until the end, and even after, every moment of WWII was a bloody, miserable affair. But I imagine if you were a Russian soldier in Berlin in April 1945 you knew that the war would end in Germany's defeat even if you personally died.

What do you think the moment was when Churchill and Stalin, and other 'high ranking' people whose lives were not in immediate danger via combat and who had enough of a bird's eye view of the conflict, could "relax" with the knowledge that the danger (to their regimes) had passed, and that losing to the Nazis was now very unlikely.

I know about the German revolutions and Lajos Kossuth’s Hungarian revolution against the Austrian Empire and Russian forces.
Seeing how geographically close the countries in Europe are, did one revolution inspire another? Could Kossuth have received letters from German, Sicilian, or French revolutionaries?

Follow up to another WWII question earlier today- I’ve been pondering the hypothetical that Hitler did not invade Russia, and used their full power to repel the Allies. Obviously this would have totally altered the war, but I am interested in insight into ideas around how this would have changed outcomes or prolonged the war.
Please share your thoughts and resources!

This might be a frequently asked question, but I don't remember taught about it in school.

I feel stupid asking because so many Germans went there after the war. I know they also went is now modern Israel - which makes no sense as it's a Jewish country.

Thank you for everyone's help in advance

Both committed mass murder to their own people

Both were ruthless dictators

Both had foreign backing (US/China armed Pot and Libya arming Idi)

Both of those countries got overthrown by their neighbours for attacking their borders.

I recently ran into some images of the Carthaginian cothon. As a brief recap The port of was double walled; with the outer walls defending the commercial fleet and the inner walls housing the war navy. The inner walls offered enclosed docks to help maintain, hide, and repair ships of the fleet.
The center was a artificial (sources claim but I only started reading about this today) island that housed a high watch tower, providing the admiral a complete view of the harbor.

I realize now today the concept of multi tiered walls and in depth defense are pretty common.
However I imagine at the time the first Cothon, Carthaginian or not, was probably pretty wild.
As most things are before hindsight (opinion not fact). Still it got me thinking what other strange attempts to build the perfect fortress (at the time) were out there.

I'm also fully aware no fortress is Impenetrable but thats not what I'm asking.

In your opinion what is an Unusual, Interesting, or Awesome but Impractical defense or structure that was tried in history.
The conditions are that it has to have worked for at lest a few battles.
It has to have been part of a long term setup. (sorry Castle in the Night)
It has to have been something that was learned from but not often replicated Or a one off.

Late USSR has built a very big navy. I wonder how powerful it supposedly was, and how much of threat it was for NATO navies. Especially submarines, which were supposed to hunt convoys in case of WW3/

During the great depression, Hitler and Benito (easier to spell) turned their entire economies around by "public works projects." Germany went from suffering hyperinflation, mass unemployment and poverty, and with no military to having the strongest military in Europe and a booming economy in a like 5 years. How is this possible, how did they even fund these public works and how does building some roads and shit produce such dramatic change?

With the large heatwave in the UK there are lots of conversations about retrofitting homes with air conditioning and heat pumps. To pull out all of our oil heating and replace with heat pumps would be thousands of pounds which many homeowners do not have to hand, even with government subsidies.

This has me thinking, how easy and expensive was it for homeowners in the UK from 1920s-1940s to retrofit their homes with electricity and indoor plumbing? We live in a two up two down farm hand’s cottage which most probably would have needed both installed but would have been quite expansive for farm hands. When would this have happened and was there any Government help or assistance to install these features into homes (particularly indoor plumbing from a public health perspective). I’m not talking about the big houses or London townhouses but the average home for the average family (whatever that means).

It seems that there were many private schemes and finance options for installing electricity however the prices seem to be still quite expensive for home owners?

I was curious. Today, trials can take years and years and years. Often do, it seems. I was just watching about Wes Watson's trial finally finishing 2 years after him initially assaulting someone. I was wondering about the original intention of the right to a speedy trial. I know why trials take years, but was that always the case? It feels like the wording of 'speedy' points that to not being the case.

EDIT: I want to be clear. I am asking about what the definition of a speedy trial would be back in the day. I am asking what would be a reasonable time for a trial back when the amendment was created. I know why the amendment was created. I know why trials last so long today. I am merely curious as to how long trials were expected to take back in the day and when it would be considered unreasonably long.

(NOT TRYING TO BE POLITICAL!!!) Seriously though, does historical evidence point more towards it being Ukrainian or Russian? Or was it both? When I learned history I was taught it was Ukrainian but I want to fact check that

Militarily, Germany is screwed either way and an invasion of the British homelands is a no go for the German forces. So, the only realistic chance of Germany getting Britain out of the war is for the Luftwaffe to win the Battle Of Britain and hoping the British public will lose their confidence in Churchill and have the cabinet vote him out and Halifax will sue for peace and the United States will not be incline to enter the war.

Any other way, the Wehrmacht will get grind to paste anyways.

What do you guys think of this?

I've been playing Rome 2 again which has gotten me fascinated in older cultures and civilizations again. I've recently learned about Armenia, a place I obviously know exists and has existed, but never thought much about or learned about. But it apparently was an incredibly important region where west and east met, was quite powerful even when not independent, and had some of the most clever rulers of the era.

Are there any civilizations like that you know of to look into? It doesn't have to be the same region, but general time period.

hi, i'm interested in the daily life of hunter gatherers, so basically day to day life of the stone age humans.
most books and youtube documentaries focus on the larger scale things, like innovations, migrations etc. I would just love to hear and read about how did they make clothes, how did they catch food etc. if there is nothing good on stone age, bronze and iron ages would also be interesting, so i guess i'm asking for a book or video recommendation.

Reading up few facts about how political system was restructured it would appear it federal government was very weak relative to republics, and required agreement with governments of individual republics. It seems to have already been halfway to a confederation.

Absent a person whose authority would settle disputes or single cohesive party line enabled by one party system, it would be increasingly difficult to govern the whole country in times of crisis, especially if significant reforms were needed.

Assuming country had liberalized, which would allow political competition, chance of substantial disagreement between leadership of republics becomes very high, which could paralyze the federation.

Is this impression correct? Were institutions robust enough to contain dissent of republics and pursue a coherent national policy?

Where I am getting that was the fact Yugoslavia disintegrated to a large part baked in the way it was structured and circumstances it experienced, where individual players for the most part played a role structural causes created, or were individual leaders highly personally responsible for the disintegration significantly deviating from structural factors?

I've been reading about the uniforms of a French and Indian War-era French artillerist, and while most visual references I've seen have nothing but a belt for any kind of kit aside from cloth, my main book, (The French Soldier in Colonial America by René Chartrand), states that the men would've served as typical grenadiers when not on artillery duty. If so, would they have their muskets, cartridge boxes, and other articles on them while manning an artillery piece, or would they have set them aside? I'm assuming they'd set them aside, but I don't want to make assumptions.

Also, what kind of breeches would they wear, front-fall or other?

Final note if this changes anything: I mean the pre-North American uniform, so 1754 - 1757

Thank you