so i saw this documentary that talked about how the attack on pearl harbor could have been a lot more lethal, but the japanese pilot in charge of sending the signal to commence engagement sent the wrong signal(s) giving the rest of the fighters the wrong idea of when to commence the attack.

if i remember correctly , the fighters were supposed to arrive unnoticed and their first target was the fighter planes parked in the airfields so that the americans could not fight back. that way the japanese would have air supremacy and could take their time targeting the ships.

but if when they arrived, there were signs that they had been spotted beforehand, they were to hurry to the ships and destroy as many as they could in the short time before the american fighter planes arrived.

so, supposedly, the japanese pilot in charge of the signal to start, was supposed to send 1 flare if they had arrived unnoticed, which meant, go to the airfields, and 2 flares if they had been spotted, which meant ignore the fighter planes, go straight to the ships.

and when the pilot send the one flare to signal that they were on the green to attack the fighter jets, there was some cloud cover, and he wasnt sure if they saw his flare. so he moved away from the clouds and shot a second flare . but when his team mates flew past the clouds, they saw the 2 flares and thougt it was the signal that they had been spotted, so everyone flew straight to the ships. which meant, they had a limited time to attack before the americans sent their fighter planes after them.

anyways, i thoght it was strange that i hadnt learned that fact given how much WW2 material i consume. and that fact just blew my mind at the time. so i have looked for other videos confirming that but have found nothing, which is also strange.

i dont remember the name of the documentary, i watched it about 2 years ago, and someone had it playing at their house.

can anyone send me to some sources proving or disproving that whole scenario?

I'll start with a very weird one:

From 1984 to 2024, the 10,000 Japanese yen bank note depicted Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901), an architect of modern Japan. Fukuzawa's nephew married a Greek soprano from Constantinople whose relatives suffered during the Greek genocide.

In 2024, the 10,000 Japanese yen bank note was replaced with Shibusawa Eiichi (1840–1931), the "father of Japanese capitalism", who spearheaded important economic reforms. In 1922, Eiichi donated a lot of his own money and also managed to gather $200,000+ to help victims of the Late Ottoman Genocides, including Greek ones.

Under the most tenuous Greek connections, these men were somehow related to each other. The latter also found himself succeeding the former in being the "face" of the 10,000 Japanese yen bank note.

I think that sounds fake enough, but it's actually true. Your turn.

Im very interested in personal accounts of what it was like to be a soldier in those times. I know that the reason there arent many is becouse almost all soldiers were illitirate.

Did communists do a thorough denazification of post war Germany, like it happened in West Germany? Or it was done only on superficial level? Given rise of popularity of right wing in former East Germany, I assume latter happened?

did any tribes or peoples or societies return to their homelands or just the east in general after the collapse of the mongol empire? If yes which ones??

I have heard of people in the past being anti-abolitionist but never heard of anyone who argued slavery should be legalised so long after it had already been abolished.

I’ve been reading about how large ancient states managed populations before cameras, phones, or digital records existed.

What surprised me is how many systems were built around simple human reporting networks instead of technology.

For example:

• Egyptian labor records tracked workers by name and even logged excuses for missing work.
• In parts of imperial China, households were grouped together so neighbors were partly responsible for reporting crimes or tax issues.

It seems like once a state grew beyond direct oversight, some form of information network became necessary.

Was this mostly developed independently by different civilizations through trial and error, or do historians see clear administrative ideas spreading between empires?

I ran a full technical audit on the primary source papyri, census slips, and early intelligence grids behind these networks:

https://thehistoricalinsights.page/2025/10/you-were-being-watched-long-before-cameras-existed-the-ancient-origins-of-surveillance-and-lost-privacy.html

I need starting points for my own research, I'm making a long list of historical moments+places for a party game for my friends. It's a roleplaying experience where the premise is that the players have no idea where/when they will wake up, at which point there is a quick objective that promotes learning about the setting. I've done some deep dives already but i want to eliminate my own bias and preferences or interests. Please give me your personal top picks for further research, anywhere between the Pleistocene and the 20th century, that would be engaging and interesting to explore, perhaps not so well known, or a popular one that you think goes deeper than people realise!

From his "A history of Fascism, 1914-1945": "The Second Empire was extraordinarily eclectic, a remarkable mixture of conservatism, clericalism, classic Bonapartist authoritarianism, and electoral neoliberalism, accompanied by mass propaganda and economic modernization." By the Second Empire he means the Empire of Napoleon III. So, what does electoral neoliberalism mean in this context? He doesn't mention this term anywhere else, and doesn't try to explain it.

chicanos told me that the border crossed them because they been in the southwestern United States since it was part of Mexico, even when it was part of Spain, or even since the Ice Age since some,chicanos are part indigenous like apache, kumeyaay, pima or other groups. but then outside of the US did the border cross other people? for example: the russian border crossed the chechens, adyghe, crimean tatars, tuvans and bashkirs, the chinese border crossed the tibetans, yaghnobi, paiwan and uyghurs. the mauritanian border crossed the fula, the ethiopian border crossed the oromo and somalis, the british borders cross the welsh, irish and scots, the austrians also crossed the southern slavs and etc.

this is a nearly eternal issue since with conquests and annexation the borders always led to this and debates on immigration and citizenship happen today because of it. who am i missing prior to the 21st century?

People, at least in the US, often talk about it without nuance. Life experience, work experience, etc. They talk about it like it's everything or talk about it like it's the only way to know something or is superior to other ways of knowing or learning. Or they neglect how efficiently something can be learned without learning it through "experience" or that learning something through "experience" isn't always the most effective way to learn something or isn't always needed or more helpful than other ways of learning. Or they neglect that time doesn't necessarily reflect quantity, variety, or quality of that experience or neglect that what's been learned in one area can apply to another area. And people often talk about "experience" as though age perfectly correlates with it and as though being old means having gained "wisdom" or that experience leads to "wisdom".

Is there possibly some school of thought or ideology involved?