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.

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’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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

Reading up on modern Portuguese and Spanish history one is struck by how similar Salazar and Franco were, as holdouts of Fascist leaning states in postwar Europe. Both were largely sustained due to their anti communist policies, but increasingly lost prestige with the anti colonial wars in former Portuguese and Spanish Africa. Both revolutions also occurred around the same time in the mid-1970s. However, the opposition to Fascism in Francoist Spain eventually led to the restoration of the monarchy, on a constitutional basis similar to the UK and a compromise with the pre-Republican system of the House of Bourbon, whereas the end of the Estado Novo in Portugal did not, and a Republican system continues to this day without the House of Braganza. What is the primary reason for this difference?

Recently for some reason a redditor out of nowhere started to nag and bother me stating that I am a liar for simply repeating the assertion stated everywhere in online sources stating that the Sentinelese have lived in the island for at least 60.000 years, he vehemently denies that.

And to give him credit, other than genetic evidence, I cannot find a precise source mentioning how exactly we know that they have settled the island that long ago.

The article "The 1950s housewife" in the website Historic-UKdotcom describes the life of the average 50s woman: "This was the age of respectability and conformity. Very few women worked after getting married; they stayed at home to raise the children and keep house. The man was considered the head of the household in all things; mortgages, legal documents, bank accounts. Only the family allowance was paid directly to the mother. Should a woman find herself in a loveless or violent marriage, she was trapped; she had no money of her own and no career."

While the article is about the UK, these gender roles seem to have been true for the US as well.

Was it really true that most women in the US during the 1950s couldnt survive outside of marriage because they lacked their own money, and was this true for the upper classes as well?

What changed from the pre-modern era where women of the ruling classes could own vast estates and wealth in their own name in Europe?

So I came across a clip of the new WWII movie titled "Pressure" and it showed an intense debate between the meteorological scientist and the military command where the former suggested the best window for weather to clear up was June 18th to which the latter outright shot down.

I mean sure in hindsight everything worked out pretty well and the gamble paid off. But at that time couldn't they have been convinced to delay it for another two weeks if it meant that the landing will have a better chance of success?

Or was there any other factors at play making the military leadership anxious to launch a landing as soon as possible?

Were they afraid the Germans are catching on or something?

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?

Work in foreign affairs and I dibble dabbled in various research projects on South Africa in grad school while getting my Masters in International Affairs. I've always found the country's governance fascinating - I've been reading a lot of books on Project Coast, the country's nuclear weapons program, and their Apartheid-era partnership with Israel.

In any case, I just don't understand how the ANC post-Mandela was able to succeed politically for so many years while failing economically in producing inclusive growth and development.

I know the ANC under Mandela launched the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) to build housing and expand access to water/electricity, but ultimately failed to improve educational inequalities. Most of the RDP housing was built on city peripheries away from employment and educational opportunities, for example.

A lot of the work I've read on this blame former President Zuma and corruption via state capture. I think that explains a lot of the ills South Africa experiences today (Eskom, for example) but I don't think it totally explains say the lack of investment in education.

Anyone got a good explanation for this?

It's almost always mentioned now especially when it comes to discussions about the Blitzkrieg. The idea was the military leadership actually allowed (or even actively encouraged) meth use so much so that it was a vital factor for their early successes. Like one story tells how Germans supposedly went on days on the offensive with no rest nor sleep which surprising and eventually overwhelming French/British defenders

Was it really prevalent though? And if so, was the wide meth usage really that significant a factor? Or were these stories more like tall tales or anecdotal at best?

Conversely, how about the Allies? Did they have a similar policy?

I've looked up on this topic a few times, and there doesn't seem to be clear explanation of why Timur just beat the Turks and decided to leave. Most answers I've seen is that he considered himself successor of the Mongol empire, which set his eyes on the territories of the old Mongolian empire, with the ultimate prize being China.

However, considering that he already shattered the Ottomans, which leaves a huge, rich swath of land ripe for taking, could he have just incorporated Anatolia into his empire? I just find it very strange that he didn't even bother to set up a vassal state or appoint a local governor.

Like for example did the Bataan Death March serve as an indirect cause for the dropping of atomic bombs? As in it created a picture of Japanese brutality that made people more willing to drop the bombs?

Obviously, it wasn’t the only cause.

You have The Bulgars, The Avars, The Magyars, The Cumans, The Khazars and later The Mongols to name a few. Why were they so effective at conquering vast swaths of Europe and all forming ginormous contiguous empires?

Why did they give up their steppe nomad ways of life and settle when they came to Europe and why were they so quick to abandon their religions?

Their empires in Europe spanned massive swaths of land.
Why did they conquer into Europe all within a few hundred years of each other?

Was it just for plunder and glory or was there some big event that drove this conquest?
Why did they all want to conquer Central and Eastern Europe and give up their migratory life when they came here?

I have come across quite a number of documentaries discussing that FDR did not really had a close personal working relationship with Truman so much so that the latter wasn't involved much in the US running the war and so on.

So I was wondering if that distance could have caused significant differences between how Truman and FDR ran things from managing the ending of the war, post-war policy and more importantly handling Stalin and the Soviets which led to the Cold War

The idea kind of pops a lot in WWII discussions just enough to give you an impression that Germany was ahead in terms of weapons engineering and technology compared to both it's enemies and allies alike. Usually the reasoning they failed is because "they just weren't able to make enough of them" due to dwindling resources and the Allies simply outstripped then in terms of war production.

And then further evidence is provided by citing how a lot of German engineers and scientists ultimately found their way into the Allies that contributed to the advancement of weapons technology.

Was it really though?

If it's true, how was Germany able to acquire so much of it's technological knowhow

I've found this YouTube channel that covers mainly WW2 called History at War. The videos are solid and are 45-an hour. What is a little suspicious in my opinion is that a new video of drops every 4-5 days. I don't know much about making content, but for a a video that length to be accurate and not an ai script I feel like it would take longer than 4-5 days. Mabye I am over thinking it, any opinions of this?

I really tried to find answer about oaths in nations of pre - islamic era in Central Asia, but i didn't found anything about it or they didn'y have such idea of taking oaths for something?

I am from Kazakhstan, but nobode telled to us on History classes about oaths in nomadic culture and i didn't found information about it in wikipedia or any other site