Split (2)

train · 226k rows

question stringlengths 3 301	answer stringlengths 9 26.1k	context list
What did the public think of Castrati? How was life for them past their singing age? Did the public accept/approve the castration for music practice?	Oooh one in my subject area!! Best mark this in my diary, this only happens twice a year or so. :) Can I ask what made you think of the castrati? It’s a little hard to say what “people” thought of them, because the castrati kinda got around! Castrati went to work in England, France, Spain, most German courts, and eve...	[ "Historically, a strategy for avoiding the shift altogether was castration. \"Castrati\" are first documented in Italian church records from the 1550s. Mozart's \"Exultate Jubilate\", Allegri's \"Miserere\" and parts of Handel's \"Messiah\" were written for this voice, whose distinctive timbre was widely exploited ...
why does our teeth not erode away when we are brushing our teeth (and using them in other ways) every single day?	If the tooth enamel is only gently weakened it can regenerate. Toothpaste is specifically made to help your teeth do this regeneration. If you significantly damage your tooth enamel it is gone forever and your tooth underneath will likely begin to rot.	[ "Brushing teeth properly helps prevent cavities, and periodontal, or gum disease, which causes at least one-third of adult tooth loss. If teeth are not brushed correctly and frequently, it could lead to the calcification of saliva minerals, forming tartar. Tartar hardens (then referred to as 'calculus') if not remo...
what's the significance of the queen's guard's hats? bonus explanation: what purpose do they serve in a modern attack with glowing uniforms and massive heads?	The queen's guard aren't commandos that get sent on covert Missions. They're meant to stand out, and be a very visible show. They aren't just ceremonial, though. They're full trained soldiers in their own right on full guard duty. But to do their job there is no need to hide or blend in. They want to be a very visi...	[ "BULLET::::- Various as the Knights, several near-identical knights who serve as background characters and comedy relief. Their features are obscured by their helmets, while the Queen's personal guard wear sunglasses and headsets in parody of the Secret Service. It is not uncommon for them to appear in their underg...
Origins of Japanese and Korean, and why they sound similar?	Korean and Japanese are both language isolates, that is, languages not provably related to any other language. Okay, recently a dialect of Japanese has been moved to related language, but so far there are no ties between Korean and Japanese. A proposed Altaic superfamily would still leave them less connected than Gae...	[ "In 2017 Martine Robbeets proposed that Japanese (and possibly Korean) originated as a hybrid language. She proposed that the ancestral home of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages was somewhere in northwestern Manchuria. A group of those proto-Altaic (\"Transeurasian\") speakers would have migrated south i...
Can you actually hear bullets whizzing past your head?	Yes you can. I've heard it.	[ "A bullet bow shockwave will be heard by any witness as long as the bullet speed is faster than the speed of sound, whether the bullet was fired from a weapon giving off an openly audible muzzle blast, or a mechanically-suppress-fired muzzle (Suppressed weapon) blast. If a bullet is fired from a suppressed weapon, ...
How did Native American tribes’ tactics to resist European encroachment evolve? With expulsion being a common fate for those lucky enough to survive, did streams of survivors travel to Western tribes, warning them of U.S. strength and brutality? If so, how did this change Native responses?	I think this question assumes a homogeneity among native tribes. Often tribes were fighting amongst themselves. Europeans often played a role as another tribe to be reckoned with, either as an ally or as an enemy, as a trading partner and/or arms supplier. The long term narrative is of the constant invasion and rape of...	[ "Interference or resistance from local inhabitants was a concern going back to the first explorations by France and Spain. This was especially of concern to Anglo-American settlers in the 19th century as they pushed the frontier ever westward. While Native Americans of coastal regions and East Texas were relatively...
how do snakes grow?	The number of vertebrae is genetically determined, as with us, and does not increase during the snake's lifetime. Their bones grow, just as with ours, and judging from the skeleton on-hand at work, although the relative space seems to remain more or less constant, indeed, in absolute terms the spacing increases.	[ "These snakes range in size from the diminutive hump-nosed viper, \"Hypnale hypnale\", that grows to an average total length (including tail) of only , to the bushmaster, \"Lachesis muta\", a species known to reach a maximum total length of in length.\n", "Growth is rapid; snakes may reach in total length at 1 ye...
how do tv game shows tax people who get cash on the spot?	Any cash prize (including lotteries) is generally considered income in the eyes of the IRS (or similar entity for other countries). The person/entity giving the money will report the transfer of money to the IRS (and in some cases, offer to withhold the expected taxes) , and it becomes the responsibility of the reci...	[ "Games that are not paid for will show a pop-up every time you play it—asking whether you’d like to try the free trial or either purchase, enter an unlock code (purchased or given through promotions), or rent the game. More on this below.\n", "BULLET::::- Game Show: A television show depicting a real contest, typ...
why did civil war soldiers not use revolvers exclusively?	First of all, I'm not sure why you think accuracy doesn't matter. Direct, close range, charges were not common and when they did occur the two lines would be separated by hundreds of yards to start. The Napoleonic line tactics fell out of favor pretty early in the war and the small unit tactics that developed were not ...	[ "For a Civil War soldier, owning a revolver as a Backup-Gun was important, so Smith & Wesson's cartridge revolvers, the \"Army Model 2\" and the Model 1 1/2 in caliber .32 rimfire came into popular demand with the outbreak of the American Civil War. Soldiers and officers on both sides of the conflict made private p...
Since kittens are born in litters from one pregnancy, does that make them twins/triplets/quadruplets?	They would be fraternal, not identical quadruplets/septuplets/whathaveyou. Unlike humans, female cats don't release eggs until after they have mated, sometimes after multiple times. With the sperm of several tom cats floating around in there, it is easy to have litters with very different looking kittens- definitely no...	[ "A litter is the live birth of multiple offspring at one time in animals from the same mother and usually from one set of parents, particularly from three to eight offspring. The word is most often used for the offspring of mammals, but can be used for any animal that gives birth to multiple young. In comparison, a...
how commonly known would the story of the Iliad, have been in the second century BC classical world?	A cup with a depiction of a scene of the Illiad was found in a grave of the first century AD in Denmark. I guess they knew what the scene meant.	[ "Oral tales have been formed into classic literature centuries later so that the historicity of the events is left to uncertainty. The Greek Heroic Age as described in the Iliad is dated to historic events in 1460 to 1103 BC according to the chronology of Saint Jerome.\n", "The main ancient source for the story i...
Was it common to actually eat the bizarre dishes seen in the cookbooks of the 1970s and earlier?	Yes, they were certainly a thing. Taste is capricious. /u/searocksandtrees has collected [answers about jello oddities before](_URL_1_), feat. /u/gothwalk, et al. /u/PeculiarLeah interprets it as [part of the recovery from rationing in World War II](_URL_0_), specifically mentioning bananas and ham with hollandaise.	[ "The most frequently ordered meal, even as late as the 1980s, was prawn cocktail, steak and Black Forest gateau. This is sometimes called the \"Great British Meal\". As Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham note in their 1997 book \"The Prawn Cocktail Years\", \"cooked as it should be, this much derided and often rid...
how is it that i'm left handed but do some activities like a right handed person would?	As I understand it, left/right-handedness isn't a 100% binary thing. You can be left-handed for most activities, but still be right-handed on a few/some others depending on how you were taught, how you grew up, etc.	[ "Also, it is not uncommon that people preferring to use the right hand prefer to use the left leg, e.g. when using a shovel, kicking a ball, or operating control pedals. In many cases, this may be because they are disposed for left-handedness but have been trained for right-handedness. In the sport of cricket, some...
if some humans have neanderthal dna while others don't, does that mean some humans are at least somewhat of a different species than others.	The definition of species is indeed somewhat loose but most agree on the basic that successfully interbreeding and having fertile offspring means that you are part of the the same species. This is why many people now think that Neanderthals should be considered a different subspecies of humans not a different species ...	[ "The following is a list of physical traits that distinguish Neanderthals from modern humans. However, not all of them distinguish specific Neanderthal populations from various geographic areas, evolutionary periods, or other extinct humans. Also, many of these traits are present in modern humans to varying extent ...
How do dogs make ATP?	Gluconeogenesis is the production of glucose from protein-rich sources. This is quite commonly used for production of energy across all living beings (plant and animal alike). In humans this is frequently seen in ketogenic diets or diets treating diabetes (and, to an extent, also the Atkins diet that was popular in the...	[ "ATP is a molecule found only in and around living cells, and as such it gives a direct measure of biological concentration and health. ATP is quantified by measuring the light produced through its reaction with the naturally-occurring firefly enzyme Luciferase using a Luminometer. The amount of light produced is d...
on gawker websites i need to spam the back button to actually go back, why?	What happens when you click on one of their links is you get taken to a proxy page. This proxy page basically acts like a handler for requests. It then passes you on to the relevant page. When you press back on any webpage the browser you use automatically re-enters any data it did the first time around. An example of ...	[ "Backscatter occurs because worms and spam messages often forge their sender addresses. Instead of simply rejecting a spam message, a misconfigured mail server sends a bounce message to such a forged address. This normally happens when a mail server is configured to relay a message to an after-queue processing step...
often people say when you get a splinter your body will learn to push it out at some point. how does it happen?	Your body doesn't learn to push it out, it's just that tissue regrows in such a way that the splinter is eventually moved towards the outside of the body, which eventually results in the splinter emerging from the skin.	[ "Generally, a splinter causes an initial feeling of pain as the sharp object makes its initial penetration through the body. Through this penetration, the object cuts through the cutaneous layer of the skin, and settles in the subcutaneous layer of the skin, and can even penetrate further down, breaking the sub-cut...
how do prince rupert's drops work?	Because the glass is rapidly cooled it sets up a state of high residual stress, compressive stress on the surface and tensile stress in the center. This effectively toughens the glass of the head similar to how Gorilla glass is toughened on cell phone screens. The residual compressive stress in the glass resists crack...	[ "Prince Rupert's drops are produced by dropping molten glass drops into cold water. The water rapidly cools and solidifies the glass from the outside inward. This thermal quenching may be described using a simplified model of a rapidly cooled sphere. Prince Rupert's drops have remained a scientific curiosity for ne...
why/how did smoking become less painful on my throat and lungs over time?	You destroyed the nerves that were on the surface, and the cilia that are in your lungs that cause coughing when a foreign substance is introduced. Cilia are fine hairs in your lungs that move out mucous. Smoking burns them away. If you stop smoking/weed for a length of time, you will regain your lung response to ...	[ "Smoking has been linked to a variety of disorders of the stomach. Tobacco is known to stimulate acid production and impairs production of the protective mucus. This leads to development of ulcers in the majority of smokers.\n", "Smoking also increases the chance of heart disease, stroke, atherosclerosis, and per...
how is a glass of wine everyday good for you? :)	It is not. There is proof to suggest that the antioxidants in wine are good for you. But with that said, current consensus is that any alcohol is bad for you, and for virtually all drinks, the downsides outweigh any upsides. Drinking is always bad and should be avoided for optimal health.	[ "Wine is a popular and important drink that accompanies and enhances a wide range of cuisines, from the simple and traditional stews to the most sophisticated and complex haute cuisines. Wine is often served with dinner. Sweet dessert wines may be served with the dessert course. In fine restaurants in Western count...
What are some recent major depopulation events?	European discovery of the Americas. Close to 90% of Native Americans died to diseases.	[ "Depopulation began in the early 1900s, accelerated in the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, and has generally continued through the most recent national census in 2010. The population decline has been broadly attributed to numerous factors, especially changes in agricultural practices, rapid improvements in urban tran...
how does motorcycle rpm and gearing work.	The RPM of a motorcycle engine as well as how the gearing works, functions on the same principles as any other engine. The whole system is setup slightly different as space is an issue. But the basics are all the same. To answer if your engine is doing the same work at 5k RPM on 2nd gear vs 5th simply, is no, it's not ...	[ "The clutch in a manual-shift motorcycle transmission is typically an arrangement of plates stacked in alternating fashion, one geared on the inside to the engine and the next geared on the outside to the transmission input shaft. Whether wet (rotating in engine oil) or dry, the plates are squeezed together by a sp...
what would happen if coke stopped advertising for a year?	I'm assuming you mean advertising as in media (TV, radio, billboards, etc). You should note that Coke advertises EVERYWHERE and you may not even realize it. The soda machine with a giant coke bottle on the front? Glasses with a coke logo at TGIF? That's all advertising too. Even if they stopped all "ads", stopped ...	[ "The tobacco industry appealed against this decision, but it was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case. \"Various governmental and voluntary health organizations made extremely creative spots and provided them to stations.\" In response, tobacco c...
why does online shopping shipping cost so much more than personally sending packages?	a few examples. -amazon (not books)- free under certain conditions, reasonable when not-free. probably has a deal with ups/usps for volume discount. -amazon - books - media mail at usps costs $2.65. there is not really a cheaper way to send a book. if you pay less than $4 for a book + shipping the seller is taking a lo...	[ "One advantage of shopping online is being able to quickly seek out deals for items or services provided by many different vendors (though some local search engines do exist to help consumers locate products for sale in nearby stores). Search engines, online price comparison services and discovery shopping engines ...
how can our brains, while sleeping, create images of people/things we've never met or seen before and how can dreams create deja vu/seemingly predict future occurrences?	Dreams don't actually create déjà vu. That phenomenon is actually created by a slight delay between sensory reception and neural recognition. Basically you witness something via sight, sound, etc, but for whatever reason your brain takes a few extra nanoseconds to process the information, so you feel as though you've e...	[ "This theory suggests that dreaming is an \"unlearning process\" in which our brains bring up material to be thrown out like a computer attempting to clean itself of things we do not need to remember. That is, the subconscious organizes things, solves these problems, and then communicates them to the individual via...
what are turkeys being pardoned from if they have not done anything?	They are "being pardoned from the sentence of death for being a turkey at thanksgiving". It is just a silly tradition.	[ "A number of U.S. states have similar turkey-pardoning events, including Minnesota. The pardoning ceremonies have also been extended to other holidays; for instance, Erie County, New York's county executive facetiously pardons a butter lamb during Holy Week.\n", "In \"The West Wing\" episode \"Shibboleth,\" when ...
How did the Norway GDP increase by ~$22k in a 4 year span?	edit-- not an economist so maybe someone else will prove/disprove the following GDP per capita increased by USD 22k in 4 years. The important thing to note here is that it is in USD, so let's just run a quick conversion from USD to NOK for 2009 and 2013: 77k USD - > 77/0.14 - > 550 NOK in 2009 at the rate of approx...	[ "Norway's mainland GDP, which excludes the oil and gas sectors and the shipping industry, shrank 1.0% in the three months to March after a 0.8% decline in the final quarter of 2008, with recession counted as two consecutive quarterly figures showing a contraction. Mainland GDP is considered a better indicator of th...
Why were so many large college football stadiums built in the US in the 1920's?	The Colleseum in Los Angeles was built for the 1932 Olympics. Cleveland built their Munincipal Stadium in an attempt to augment their bid for the 1932 Olympics. Not only did they not get the Olyimpics, they could not convince the Cleveland Indians to play there until the ...	[ "In North America, multipurpose stadiums were built primarily during the 1960s and 1970s as shared home stadiums for Major League Baseball and National Football League or Canadian Football League teams. Some stadiums were renovated to allow multipurpose configurations during the 1980s. This type of stadium is assoc...
why is computer image recognition so hard?	I know we aren't supposed to post just links, but I don't think there's a better explanation than [this WaitButWhy article](_URL_0_). Scroll down to "The Road From ANI to AGI" paragraph. Edit: For those about to tl;dr - over millions of years of evolution our brains became really good at recognizing objects, because t...	[ "The classical problem in computer vision, image processing, and machine vision is that of determining whether or not the image data contains some specific object, feature, or activity. Different varieties of the recognition problem are described in the literature:\n", "Computer algorithms for recognizing objects...
If protons & neutrons are each composed of 3 quarks, is the atomic nucleus just a jumble of quarks, or is each set of 3 quarks a distinct particle?	These pictures of 3 quarks making up a nucleon is a crude simplification. A proton is a very complex bound state that consists of the 3 valence quarks as well as a fluctuating part of gluons and quark anti-quark pairs. Even though the nucleons are a seemingly a mess, they can be more or less be seen as distinct part...	[ "Inside protons and neutrons, there are fundamental particles called quarks. The two most common types of quarks are \"up quarks\", which have a charge of +/, and \"down quarks\", with a −/ charge. Quarks arrange themselves in sets of three such that they make protons and neutrons. In a proton, whose charge is +1, ...
Do eggs change weight as they develop?	Yes, the [egg loses weight during incubation](_URL_0_).	[ "An average of 146 eggs are laid per batch. Each egg weighs around 1.63 mg and ranges from 1.13-1.89 mg. The specific time in which the eggs are laid does not seem to determine larval fitness. Similarly, the range of egg weight seems insignificant as there is no known information on whether or not quality/health of...
intelligence quotient / iq, what exactly is it and what are its criticisms? why is it potentially wrong?	IQ is a measure of how 'intelligent' you are compared to the average person your age where you live. Having an IQ of 100 by definition means that you are exactly average for your age and area. A 20 year old and 12 year old writing the same test and marking the exact same answers would get different results. The 12 ye...	[ "A large body of research indicates that intelligence measures such as intelligence quotient (IQ) varies between individuals and between certain groups, and that they correlate with socially important outcomes such as educational achievement, employment, crime, poverty and socioeconomic status.\n", "An intelligen...
when someone talks about rendering a video, or an animation, what does that mean? and how would not rendering it affect it?	Let's compare video editing to building a car. So you're editing your video, but really it's a collection of parts. Multiple footage clips, effects like color correction, etc. The computer is able to tell you that "yes, these parts put together make a car" but rendering is where the parts actually get put together and...	[ "Rendering or image synthesis is the automatic process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model (or models in what collectively could be called a \"scene\" file) by means of computer programs. Also, the results of displaying such a model can be called a render. A scene file c...
why do so many americans blame obama for practically everything?	Because most American citizens have very little idea of how their government actually works, and how limited the president's power is, domestically and economically. The president is the most well-known governmental figure, and it's a lot simpler to blame him than to go watch C-SPAN or check voting records and see tha...	[ "Obama commented on the role of government that \"Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time — but it does require us to act in our time.\" And he added while the American people never gave up their skepticism of a strong federal government, they also neve...
Why is Neptune warmer than Uranus?	There isn't a great deal between the two, but because of the huge distance that both are from the Sun neither gets much warmth from the Sun. Instead some heat is generated by internal motion within the planet, partially assisted by the Sun striking the pole as Neptune is "tipped over"	[ "Neptune's more varied weather when compared to Uranus is due in part to its higher internal heating. Although Neptune lies over 50% farther from the Sun than Uranus, and receives only 40% its amount of sunlight, the two planets' surface temperatures are roughly equal. The upper regions of Neptune's troposphere rea...
why can't another wifi device interfere with another one	> Hey, I'm the router, send me your information" as Man in the Middle Attack They can do exactly this. It is known as an [ARP poisoning attack](_URL_0_) and it is a type of man-in-the-middle. An attacker sends spoofed ARP packets to other machines on the network, causing them to route all packets through the attacke...	[ "One of the challenges of a wireless system is the possibility of interference. Radio frequency wireless systems may get interference from other wireless devices. Some wireless intercom designs reduce this interference by using \"digital spread spectrum\".\n", "Compared to wired systems, wireless networks are fre...
if we could take a snapshot of every atom in the universe, could we effectively predict the future?	Quantum Mechanics at least suggest, if not prove, that there may be an element of inherent randomness that cannot be eliminated. If that is the case, then it is certainly at least plausible that there is some degree of unpredictability that also cannot be eliminated in macroscopic events.	[ "While the future can never be predicted with absolute certainty, present understanding in various scientific fields allows for the prediction of some far-future events, if only in the broadest outline. These fields include astrophysics, which has revealed how planets and stars form, interact, and die; particle phy...
why are males naturally attractive without make-up?	Because we are conditioned to believe that girls need make up to be attractive, not to mention that women have used make up for a long time creating a "norm"	[ "Regardless, by using cosmetic surgery, females can change various aspects of their body to make themselves more attractive by displaying a more desirable waist-hip ratio. This can lead to competition with other females who may be considered less attractive in comparison. When women change their appearances, such a...
Were Asian Americans Segregated and considered "Coloured" in the 1950's to 60's?	Yes they were. Asians were subject to segregational practices in many cities. I wrote a bit about this topic previously [here](_URL_0_), but am always happy to add on to it or have more of a discussion on the topic. Filipinos, for example, were prominent targets of attacks by white people. This was often rooted in whit...	[ "The 1950s and 1960s was an era when racial discrimination against Afro-Americans was widely practiced in the state of Michigan and most of the Midwestern states. Public accommodations that could be used by black tourists and travelers were so scarce in the northern United States that New York City resident Victor ...
in traffic, why do cyclists by default have to use the road instead of the sidewalk? aren't motor vehicles and cyclists a bigger danger to each other than cyclists and pedestrians would be?	Bicycles and cars are supposed to follow the same rules, and both drivers and riders are responsible for maintaining situational awareness. This is intended to create a predictable flow. As others have mentioned, while there are notions about how best to walk on a sidewalk, there aren't really any rules or regulations...	[ "Cyclists may travel either in the street or on the sidewalk. On the sidewalk they must behave so as not to cause danger to pedestrians (which is an arbitrary judgment that seems to translate into traveling at walking pace). Moreover, in some of the cities within the greater Los Angeles region, it is illegal to cyc...
why is the taste/smell of licorice so polarizing?	This is the same with most bitter foods like coffee and beer. People have an inherent disgust for things bitter and you have to learn that something bitter is good. After you have related the bitter taste of licorice with the sweet taste, or the bitter taste of beer with alcohol you start ignoring the bitter taste in t...	[ "Miraculin itself does not taste sweet. When taste buds are exposed to miraculin, the protein binds to the sweetness receptors. This causes normally-sour-tasting acidic foods, such as citrus, to be perceived as sweet. The effect lasts up to about an hour.\n", "It has the unusual property that it either tastes ver...
how does all dna of a fully grown human fit in a baby?	It's better than that -- all the DNA fits in almost every one of the trillion cells in a human body! How? Because DNA Is written extremely small, using just a tiny molecule (an amino acid) to represent each "letter" of the information. And DNA takes the shape of a long string of such "letters" which is all folded up.	[ "Mosaic trisomy 16, a rare chromosomal disorder, is compatible with life, therefore a baby can be born alive. This happens when only some of the cells in the body contain the extra copy of chromosome 16. Some of the consequences include slow growth before birth.\n", "During conception, the father's sperm cell and...
If you were to ingest or inject yourself with ATP, would it provide you with energy? Would consuming more act like a sugar rush or an energy drink?	ATP is fairly large, and it's purine functionality would make it difficult to enter the cell without transport. Outside of the cell it acts as a signalling molecule, which plays a role in regulating heart rate, blood coagulation, and inflammatory/immune response. The metabolic byproducts of ATP degradation are also sig...	[ "Breaking one of ATP's phosphorus bonds generates approximately 30.5 kilojoules per Mole of ATP (7.3 kcal). ADP can be converted, or powered back to ATP through the process of releasing the chemical energy available in food; in humans, this is constantly performed via aerobic respiration in the mitochondria. Plants...
Can we reproduce every wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum?	Even if I only have an LED, which emits light at one singular frequency, we can still get any wavelength we want by moving that LED and let the Doppler effect take care of the rest.	[ "There is a minimum possible wavelength, given by twice the equilibrium separation \"a\" between atoms. Any wavelength shorter than this can be mapped onto a wavelength longer than 2\"a\", due to the periodicity of the lattice. This can be thought as one consequence of Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, the lattice ...
Is topical Vitaminc C effective for boosting collagen or is the beauty/skincare industry somewhat falsely claiming this?	Vitamin C can diffuse through the cellular membranes but it's very slow and it has to be from high concentration to low. Here's some literature about topical Vitamin C :) _URL_2_ _URL_1_ _URL_0_	[ "Vitamin C – specifically, in the form of \"ascorbate\" – performs numerous physiological functions in the human body by serving as an enzyme substrate and/or cofactor and an electron donor. These functions include the synthesis of collagen, carnitine, and neurotransmitters; the synthesis and catabolism of tyrosine...
Why on earth did Krushchev try to put offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba in the first place?	There's a lot to it, but the gambit was that a) the US had put missiles in the USSR's back yard (the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, to say nothing of the [over a dozen](_URL_0_) nuclear deployments that the US ringed the USSR and China with in the late 1950s), and this was both payback and a stimulus to remove them; b) th...	[ "Additionally, placing nuclear missiles on Cuba was a way for the USSR to show their support for Cuba and support the Cuban people who viewed the United States as a threatening force, as the latter had become their ally after the Cuban Revolution of 1959. According to Khrushchev, the Soviet Union's motives were \"a...
What is the smallest possible Goldilocks zone for any star?	Probably a red/brown dwarf where the goldilocks zone will be close to the star itself, adjusting the mass and temperature of the star so that it's right outside of the Roche limit for a rocky planet.	[ "BULLET::::- In astrobiology, the Goldilocks zone refers to the habitable zone around a star: As Stephen Hawking put it, “like Goldilocks, the development of intelligent life requires that planetary temperatures be ‘just right’”. The Rare Earth Hypothesis uses the Goldilocks principle in the argument that a planet ...
why can't dental crowns be whitened/have something placed over them to make them whiter?	Crowns are made of non-porous material that is very, very hard. They don't discolor or stain, so it's uncommon for them to need to be whitened. Crowns are matched to your natural teeth colour, so if you plan on bleaching your teeth, you should bleach them prior to the crowns being colour-matched, or let the dentist k...	[ "Preventive and restorative dental care is very important as well as considerations for esthetic issues since the crown are yellow from exposure of dentin due to enamel loss. The main objectives of treatment is pain relief, preserving patient's remaining dentition, and to treat and preserve the patient's occlusal v...
What's myth and what's truth about the legend of Rasputin?	* /u/kieslowskifan has a fantastic post on the [creation of the Rasputin mythology](_URL_0_) out of contemporary Russian court gossip and post-Revolution anti-Romanov polemic. It addresses the "power" aspects of the legend * /u/carlton_the_doorman addresses the rumors specifically connected to [Rasputin's assassination...	[ "BULLET::::- In the 2003 novel \"The Romanov Prophecy\" by Steve Berry, Rasputin is depicted as a mysterious and prophetic figure who predicts his own demise, as well as that of the Russian Empire, but then a return of the Romanovs to power. The first two of those prophecies are based on an actual letter that the h...
how do some websites offer free returns on unwanted goods?	Some of it is about price. Whether that comes from charging the customer more, or getting the goods cheaper. Some websites (such as Amazon) have stipulations about free returns depending on who you purchased from or what good it is, unless you pay for Prime, so it isn't actually free. And of course, there are always st...	[ "Travel bargain websites collect and publish bargain rates by advising consumers where to find them online (sometimes but not always through a direct link). Rather than providing detailed search tools, these sites generally focus on offering advertised specials, such as last-minute sales from travel suppliers eager...
What is the oldest translated book?	An actual historian can give you a more detailed answer, but you should check out the Wikipedia page on [ancient literature](_URL_1_). The short answer would be the Sumerian texts discovered in Abu Salabikh and the Akkadian legend of Etana. While there are earlier examples of writing that has been translated, these are...	[ "The translators appear to have otherwise made no first-hand study of ancient manuscript sources, even those that – like the Codex Bezae – would have been readily available to them. In addition to all previous English versions (including, and contrary to their instructions, the \"Rheimish New Testament\" which in t...
posting for a friend, "so color is just a specific reflection of light, correct? would that mean that a planet under another star (ex. krypton and it's red sun) would have completely different colors?"	No, not completely. The colour of an object is depending on what light it reflect but our eyes can only see colours within certain wavelengths. That doesn't change on another planet. Certainly a different colour from a light source changes the colour you see from an object but that can be shown on Earth no need to go t...	[ "Astronomers originally supposed that the entire trans-Neptunian population would show a similar red surface colour, as they were thought to have originated in the same region and subjected to the same physical processes. Specifically, SDOs were expected to have large amounts of surface methane, chemically altered ...
why is an accounting firm responsible for the academy award envelopes?	Tabulating vote data, ensuring its accuracy, and security from disclosure are all things that fall under the realm of accounting/auditing.	[ "Oscar (Oscar Nunez) informs Michael (Steve Carell) that the office must spend a $4300 surplus or lose it in next year's budget. When Michael opens up the floor for suggestions, factions break out and officemates square off against one another in order to get what they want. Oscar suggests that they replace the cop...
Just how successful or influential was the global protest movement in shaping the course of the Vietnam War?	Have you read Todd Gitlin's [The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making & Unmaking of the New Left](_URL_0_) (1980)? Gitlin is now an academic, but during 1963-4, he used to be the head of the SDS, the main student activist organization in the US, and was involved heavily with the anti-war movement. He wro...	[ "High-profile opposition to the Vietnam war turned to street protests in an effort to turn U.S. political opinion against the war. The protests gained momentum from the Civil Rights Movement that had organized to oppose segregation laws, which had laid a foundation of theory and infrastructure on which the anti-war...
When in high school I remember somebody telling me the fire us made of a different sate of matter (different being not solid, liquid or gas) called plasma. Is there any truth to this statement and if so what exactly is plasma?	> Is there any truth to this statement and if so what exactly is plasma? Absolutely it is true! The standard response is that plasmas are the fourth state of matter, just like you can heat a solid into a liquid and a liquid into a gas you can heat a gas into a plasma. The transition happens because individual atoms ...	[ "Plasma is any gas whose atoms or molecules have been ionized, and is a separate phase of matter. This is most commonly achieved by heating the gas to extremely high temperatures, although other methods exist. Plasma becomes increasingly viscous at higher temperatures, to the point where other matter has trouble pa...
Why does damped oscillation depend on velocity?	Friction forces are not typically considered damping. You are confusing energy dissipation (which can come from anything, including friction) with damping. Damping is a type of energy dissipation, as is friction. But damping is a specific type of energy dissipation, specifucally given to energy dissipation proportio...	[ "In real oscillators, friction, or damping, slows the motion of the system. Due to frictional force, the velocity decreases in proportion to the acting frictional force. While in a simple undriven harmonic oscillator the only force acting on the mass is the restoring force, in a damped harmonic oscillator there is ...
Why are low-pitch sounds generally relaxing while high-pitch sounds are annoying?	Because the higher the frequency the more waves are hitting your ears (and all the stuff in them) per second and the lower the frequency the less that is. Say I punch you in the arm at a rate of 4 times per minute, it's not as bad as being punched 400 times per minute. Just pretend the movement of your arm from my pun...	[ "BULLET::::5. Blowing more softly lowers the pitch; blowing harder raises it. Breath force can change the pitch by three semitones. This is why ocarinas generally have no tuning mechanism or dynamic range, and why it is hard to learn to play one in tune.\n", "The difference in pitch of the sounds arises because t...
why is a viral disease, cat leukemia, named as a cancer type?	This virus causes the cats to get this type of cancer. Just like some strains of HPV result in cervical/penile (and throat) cancer in humans, some viruses will integrate into the genome of some of your cells and cause them to turn cancerous.	[ "A lymphoma is a type of cancer arising from lymphoid cells. In AIDS, the incidences of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, primary cerebral lymphoma and Hodgkin's disease are all increased. There are three different varieties of AIDS-related lymphoma: Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, B-cell immunoblastic lymphoma, and Burkitt's...
Is it true that Germans didn't actually use the term Blitzkrieg themselves?	It’s true the term “Blitzkrieg” does not come up often in German plans, old memoirs, or communiques. It’s closest word or phrase that the Germans/Prussians may have used more often was Bewegungkrieg or maneuver warfare. The term Blitzkrieg however pops up more post-war to describe the tactics of their Wehrmacht during ...	[ "Despite being common in German and English-language journalism during World War II, the word was never used by the Wehrmacht as an official military term, except for propaganda. According to David Reynolds, \"Hitler himself called the term Blitzkrieg 'A completely idiotic word' (ein ganz blödsinniges Wort)\". Some...
how would we know how much successful voting fraud is happening, if by definition successful attempts at fraud go undetected?	This is a bit like Russel's Teapot--it's very difficult if not impossible to prove that there isn't a teapot floating around somewhere between Mars and Earth. It's more useful to focus on the fact there is no evidence to suggest that there is. There are many ways we could detect large-scale in-person voter fraud i...	[ "Electoral fraud in the country was usually done by manipulating the ballots. However, a new technique has arisen which just involves the manipulating the \"election return\" or \"ER\", which is a summary of the votes in precincts. Evidence exist showing that the 32,000 sets of overprinted ERs of the Commission of ...
why do i get automated phone calls that promptly hang up?	I believe they're called 'robocalls' and they're done to see if your number is a live line, in which case your number is sold to spammers	[ "Mobile phone services are prepaid. A person finding himself with inadequate prepaid time to make a call will ring up the intended recipient of the call and hang up immediately. The receiver of the call, hearing the phone ring once and seeing the number, understands himself to have been \"beeped\". Alternatively, i...
why is the lesbian/gay/transgender community referred to with so many different acronyms, many of which are long and confusing?	Individuals don't decide these terms. We in the community are just as confused as everyone else sometimes. "Oh, so that's what we're calling ourselves now.... okay" Any marginalized community has smaller groups in it that are further marginalized by that community and society at large. They get double hate. I know s...	[ "An addendum to the terminology of homosexuality is the seemingly ever-changing acronym, with its roots in the 1980s when female homosexuals began to identify themselves as lesbians instead of gay. This led to references of \"gay and lesbian\" every time homosexuals were discussed in the media. Non-heterosexuals su...
why do people lose their senses of hearing and sight, but not their sense of touch, taste, or smell?	People can also lose their sense of taste and smell...you are just a lot less likely to notice them. People also can lose there sense of touch over part of their bodies, but there are not a lot of neurological disorders to totally remove touch...at least not without also killing you.	[ "This interplay of various ways of conceiving the world could be compared to the experience of synesthesia, where stimulus of one sense causes a perception by another, seemingly unrelated sense, as in musicians who can taste the intervals between notes they hear (Beeli \"et al\"., 2005), or artists who can smell co...
If shoot a gun in a car at 10 m/s, and the car is travelling at 5 m/s relative to an outside observer, is the bullet really moving at exactly 15 m/s? Do velocities really transfer fully?	For the numbers you mention, the answer is for all intents and purposes yes. But according to special relativity velocities u and v add according to the formula w = (u+v)/(1+uv/c^2) where c is the speed of light. For small u and v this works out to very close to just w = u+v.	[ "From Eq. 1 we can write for the velocity of the gun/shooter: V = mv/M. This shows that despite the high velocity of the bullet, the small bullet-mass to shooter-mass ratio results in a low recoil velocity (V) although the force and momentum are equal.\n", "BULLET::::- formula_11 = parameter calculated from a wei...
why didn't other european powers shut down hitler as soon as he violated the versailles treaty?	That would require mobilization of troops and resources that many European powers just didn't have. World War I decimated many European countries in manpower, resources and financially and the Great Depression didn't help any. Not to mention that many politicians wanted to avoid war because it would have been detrime...	[ "Alongside this, Hertzog saw France as the main threat to peace in Europe, viewing the Treaty of Versailles as an unjust and vindictive peace treaty, and argued the French were the principal trouble-makers in Europe by seeking to uphold the Versailles treaty. Hertzog argued that if Adolf Hitler had a belligerent fo...
Why did the Germans seemingly abandon their colonial holdings in Asia during WWI?	They were un defendable these colonies were right on the doorstep of Australia and New Zealand two British colonies with millions of people compared to the German colonies couple of thousands. If they had tried they would have failed. Any attempt to reinforce would have resulted in the ships sinking by the Royal Navy....	[ "Germany lost control of its colonial empire when the First World War began in 1914 and many of its colonies were seized by the Allies during the first weeks of the war. However some colonial military units held out for a while longer: German South West Africa surrendered in 1915, Kamerun in 1916 and German East Af...
how is netflix able to provide seemingly perfect subtitles to basically every show/movie on their platform and what allows them to do this so well?	The people that make the show or movie write down the subtitles, from the script. They package that as a subtitle file inside the video file, and Netflix opens that up to show it to you if you enable subtitles.	[ "Netflix provides both subtitles and dubbed audio with its foreign language shows, including Brazil’s dystopian “3%” and the German thriller \"Dark\". Viewer testing indicates that its audience is more likely to finish watching a series if they select to view it with dubbed audio rather than translated subtitles. N...
how does venture capitalism work?	On one end, there are the big money funds. Some groups that have tons of money. Enough that they've already put a lot into traditional stocks and bonds and money market stuff. Now they want to take some more and put it in a different area: new companies that aren't on the stock market yet. On the other end, there ...	[ "Venture capital is also a way in which the private and public sectors can construct an institution that systematically creates business networks for the new firms and industries, so that they can progress and develop. This institution helps identify promising new firms and provide them with finance, technical expe...
What was the general public perception of Dunkirk immediately after the rescue throughout the nations involved in WWII?	I can give a broad summary from the point of view of the British as, like so many other British War myths, it is more complicated than it has subsequently been reduced to and therefore infinitely more interesting as a result (in my admittedly nerdy opinion). So I will assume the common narrative is widely known, the s...	[ "In the Second World War, ten of the fleet of sixteen ships were commandeered for active duty, four of which were lost. The Dunkirk evacuation was perhaps the company's finest hour, with \"Mona's Isle (IV)\" being the first to leave Dover and the first to complete the round trip during the evacuation. Eight company...
How do you calculate the focal length of a multi-lens setup?	In my opinion, the cleanest formalism for linear optics is using [transfer matrices](_URL_0_). There is a fixed matrix for each type of optical element, and to find the optics of a series of optical elements, you just multiply the corresponding matrices in the right order. Then you get one final matrix that describes t...	[ "Many lens manufacturers produce or produced prime lenses at or near the following focal lengths: 20mm, 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 40mm, 50mm, 85mm, 105mm, 135mm, 200mm, 300mm, 400mm, and 600mm. For these lengths many manufacturers produce two or more lenses with the same focal length but with different maximum apertures to...
how do they measure the visual acuity of animals?	One of the oldest way to test it is the following: 1. set up 2 doors: one with food and one without. Put a label on top of each door with black square (door no food) and black square with a single white stripe (door with food). 2. During the first few times, open both door and let the animal go. After a few times they...	[ "For a human eye with excellent acuity, the maximum theoretical resolution is 50 CPD (1.2 arcminute per line pair, or a 0.35 mm line pair, at 1 m). A rat can resolve only about 1 to 2 CPD. A horse has higher acuity through most of the visual field of its eyes than a human has, but does not match the high acuity of ...
how can north korea have work camps and not get in trouble for it?	Because they're a country. They're not a person and can be arrested by the police. The only way to force another country to do something is either from the threat or application of military or economic action. North Korea has a military 9 million strong and doesn't have an economy to ruin.	[ "In October 2014, North Korea admitted for the first time that it had labor camps. Choe Myong Nam, a North Korean foreign ministry, said \"Both in law and practice, we do have reform through labor detention camps – no, detention centers – where people are improved through their mentality and look on their wrongdoin...
Does mental/emotional trauma halt maturation of the mind?	Clinical psychologist here. The effects aren't nearly that predictable or lawful. Various effects are possible, its not a straightforward case of arrested development. Some victims of abuse are amazingly [resilient](_URL_0_).	[ "Its theoretical basis emphasizes early trauma in shaping an individual's consciousness. It claims that trauma that takes place before, during and soon after birth has strong influences on how someone interprets and copes with their future life. These early preverbal traumata, as well as later difficult childhood e...
who pays for the plane ticket back to your home country if you’re denied entry to a country?	The passenger legally has to pay, but the airline is required to take them back no matter what. If the airline will actually get their money is another question.	[ "An onward ticket can be required, based on the countries' entry requirements (which may or may not include the onward ticket). Many countries insist a flight ticket be held out from their country, which must be presented upon arrival at immigration. They set this requirement, so that if travellers run out of money...
I heard in a PBS documentary that Napoleon's policies set the framework for what would become modern France. How specifically did he help build this framework? And to what extent did Napoleon pick up on the shortcomings of the French Revolution to spur the country into its 'modernity'?	By "set the framework for modern France," the documentary was probably referring to the [Civil Code](_URL_0_) of 1804. That link provides the Code in its entirety, so you can peruse at your leisure. The Civil Code standardized legal jurisdictions across all of France regarding subjects such as inheritance, civil righ...	[ "Outside France the Revolution had a major impact. Its ideas became widespread. Roberts argues that Napoleon was responsible for key ideas of the modern world, so that, \"meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on-were protected, ...
why african americans are not given the prefix of their country of origin while european's are?	Because Black Americans who are descendants of slaves usually don't know their family's country of origin. Slave owners and traders were not interested in the ethnic origins of their slaves and kept only the most rudimentary records. Many Black Americans find it impossible to trace their families back more than a few g...	[ "Many African Americans have expressed a preference for the term \"African American\" because it was formed in the same way as the terms for the many other ethnic groups currently living in the nation. Some argued further that, because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement and systema...
What Really Happened Between Edison and Tesla?	Tesla claims, in his autobiographical [My Inventions](_URL_1_), the following regarding his time at the Machine Works in NY: > For nearly a year my regular hours were from 10.30 A.M. until 5 o'clock the next morning without a day's exception. Edison said to me: "I have had many hard-working assistants but you take ...	[ "The investors showed little interest in Tesla's ideas for new types of alternating current motors and electrical transmission equipment. After the utility was up and running in 1886, they decided that the manufacturing side of the business was too competitive and opted to simply run an electric utility. They forme...
why do dogs drink out of the toilet, even though you give them fresh water?	As far as the dog's concerned, a source of water is a source of water. All he'll care about is that there's always water there, it's clean (by the dog's standards) and at a convenient head height for drinking. Dogs are also creatures of habit and will keep going back to the same places for food and water just because t...	[ "According to Alexei Vereshchagin, a graduate student of Poyarkov's who has studied them, the dogs generally go out of their way to avoid conflict with humans, and rarely defecate in busy areas or onto pavements.\n", "Dogs can be bathed by being sprayed with a hand-held shower head, or doused with water from a bu...
How large was the U.S involvement in the Boxer rebellion?	The Boxer Rebellion, which took place at the start of the 20th century, was a 3-way power struggle between Chinese peasants, the Boxers (a xenophobic, anti-Christian, anti-modernization, mystic religious group), the Qing Empire and (mostly) Western foreign powers. The United States desired to set up commercial operati...	[ "The Boxer Rebellion was a proto-nationalist movement in China between 1898 and 1901, so called because it was led by fighters who called themselves the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists. The United States was part of an Eight-Nation Alliance that brought 20,000 armed troops to China, defeated the Imper...
what is happening in our heads that allow thousands of people to sing, shout, clap or speak in almost perfect unison?	I haven't been able to find anything completely definitive, but the phenomenon you're talking about is called [entrainment](_URL_0_) (specifically, beat induction), and is similar to how fireflies synchronize their flashes. There's a neural deficiency known as [beat deafness](_URL_1_) that prevents people from being a...	[ "By a sole speaker, it is a form of interjection. In a group, it takes the form of call and response: the cheer is initiated by one person exclaiming \"Three cheers for...[someone or something]\" (or, more archaically, \"Three times three\"), then calling out \"hip hip\" (archaically, \"hip hip hip\") three times, ...
Are alligators and crocodiles actually living dinosaurs? Or did their ancestors just exist at the same time as dinosaurs?	Crocodylians, which include alligators and crocodiles, are not dinosaurs. They are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs, however (because birds are theropod dinosaurs). Dinosauria is a group that was originally defined by anatomist [Richard Owen](_URL_2_) based on a few described taxa, including [Iguanodon](_...	[ "As the Mesozoic progressed, the Protosuchia gave rise to more typically crocodile-like forms. While dinosaurs were the dominant animals on land, the crocodiles flourished in rivers, swamps, and the oceans, with far greater diversity than they have today. With the end Cretaceous extinction, the dinosaurs became ext...
if i drive 5 miles going 40 mph vs. the same 5 miles going 80 mph, will one require more gas than the other?	The short answer is that at those speeds yes, air resistance increases and going 80 will take more fuel. If you stick your hand out of the car window when doing both of those speeds you will notice that the air pushes harder on your hand at 80mph. The car engine needs to output more power to hold the speed because the ...	[ "On test by \"Autocar\" average fuel consumption for the total distance of 1404 miles proved to be 14.7 miles per gallon or 19.2 L/100 km. The maximum speed of the car was a (mean) of 113.5 mph, 182.6 km/h and the best run 114 or 183.2 km/h.\n", "BULLET::::- Gas mileage is below average (11-13L/100 km or 18.1–21....
what was happening in north america during the bible?	Natives. Literally. If we look at the bible as a semi-historical text, it goes back a few thousand years. People started migrating over the Land Bridge into North America from Asia before that. Meaning that while David fought Goliath, Geronima was chasing the buffalo. While Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, Sacagawea ...	[ "It seems a link between the colonial Bible Belt (the North, especially New England with its Puritan heritage) and the later Southern Bible Belt may be seen in the impact which some Northern figures had on the religious development of the South (perhaps not incomparable to the origins of Mormonism in the North, in ...
Humans at one point used to see slavery as a positive good. At what time did this change to where now modern humans are disgusted by its practice?	I can only speak of the American slave trade, and not anything that happened before 1492, but as far as the Transatlantic slave trade goes, slavery was never seen universally as a positive good. Bartolomé de las Casas was a contemporary of Christopher Columbus's and participated in early expeditions to America. He cri...	[ "In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a \"necessary evil\". White people of that time feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery. The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, in \...
Do videos and photos help children remember their early childhoods?	Yes and no? Depends on how you would define memory I guess. When we recall something we rewrite said memory in the way we recalled it at that moment. Stuff we miss-remember becomes part of the memory and stuff we leave out will be forgotten. This has all kinds of implications like the setting in which we remember som...	[ "The types of childhood memories that an adult recalls may be linked to personality. Research into memory in both children and adults reminiscing about childhood memories is not well-established, but considerable attention has been devoted to assessing the validity of strategies that can be used to recall early mem...
/r/darknetplan	So websites have names. The place that has all these names is called ICANN. When you type in a website name, ICANN tells you the address for you to go to so you can get to that website. A lot of other fancy stuff happens that makes the information get from one place to another. This is good most of the time. Remem...	[ "Darkforest is a computer go program developed by Facebook, based on deep learning techniques using a convolutional neural network. Its updated version Darkfores2 combines the techniques of its predecessor with Monte Carlo tree search. The MCTS effectively takes tree search methods commonly seen in computer chess p...
what causes baseball pitchers speed to be capped at approximately 105 mph?	I recall reading a popular mechanics article about this. One interesting aspect was that the amount of torque needed to throw the ball in excess of 105 mph corresponded roughly to the point where a certain ligament in the elbow would tear. For reference: _URL_0_	[ "How has pitch velocity gone up so much? Mostly by the development of better training and clearer communication within the baseball community that velocity is so valued. People like Tom House, Eric Cressey, Kyle Boddy, and Ron Wolforth have all pushed the edge and dedicated careers to research on what makes the ult...
Does the availability of Narcan (naloxone) encourage opioid use?	This [National Academy of Sciences review paper](_URL_0_) cites several studies showing that Narcan is associated with lower overall heroin use, fewer opioid-related ER visits, and fewer deaths due to opioid OD. I assume your thought process is that people are more likely to take a more risky dose if they know their bu...	[ "Naloxone is a drug used to counter an overdose from the effect of opioids; for example, a heroin or morphine overdose. Naloxone displaces the opioid molecules from the brain's receptors and reverses the respiratory depression caused by an overdose within two to eight minutes. The World Health Organization (WHO) in...
how are horses taught to respond to the controls of the rider?	Repetition and reward. It's a long process to train a horse, and there are different methods (Western vs English mainly) but it all boils down to repetition and reward. Just like teaching a dog to sit, or a toddler to use the potty. Thanks Pavlov	[ "The simulators are controlled two different ways. The instructor mode is by pressing buttons on the side of the simulators to start, speed up, slow down or stop the horse whilst the rider mode is aid sensitive in the form of squeezing his/her leg on a side sensor panel to start the ride and squeezing again to spee...
Did Salmon Evolve From Freshwater Fish Or Saltwater Fish?	[This book](_URL_0_) says that there has been "considerable debate" as to whether they evolved from freshwater or saltwater fish and the most recent theories suggest that they evolved from fish that were already able to survive in fresh and salt water. Originally though, all fish evolved in the sea and it must have be...	[ "Today, many sea fish, such as fresh herring, tuna, mackerel, salmon and sardines, are well established throughout the country. Prior to the industrial revolution and the ensuing pollution of the rivers, salmon were common in the rivers Rhine, Elbe, and Oder and only slowly started to return along with a growing co...
What was warfare like in pre-colonial Indonesia?	Warning: Wall of text incoming. But then this was /r/AskHistorians, so you expected this. For practical reasons this answer relies substantially on European sources and wars against Europeans, but I did intentionally avoid talking about more modern weaponry like muskets or cannons. --- This question is really hard t...	[ "Guerrilla tactics were employed in the war in the Pacific as well. When Japanese forces invaded the island of Timor on 20 February 1942, they were resisted by a small, under-equipped force of Allied military personnel— known as Sparrow Force—predominantly from Australia, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands East In...
Hi, taking the family on vacation to Niagra Falls soon, what was life like around the falls before the Europeans arrived?	There are some errors in /u/dbcanuck's post, at least if we're thinking of the area prior to the arrival of Europeans. A lot of what's said in that post more closely resembles a later colonial era view. The main issue is that dbcanuck skips over the people who were living in the immediate Niagara area at the time. A...	[ "French voyagers/explorers visited the area in the early 18th century. The first documented visit by an American (of European descent) was by Philander Prescott, who camped overnight at the falls in December 1832. Captain James Allen led a military expedition out of Fort Des Moines in 1844. Jacob Ferris described t...
How did france combat the longbow?	If you are wondering about the 100 years war and the part the longbow played in it, I believe I can help you there. In the battle of Crecy, the English victory was due in part to the cunning leadership of King Edward III. His use of longbowmen was legendary, and the first major victory for longbows over crossbows. Thei...	[ "Longbowmen were used to great effect on the continent of Europe, as assorted kings and leaders clashed with their enemies on the battlefields of France. The most famous of these battles were Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt. The English tactical system relied on a combination of longbowmen and heavy infantry, such as...
how does “i want my lawyer” work when being interrogated?	In the US, the right to remain silent and a request for a lawyer usually go hand and hand. You are basically saying, "I'm not talking anymore, move on to the next step or release me. If you are arrested, you are either released after the arrest, or a bond is set. You don't need a lawyer for either of those things,...	[ "The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if ...
why can't people who are very light in weight donate blood?	Because the medical common "unit of blood" represent too large a proportion of their total blood - it would be unsafe for them to donate.	[ "In patients prone to iron overload, blood donation prevents the accumulation of toxic quantities. Donating blood may reduce the risk of heart disease for men, but the link has not been firmly established and may be from selection bias because donors are screened for health problems.\n", "Blood accounts for about...
How did the Roaring Twenties happen when the decade before saw both WWI and the Spanish Flu Epidemic, essentially wiping out an entire young generation? What were the lasting negative effects of losing so many young people from 1914-1920?	With the greatest respect, your question is based on a largely false or flawed assumption that most western countries did experience unprecedented levels of economic prosperity following the years 1914-1920. Certainly this is true of the US, not so much for Europe. The places where the ravages of the Great War, and/or ...	[ "The death of young men as soldiers in World War I, coupled with the Flu Pandemic of 1918 wrought their eventual harm to the economy as a whole. The increase in secularization during the 'Roaring Twenties', as automobiles became widespread, and availability of electricity and electrical appliances and such, may hav...
Why do antibiotics cause rapid growth in animals?	You're right, this is a real effect. And as of right now, we're not really sure how it works, though there are a few ideas. I'll quote verbatim from [this paper](_URL_0_): > At least four mechanisms have been proposed as explanations of antibiotic mediated growth enhancement: [1] inhibition of sub-clinical infections...	[ "Antibiotics given in concentrations too low to combat disease are called “subtherapeutic.” The administration of these drugs when there is no diagnosis of disease result in decreased mortality and morbidity and increased growth in the animals treated. It is theorized that subtherapeutic doses kill some, but not al...
Does love (as a feeling) raise testosterone levels in men?	I don't know how broadly or narrowly you are asking this question. I have not spent any time recently on this literature, but I do know of one study that found that when men fall in love their testosterone goes down. When men are married or cohabiting with their partner, they have lower testosterone than when they were...	[ "As testosterone is critical for libido and physical arousal, alcohol tends to have deleterious effects on male sexual performance. Studies have been conducted that indicate increasing levels of alcohol intoxication produce a significant degradation in male masturbatory effectiveness (MME). This degradation was mea...
twitter reported a q2 loss of $144.6 million. how do they still afford to run a company and attract investors?	Investors think they will be very profitable in the future, so they keep investing money, despite it currently operating at a loss. At some point, it becomes necessary to monetarize Twitter, which means (you guessed it) ads.	[ "On January 29, 2008, Yahoo! announced that the company was laying off 1,000 employees, as the company had suffered severely in its inability to effectively compete with industry search leader Google. The cuts represented 7 percent of the company's workforce of 14,300.\n", "On November 7, 2013, the first day of t...
github, including what branches, commit and repositories are.	GitHub is just a git-based code repository. It's used for maintaining a code base, including distribution and version control. There are a lot of them, but git-based ones are popular these days because they work well. Repositories are communal places to store code and code changes. They can be free and available to al...	[ "GitHub was developed by Chris Wanstrath, P. J. Hyett, Tom Preston-Werner and Scott Chacon using Ruby on Rails, and started in February 2008. The company, GitHub, Inc., has existed since 2007 and is located in San Francisco.\n", "GitHub is a web-based Git repository hosting service and is primarily used to host t...

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