How the hell did H.W Bush fail to get re-elected in 1993? He presided over the fall of the USSR, and Operation Desert Storm, which was received internationally and domestically as a success.

Why did movies like James Bond etc show Turks wearing a fez? The fez was made illegal 1925 in Turkey.

We all know that European full plate are the superior armour to any other, but how the comparative protection of the others?
Why did people in 14th and 15th century in Western, Central, Northern, Southern, and East Asia replace their lamellar with brigandine? Isn't having backing in the outside makes it weaker than scale armour with backing in the inside? Are lamellar laces easily cut?
How good were maille compared to lamellar? Usama ibn Munqidh praised Crusader armour, and by then the Crusaders only wore maille. Is maille that protective? What were double-maille?
Why Ottomans and Rus prefers Plated Maille instead of Brigandine like Timurids and Golden Horde? How a single-layer Plated Maille better than two layer of maille and lamellar corselet? Was it a matter of comfiness? or ease of production? or just fashion and memetics?
Why Europeans Coat of Plates comprising of larger laminar plates evolved to Brigandines with smaller plates?

What about the Germans made them develop into the antagonist of history, why wasn’t it someone else like the poles or something?

Was it their central location in Europe that caused them to be a psychotic violent people?

When did the ruling classes cease being afraid of proletarian revolution and communism?
When the Bolshevik revolution broke out countries everywhere were scared shitless. Even in the US being a radical could get you arrested, beaten, or killed.
All over the world capitalist governments passed anti-socialist laws and crushed organized labor. The rise of fascism in Europe was welcomes by established social and business elites solely because of the fear of bolshevism.
Nowadays communism is basically a joke and when teen edgelords have communist phases it's considered cute and idealistic. Marxism is considered "a good idea in theory".
What happened? Was it when the USSR and Eastern Bloc fell?

Can we have a thread about funny stories you've read in history books?

>It so happened that during Zheng’s minority the state had been run by a group of veteran statesmen and generals under the direction of the able Lu Buwei, chancellor to Zheng’s father. Unusually, indeed scandalously by the standards of Confucian ‘gentlemen’ accustomed to regard influence as their own prerogative, Lu Buwei owed his position not to scholarship but to trade. Though a highly successful businessman, he still ranked as a merchant, one of the most despised professions throughout the Xia states and a heavily penalised one under Qin’s ‘legalist’ regulations.

>Like most of Qin’s ministers, he was not a native of that state, and before arriving there in c. 251 BC had enjoyed the favours of a celebrated concubine. Her name is not mentioned, only her ‘matchless beauty and great skill in dancing’, which attracted other admirers, including the then crown prince of Qin. The crown prince prevailed on Lu Buwei to part with her, ‘she concealed the fact that she was already pregnant’, and her baby, a son born in the fullness of time, had therefore been assumed to be the offspring of the Qin crown prince. Meanwhile the crown prince had succeeded as king of Qin; the matchless concubine had been recognised as his official consort; and her infant had been declared heir apparent. This was the young Zheng. If the story was true, the future First Emperor was an impostor.

How did Turks manage to fully assimilate the more numerous local people in Anatolia? I see how the upper class would be Turkified but I cant imagine a situation where the common illiterate peasants would not only adopt the ethonym but the also fully adopt the language - fogetting their own. Similiar thing happened in Bulgaria but the native Slavs only adopted the ethonym.

I'm not sure if this goes on /k/ or on here since it's more about warfare than history, but what are some good resources about the style of warfare during the Cold War? I'm not looking for something that talks about particular wars, but something that talks about the style of warfare and the weapons used.

Why were the Chinese so easily defeated by Japan? Was it humiliating to be so easily destroyed by what your country thought of as island barbarians?

Why did the cowardly Ar*bs need the strong Turkish man to fight and lead them as mamluks?