I have heard of a hypothesis that geography can determined development path.

The democratic tradition was present in Greece, Rome and Europe. All of these are peninsulas, with mountains or forests in the interior, and plenty of harbors along the coast.

On the other side, several major ancient civilizations were based along a river valley, and were fully autocratic: Egypt, Babylon, China.

Is there a connection? Could be it that river-based civilization made it easier to control movement of both goods and troops, leading to conquest by autocratic ruler?

Are there further examples of counterexamples? Did any actual historian think along those lines?

Maybe this is way too broad, but how did hereditary monarchs actually hold on to power? It was always presented to me as "Well, he's the son of the previous king, and everyone just agrees that's how kings work, so everyone just goes along with it." But the older I get, the more skeptical I am that the social class just below the monarch would blindly subject themselves to the monarch's authority for the sake of upholding tradition. Yet, many hereditary monarchies managed to hold onto power for centuries. How? How did they keep the other nobles complacent? Money? Violence? Or did the other nobles see themselves as equals with the monarchical family and didn't care that some guy was calling himself a king?

I can't remember where I read it, but Hitler sought a 10 year long war, figuring that it would take 10 years of warfare to achieve all of his goals and have a nuke so figure with that idea he would want to or have to fight from 1939 until 1949 and just as the other poster pointed out I also read that the Nazi's own assessment was they wouldn't have a nuke until 1947 meaning that with Hitler thinking he needed 10 years, and his high command figuring that they wouldn't have a nuke until 1947, that even after getting the nuke they would still need some 18-24 more months of war for Hitler to achieve all his goals.

Walter Isaacson has a pretty great biography of Leonard Da Vinci, I think it focuses more on his life and art work than his scientific works, but I learned a lot.

Yeah this one ship wreck had a hand sketched drawing of a naked woman recovered from it…. Wait that was a movie. But I agree with you, the way some things remain and can preserved is crazy

Ive heard that Ride with the Devil is fairly accurate, but most people consider it boring.

How did Nikolai Ignatyev secure so much land for Russia after the Opium Wars, despite Russia denying the request from Britain to be allies and sending virtually no military support? Are there any good books on the Russian specific side of the conflict?

Silver? That dress looks gold to me. Does anyone else see silver?

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Incredibly fascinating, stuff like this invigorates my sense of wonder with this world

They did, the major agonists in the scenario all rose to the position to be possible emperor during these conflicts with Persia, gaul, etc. Caesar ended any possibility of revolt in gaul by pacifying them with arms, winning their loyalty citizenship. Crassus was killed in Persia, but IIRC, Pompey went and fixed their wagon.

I don't know about Accuracy per say but I do know that when westerns became a thing Wyatt Earp was a consultant for several silent era westerns. He became friends with a few western actors so im sure they at least got his perspective. Another thing I've always heard but im not sure about truth wise is that John Wayne met Earp when he was still a bit player in silent films and going by his birth name. He may have gleaned some knowledge from him as well

Not really, when something is found that contradicts the record they weigh the evidence (it almost always turns out to be sloppy site work or just fraud) and withhold judgement on that artifact. One potsherd against thousands and all of that.

Greek fire was figured out, however we don't have any Byzantine recipes for it. We do have the versions used at the time by other armies, and it's probably the same thing. Without the Byzantine recipe we will never know for certain what precise ingredients were used.

There's a researcher named Alex Wellerstein who studies nuclear weapons history. He's done some AMAs here and posts on /r/askhistorians occasionally. He keeps a blog called Restricted Data. If you search around on it, there's lots of cool stuff. This post gets a little into your question. https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/11/13/when-did-the-allies-know-there-wasnt-a-german-bomb/

Also, there's a BBC podcast called The Bomb. I don't think it was great, but there's enough useful info on it to make it worth listening to. But a few of the episodes address your question.

You might find this interview with Patricia Tilburg interesting. It's about women working in the garment industry in France at the time you're curious about. It talks about their sexualized image and their depiction in advertising and gets into ideas of working women, their independence and their sexuality as popularly perceived.

https://newbooksnetwork.com/working-girls

I have a feeling The Prestige also had something to do with it. That'll happen when David Bowie portrays you in a Christopher Nolan movie and you make an entrance like this

There was many other pieces recovered. The silver probably had very little to do with it surviving.

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After spending time around some archaeologists, actual archeology is only like the 3rd most important thing for them. Right behind arguing and drinking.

It's impossible to know, and I'm an institutionalist, so my bias comes from that POV, but I don't think it would have mattered. The problem with the USSR had more to do with corrupt and ineffective institutions, and that's carried through to the modern day. This treaty, and pretty much any other treaty like it, would just be putting different curtains on the windows. It wouldn't have done anything to fix a court system to make enforceable contracts, or to protect people from the government, or to make the incentives for public employees to not be corrupt, or to make businesses competitive in the world markets. Also, as countries like the Baltic states and Poland improved their economies, the failure would have been more apparent and created resentment. I think it would have just delayed Ukrainian independence for a little while, but that's probably it.

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better make a copy before they lose it again.....

Roman concrete is no lost knowledge. Its just million times repeated pop history myth.