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That coupled with a inhospitable climate making winter warfare almost impossible and the mountain passes impassible.

Well that and mountains, a lot of the Swedish-Norwegian border is made up of mountains making it very hard to invade

It never really dawned on me why Norway had such a random northern strip of territory. But the idea that it kept Sweden using the Baltic straight makes a great deal of sense now.

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Has a notable person of power ever jeopardized their position solely to get laid?

Go look it up yourself, you certainly won't believe anything I link.

> The whole point, there has been verification.

So you say. I have yet to see you post a scientific paper on this matter, much less independent verification of the claims in it.

> And there was absolutely no way either people could have guessed

Says you. Again, I am not seeing any 'verification' that this claim is at all true.

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When Woodrow Wilson was running for New Jersey governor, was there any suspicion/negativity of him because he was a Virginian?

I mean like willingly.

Kind of.

The Marine Corps always struggles with how to justify itself as a separate force. The Army does the land fighting and the Navy does the ship fighting and where does that leave the Corps? In other militaries "marines" are just Army soldiers assigned to ships. Plus, you have the issue of it being a component of the Department of the Navy--it's not called the Department of the Navy because the Marines are top dog over there. So, there is a lot of pressure behind the idea of folding the Marines into the Army.

But, the Marines have always found a mission that they will excel at and that requires a different force composition, or mindset, or just particular brand of crazy than the Army--amphibious assault, guarding nuclear weapons on a carrier, or the first reaction force into a conflict zone. They also have done a very good job at building a very strong esprit. You can say that it makes sense from a bureaucratic perspective to do away with the Corps, but from a "winning wars" perspective they keep serving vital functions, so it's not likely they'll ever be disbanded.

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Now that the "whisky war" is done, has there been any other border disputes between neighborign countries that have been as civil/non-combative?

I would imagine so, albeit very few. If you converted, then you would be freed from slavery. However, you were watched to ensure that you practiced.

Around what period did the Ottoman Empire start deploying permanent embassies to other countries, as opposed to temporary diplomats with specific mandates?

Were there cases of Crusaders converting to Islam then living the rest of their lives in say Egypt etc.?

No. The Marine Corps is still a major service organized with the Navy. They have about 180,000 active service.

I heard this before and I have read some history on it but mostly on blogs. "Was the USMC almost disbanded and the mission absorbed by the US Army?"

No existing culture are the “first” anywhere - as it is. Besides maybe some very remote islands. The question is more what a native population is.

Other people in the thread talks about trade between Viking and tribes - there are little evidence of that - and they were heavily dependent on cows and European style living in general.

While it is very good based on what I've read so far I'd say no it isn't accessible. It's very indepth and heavy on the operational details (army movements, generals etc). I'd say The Western Front book by Richard Holmes I mentioned is probably more accessible. If books about WWI that aren't focused on the Western Front are ok then I'd say 'Short History of the First World War by Gary Sheffield' or 'The First World War by Hew Strachan' are good options (but Strachan has another book called First World War - Vol 1 To Arms which I'd avoid because it's like 1000 pages) .

I am baking Christmas cookies using an old family recipe from 1870. But where did my ancestors get spices like cinnamon, cloves and ground ginger in rural Denmark? Was the trade with Asia well established at this time?

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As has been mentioned, some of the Nation's of Indigenous Australia have continued cultures going back tens of thousands of years. It's harder to determine the exact history of any single Nation's history but there's a few examples.

The Budj-Bim Nation (south western Victoria) created a complex aquaculture system over 6,000 years ago, which remained in continuous use until the 1800s, when it was destroyed to make way for European farms.

The Budj-Bim people have since been able to reclaim the land, rebuild at least some of the aquaculture system and continue to maintain their language, religion, and cultural practices.

They by far are not the oldest continuous culture in Australia, but just one group I'd heard about recently. The greater cultural/language group has been on that part of Australia for something like 50,000 years.

Thats comprehensive, thanks. Of course I am not excluding cultural heritance based on the strictness of "having the same verses and instructions" or smth. I dont do that for Guran or Hinduistic Indo-Aryans either. Hinduims is (largely?) Vedic-derived and that suffices since tongue and ethnic identity as even ethnic continuity is given. And the Guran are not Zoroastrians either. But we do have the very same core values as our ancestors established and rooting from exactly what was established with Zoroaster among them millenia earlier. So the issue I have with Greeks here is that they are Christians and this comes from a different people and a different area and a different cultural sphere all while the Greeks were already existing as such. Aside of that I consider the Greeks the same as the Guran and the Hindu Indo-Aryans.