My family is from Slovakia, but I know almost nothing about the history of the region. What would be the most interesting period / event to read about?

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Its not subjective at all. Its got clear features to judge by which all can be scientifically approved of. Linguistics, genetics, historic accounts, anthropology.

Those are all social constructs. It's entirely subjective who is included, and as such, when any groups starts or ends.

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You might want to have a look at the dispute about the border between Germany and the Netherlands in the Ems Dollart estuary. Basically Germany claims the whole river and estuary, the Netherlands claim the border is in the middle of the river. This goes back to a dispute about a deed of enfeoffment granting the whole river and estaury to East Frysia. At the time this was a dispute inside the Holy Roman Emperor and the main dispute is about the deed being backdated and forged. That border later became an international border when the Netherlands became independent, but the dispiute remained the same. There are various treaties regulating who can do what where, whose police is responsible where etc., with an emphasis on friendship and cooperation, but always with the caveat that nothing in those treaties can be constructed as either side giving up their claims...

If you are into 84 page treatises about bizarre border disputes, I'd recommend The Ems-Dollart Predicament

Well that things looks way worse than I was expecting. Hopefully they can restore it.

Naw, I'm talking just to hook up, or pursue a lifestyle in which he could sleep with women all day.

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>Most of the names he gave to new found land were names of villages close to his hometown of Cuba

Good attempt, Columbus named the island "Juana" (or Ioanna, or whatever at that time).

Kings have abdicated for love. Whole wars started over infidelity. Presidents and ministers disgraced over affairs.

I can't think of a region or era that doesn't have examples.

"Er spricht Gotisch! Er spricht Gotisch!"

You might be thinking of the time - When the Revolution ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the Marines, like the Navy, were disbanded. It wasn't until 15 years later, on July 11, 1798, that President John Adams signed into law a congressional act which created—or re-created, depending how you're counting—the United States Marine Corps. But if I remember correctly, so too the Army was disbanded, because there was no central miliary under the Articles of Confederation and only local states militias were supposed to make up the military forces until we got the Constitution in 1789 - BTW The USMC is not part of the Army, It has always been part of the US Navy - It is a Military Armed Naval force that fights on Navy Vessals (to repel enemy boarding parties) and is also used for naval invasions to occupy ports or strastigic landings for later (to arrive and occupy) other US armed forces. The most famous of this type of thing was the battle of Derma Tripoli 1805 when 8 US marines with 400-500 Arab-Greek mercenaries over threw the Tripoli Barbary Pirates. Other famous Marine events are, Halls of Montazuma (refers to the Battle of Chapultepec, during the Mexican-American War, where a force of Marines stormed Chapultepec Castle) and Iwo Jima (1945).

Depends how much do you want see "having a relationship" view as get laid. One British monarch abdicated so he could live with women he did love. Franz Ferdinand greatly ruined his position in Austria-Hungary so that he could marry his future wife.

For additional perspective, there's also been the claim that a famous Chinese captain "discovered" the New World some 70 years earlier.

But it's all irrelevant for the same reason: the Chinese were about to get totally focused on themselves, they didn't share the discovery. Actually, if it happened, they actively suppressed all knowledge of it.

No further contact, no spreading of the knowledge = no impact.

It's like when you invent some new device. if you sit on it and someone else creates the same thing, then patents it, they get all the credit.

You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.

They should read a bit more about his biography before feeling that heart-warming feeling.

Same Crown, not same "country". Those concepts were largely disconnected back then. Think of the current Commonwealth: same head of state (whoever is the King/Queen back at the UK), but a collection of independent countries. Not exactly the same concept, but close enough.

Doubt it, but I’m sure several eventually took their new faith seriously.

Thats the kind of tribe I wasnt looking for. The problem here is the English semantic twist of "tribe"

I've tried. I've found exactly zero sources claiming inuit oral traditions have accurately pointed out villages lost by floods 10000 years ago.

Which face it, would be quite impressive since they weren't even around back then. The Inuit only formed a thousand years ago, which is when they came to occupy the area they now live in. Their ancestors lived in Alaska and Russia before that, so there's literally no way for them to have an oral tradition about villages lost 10,000 years ago in the area they now inhabit. Neither could they have adapted stories from the people that lived there before (the Dorset culture), since there appears to have been no contact between these groups. Nor would that matter if they had, because none of the paleo-eskimo seemed to have existed that far back. Humans only started living in the areas the Inuit now live 5000 years ago at the earliest. So obviously they can't have oral traditions about the area that date back twice as far.

This is clearly something you either made up entirely, something someone else made up, or a case of you misremembering something you read.

Were there ever “benevolent” colonial arrangements? Or ones that were at least purely commercial, not aggressively exploitative or land grabbing?

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Given their isolation and hints that they might be descended from the earliest wave of homo sapien out of Africa, I will say the Sentinelese.

One could say modern sex scandals in politics come to mind, think perhaps of famously Bill Clinton.

You'll find older examples, too. However, often they are more up for debate due to the context. Case in point, the case of the French king Philip I (1060-1108), who was put under Interdict by the pope (multiple times) for taking another (married) woman as his own. Whilst Philip repudiated his former wife, the Reform Papacy retaliated on moral grounds. The whole affair lasted years, and while Philip made it seem as if he broke of his second marriage, he stayed with his new woman. It went so far that the former husband (the Count of Anjou) of his new wife retracted his allegiance to the house of Capet & placed Anjou under the suzerainity of the Papacy... Clerical writers on the side of the Papacy couched this affair in terms of weakness of the flesh.

The reality was, however, more prosaic.

Philip's former wife was eventually barren, and with only one male heir, the king had his dynastic duty to consider and ensure more offspring. The feelings he might have held for his new woman we will never truly know. It is important to consider that in early medieval Europe, marriage as a singular concept was not yet established, and various forms of matching existed. Basically, noble and clerical values clashed as both sides were in the process of establishing social norms that in this regard, conflicted.

So the Pope and his cronies would say it was weakness of the flesh, but king Philip arguably had other things on his mind.