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Very clever. :cool:

Please, it's a myth that North Korea's 170mm pieces will lay waste to Seoul. They don't have a lot of these, and the main reason to fear them is the possibility of chemical shells. Without WMDs North Korea is paper tiger.

Because he has nukes. Otherwise his regime would be done by now. I'm pretty sure with guys like Gadhafi, their supreme goal in life is survival rather than actually fruitful relations with the neighbors. He thought disarming might help him survive, he thought wrong. A better strategy would be...

Underwater cables were made of guta percha, and did not require advanced chemistry. The stuff had been used by native Malays for God knows how long and commercialized in Europe in the 1840s.

Kim Jong Il is still alive isn't he? “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal” --- Henry Kissinger

Gadhafi's mistake was giving up his WMDs for detente with the West. He correctly understood that a rebellion is highly likely when he dies, so he thought he would disarm Western hostility towards him by disarming his WMD program. This was a miscalculation. While the West did warm up to him, they...

If the POD is in the 1830s the best thing would be to avoid war and get Chinese merchants involved in overseas trade. One of the problems the British had exporting to China was they didn't couldn't figure out the Chinese market. They would just ship over things like wool to subtropical Canton...

She had a bit of Moorish blood, that doesn't really make her African.

Ming the Merciless.

IMO the key is oil prices. Gorbachev's reforms were flawed, but the most serious problem was bad timing. In the 80s the price of oil crashed and the Soviet economy crashed with it. It's always a good idea to do reform when life is still good. The Soviets tried to build a roof in the middle of a...

That's interesting. Never thought green and blue could work together. You proved me wrong.

What would be the best time to establish an independent Scotland that would remain sovereign today?

Fiat money is mainly a question of trust. If the issuer is credible then it is plausible. Anytime when the ruler is considered divine would be a boost to the credibility of money. Going back to Pharaohs and Eastern despots like the kings of Persia, or Chinese emperors, or Islamic Caliphs, there...

Biplanes are actually more maneuverable because they have more wing area. But speed was more important for survival, that was amply demonstrated early in the Spanish Civil War.

I suspect the 8-10 shot per minute was achieved only with metallic cartridge. Even then that must be some kind of record. The paper cartridge which was what was used in 1859 would not be quite that fast. You had to tap the gun to loosen up the powder after closing the action. 4-5 shots a minute...

I've got to sig this.

Why does Koxinga have to pay attention to Brunei at all? After the Castille War 90 years earlier Brunei was out of the game. They would certainly not be in any position to threaten Koxinga should he drive the Spanish out of Luzon. At best they might get a piece of southern Philippines with the...

This timeline greatly underestimates the Qing dynasty. Firstly China under Kangxi was NOT closed to trade with Europeans. Far from it there was a bustling porcelain and tea trade which was bankrupting European treasuries. Augustus the Strong bought so much porcelain that Canton became known as...

Well they didn't officially exist. But John Birch was killed in China in 1945, and was a minor celebrity of the Right. Incidently the JBS traces its roots to Fred Koch of the Koch Industry fame.

China was trying to get the government of India to tell America not to push into North Korea. It had good relations with India at the time but had no diplomatic relations with the US because it did not recognize the PRC. The US government ignored the Chinese message relayed by the Indians...