Ouija Board skeptic question. What does it mean when they go from the Sun to the Moon and back again; over and over?

Well, you know someone seriously wants to learn a correct answer when they end their question with "lol." I can tell you don't want a real history lesson, but I've got nothing better to do, so you're getting one anyway. When the armies of Islam came out of Arabia in 634 AD, they faced two world empires; the eastern Roman empire (the western Roman empire had broken up in the 400s) and the Persian Empire.

Both were exhausted and bankrupt after decades of war with each other and the attack took them by surprise. Thirty years later, the Persian Empire (roughly modern Iran and much of Iraq) had collapsed completely. The eastern Romans lost about half their territory to the invaders - basically Egypt and Syria.

They were left with a smaller but still substantial empire in Greece, the Balkans, and Asia Minor. At that point, Muslim expansion largely stalled out, as far as the east Romans (or Byzantines) were concerned. Spain was conquered in 711 and new territories won in central Asia down to around 750 and the Battle of Talas against the Chinese, but two attempts to take Constantinople failed and the Byzantines held out.

Meanwhile, after the death of the fourth Caliph, Muslims fell to fighting against each other, the original split between Sunni and Shia. The Ummayad dynasty became Caliphs and ruled from Damascus from 660 to 751, but they fell in turn and the Abbasid dynasty became Caliphs. But very rapidly, the Abbasids started losing control of outlying emirs and the "Muslim empire" became a patchwork of principalities who fought each other more than non-Muslims.

Turkish dynasties like the Seljuqs entered Islam and carved out territories for themselves; Later Saladin, a Kurd, hammered together a realm that united Egypt and Syria for a time, the Ayyubid state. It fell apart, Egypt was taken over by its own Mamluks, Mongols invaded in the 13th century, burned Baghdad, killed the last Abbasid Caliph, and created the kingdom of the Il-Khans based in Persia. Seven hundred years passed from the time of the first Muslim conquests, and the Byzantine/East Roman empire survived it all.

There was no "Muslim Empire" any more, it had broken up among squabbling warlords, and the Byzantines outlived it. Finally in the 1300s, a new Turkish warlord, Osman, started building a successful principality in the borderlands of Asia Minor. It grew bit by bit until finally, in 1453, the Ottomans finally took Constantinople itself and ended the East Roman Empire, more than 800 years after the battle of Yarmuk.

The Muslims who actually had dealings with the Byzantines were not so dumb as to "lol" at their rivals; they recognized the Byzantines as a world power and a sophisticated civilization to be reckoned with. Nothing lasts forever, but the Byzantines lasted longer than any of the various Muslim empires that came and went over those 800 years.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.