u/DopplerRadio

Bhutan's monarchy seems like an interesting outlier; it was a constitutional monarchy from the beginning, it was established in the 20th century, it has explicit provisions for removing a king from office, and includes a requirement of being a protector of all religions despite being an explicitly Buddhist role. So, what led to such an unusual monarchy arising in 1907, and how did the first king get consensus to form the monarchy?

From everything about his later life, Henry VIII clearly wasn't *that* attached to Catholicism and the power of the Pope, so why did he have so much beef with Martin Luther? Did he have genuine religious concerns about Luther's arguments or were other factors more important? Did he ever publish treaties against other reformers before his own break with Rome?

Bell Labs famously demonstrated the capabilities of the IBM 7090 by having it sing "Daisy Bell," eventually inspiring Arthur C. Clarke to use it for HAL 9000. Do we have any idea what led to that decision? Was "Daisy Bell" in the cultural zeitgeist of the 1960s, despite being nearly 70 years old at that point? I assume the age helped with copyright concerns, but even so, there were many songs they could have chosen to avoid that issue. Is there something structural about "Daisy Bell" that makes it particularly suitable for a computer to sing?

In an era when travelling from somewhere like Indonesia to Mecca would take idk months? years? (a long time, at any rate), how did that distance and difficulty shape the way Muslim communities in far-flung places approached the concept of Hajj? Was it still an expectation? Was a journey like that actually accessible to the average person, and if not, were there any religious charities that tried to make it more accessible? For those who were able to make the journey, what would their travel have been like? Were there travel guides specifically for pilgrims from places like Indonesia and India?

Presumably losing such a big chunk of productive colonies would upset the political balance, so what were the actual outcomes for British politics? Did political parties, cabinet members, and MPs face a lot of backlash? Were there any lasting changes to the political landscape? Were any promising political careers cut short (or did any politicians rapidly rise through the ranks as a result of the war)?

The Tarim Basin is inhospitable and mostly a giant desert; it seems like it would be a lot of effort for an 18th century force to conquer and maintain, for very little gain. As far as I'm aware, all of the previous Chinese dynasties were okay with either simply ignoring the area or making deals with local leadership to get what they wanted, so what led to the new desire to control the area?

I know that in the modern era it's a source for oil and solar power and is a useful place for testing weapons, but none of those resources would have been relevant to the Qing. My understanding is that some of the silk road trade routes ran through there, so was exerting bigger control over those routes part of it? If so, why didn't they push further into central Asia and take control of more of the route? The other thought I had was that maybe it was to create more of a defensive frontier, but it seems like the Taklamakan Desert and the Tian Shan Mountains would just do that naturally, without needing to expend the resources to invade and control them. So, what were their actual goals in expanding in that direction, and was their expansion successful in achieving those goals?