/r/askhistorians
In the movie True Grit (a western set in Texas) the main character a girl of 14 goes to an inn and is told that that due to having too many visitors she will need to share her bed with an complete stranger who happens to be an older woman. Would this actually happen?
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In Netflix's Dracula, there's a character who specializes in the occult, vampirism etc. That got me thinking, could a Medieval or early modern nun have pursued these interests without being looked at askance? Did any church figures seriously study the occult or was it all just condemned and ignored?
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Everyone I know regards the board game Monopoly as frustrating and long. But almost every family owns the game. How did it become such a popular and universal board game?
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In Rome, powerful men would brag about how many clients they had as a way of showing off their influence. How many was it normal to accrue? Did clients double-dip and sign up with multiple patrons? Was it prestigious to sign up the poorest citizens, or only those of at least modest means?
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In the book 1984 Orwell describes how the party members wear factory clothes, a practice that would indeed happen in China and North Korea but not the USSR, what’s going on here?
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In 1960 Ruby Bridges was one of six children who passed a test determining whether they could go to an all white school. What was the test, and what was considered “passing” vs “failing”?
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Is there any particular reason why so many English speakers have surnames that are also colors (Brown, Green, White, Black, etc)?
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