/r/askhistorians
Have sleep patterns always been the same? I read recently that in the past few hundred years the eight hour overnight was not the norm and people would get up in the middle of the night and spend time together before returning to sleep. Is there truth to this?
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On 2 October 1968, the Mexican army killed hundreds of student protesters, 10 days before the Mexico 68 Olympics began. Why is this event mostly ignored in English-language material when discussing the global '68 protests, or even student massacres in general (as opposed to Tiananmen or Kent State)?
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Odysseus has sex with several women (Hecuba, Circe, Calypso) but Penelope remains loyal to his husband. Odysseus' infidelity is not chastised in the story, so how commonplace was this ideology of sex in ancient Greece? Were men expected to be monogamous?
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What lead to the transition from the flamboyant pastel colours of automobiles in the '50s and '60s to the drab and tame colours of today?
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How racist was Lyndon Johnson, really? It seems like he was racist, with his use of the n-word, but his first job was teaching English to underprivileged Mexican and black children, and he passed more Civil Rights legislation than any President before him.
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In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed, the Soviet archives were opened and historians had access to a lot of previously secret information. Did anything found in the archives radically change the perception historians had of certain events? Did they find anything new they had never known about before?
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In the 1890s, Argentina was the richest country, in the world. Today, their GDP per capita is barely higher than it was 120-130 years ago. What happened?
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When and why did the general political tone of American country music shift from left-wing to right-wing?
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