/r/askhistorians
If a monk walked into a respectable monastery of the High Middle Ages, carrying books in Arabic, Farsi, or even just Classical Hebrew, could he expect to meet anyone capable of translating them? If he brought the Sanskrit or Chinese classics, would anyone recognize the language?
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In Game Of Thrones during the siege of Winterfell, Ramsey Bolton was keeping the inhabitants of the castle awake by constantly blowing a trumpet. This drove them mad and made them want to sally out. Did things like these ever occur in real life?
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In various Hollywood movies (e.g. Blade, Hellboy, Guardians Of The Galaxy), we see a structure that channels a victims blood into a carved pattern. Is there a historical precedent for this?
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History Lesson Please! AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told POLITICO last week that the filibuster is “An artifact of Jim Crow. A creature of white supremacy. A procedure that was said to encourage robust debate but has turned into an instrument of government paralysis.” Can someone provide input?
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Tomas Aquinas wrote that animals do not have emotions, and thus hurting them is not a sin, later Descartes held a very similar position and even dissected his dog alive. Did they arrive at this conclusion independently or has it been a recurring idea in western philosophy?
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