askhistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
Was the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson advocating abolition (to the extent that he did) while keeping his own slaves noted/criticized during his political career or later life?	23
Why did individual Christians reading the Bible themselves lead to theological schisms? Judaism and Islam never had that problem, did they?	20
How much did war horses and coconuts (if you could even get one) each cost in 10th Century England? Also, did 10th Century English knights use the same horse for battle and travel?	20
When, how, and why did other members of the British Empire (Scots, Welsh, New Zealanders... who else?) sexually abusing sheep become a widely referenced trope in English humo(u)r?	20
Why did the organizers of the 1967 Boston Marathon attempt to stop Katherine Switzer from participating? And if they didn't want women to participate, why didn't they make a rule against it?	17
What is the origin of the "9-11 Dash Line?" Has the PRC's stated policy always been so nebulous? Where does the RoC fit in? How was territory in the South China Sea split (if at all) prior to European influence?	16
Were there unifying reasons for the rises and falls of large, wealthy, diverse R&D companies like Bell Labs? Bell Labs, GE, and PARC all still exist in some form, but only GE is still a major entity and they're no longer particularly innovative.	15
A recent /r/BestOf submission claims that snowshoes made roughly 100 years ago in the Native American tradition are better than modern snowshoes - is this true? How do they compare to tools brought to North America by immigrants from other snowy regions?	14
Did the HW Bush presidency have any major LGBTQ-specific effects? This is among the many threads of American history in which people seem to go straight from Reagan to Clinton.	14
I don't have a direct quote, but Robert Conquest is said to have given an example of "The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies," the postwar British secret service. Did he claim that and is it correct?	14

« < > »