AskHistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
What happened to the hundreds of people left in the American Embassy after the last helicopter out of Saigon?	3991
I'm a Jewish man in 1946 recently liberated from a death camp. My home has been destroyed by the war, all my friends and family have been eradicated, I have no money or possessions and all records of me have been destroyed. What do I do and who can I turn to for help?	3098
Were Harold Hardrada and William the conquerer aware of each other's plans to invade England in 1066 and was there any communication between the two?	847
I've often heard that the Battle of Britain was won by the Hurricane since it was so cheap to produce Britain could outnumber the more advanced German planes. Whilst the Spitfire was mostly used for propaganda as it was the "sexier" aircraft. Is this true?	281
How accurate are modern depictions of Medieval siege towers and battering rams? And how often were they actually used?	235
What was so special about medieval Welsh and English long bows? Why couldn't anyone else cut a six foot piece of Yew and shoot it back at them?	177
How can we be sure Shakespeare invented so many words when his plays are also touted as one of the few sources of 16th century common English?	173
Did the United States ever seriously consider joining WW1 on the side of the central powers? Or even deploying as a neutral peace keeping force to bring the war to a close?	101
Did Elizabethan ruffs have any practical uses before they became fashionably oversized?	74
When I think of the black death in the middle ages I picture the plague appearing, devastating Europe and then disappearing rapidly in few years. Is this correct or was it more like AIDs that spread slowly over decades to eventually become a global epidemic?	37

« < > »