askhistorians

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Where did the bizarre nickname "Biff" come from? And why did some parents in the 1940s and 50s apparently start giving it out as an actual legal name to their sons?	3222
News reports this week about a so-called 'Sistine Chapel of rock art' discovered deep in the Colombian wilderness allege the existence of a 12,500-year-old, eight-mile-long series of paintings depicting everything from scaffolding to megafauna worship. But... really, though?	2643
Hokusai's "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (c. 1830) is arguably one of the most famous and reproduced illustrations in the world, but it first appeared as one piece of his series, 'Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji'. What happened that caused this one to completely eclipse the other 35?	567
The English historian Norman Stone has died. The obituary published in the Guardian is almost unbelievably scathing -- are the claims it makes accurate?	242
1993/94 saw widespread concern over violence in computer/video games, with titles like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II drawing ire from parental and religious groups. When the quiet, ethereal puzzle adventure MYST broke all sales records, how did these groups react?	67
Movies like 'Lean on Me' and 'The Substitute' make late-80s/early-90s urban high schools seem like anarchic war zones. Was this really a problem anywhere at the time?	62
I read today that the very first game of Basketball, played in 1891 in Springfield MA, included a Japanese player named Genzabaro Ishikawa. How did he get there, and what happened to him after?	49
Did Marshall McLuhan really become obsessed with Masonic conspiracies later in life?	41
If I wanted to pretend to be a hippie, I could be immediately recognized as such by a certain tone and cadence of voice. How did this stereotype emerge, and how did it become as narrow and unchanging as it is?	24
What has been the history of indigenous peoples in Greenland? Were there any such peoples to begin with?	6

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