/u/EnclavedMicrostate's posts
Before Christianity, Greeks buried their dead with coins in their mouths to pay the ferryman in the afterlife. But coins were only invented at the end of the 7th century BCE. Was this a tradition that postdated the invention of coinage, or an existing tradition adapted to include coinage?
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In September 1992, Nine Network aired Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos, a programme so apparently objectionable that it was pulled off the air 24 minutes into its 60 minute run. Why was it ever made in the first place, and why was the plug pulled after they'd already made it? NSFW
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Westerns often depict decently-sized towns out in arid regions with little to no visible farmland. Is this purely a limitation of film budgets, or did settlements in the American west and northern Mexico in the 1800s actually generally import food rather than produce it locally?
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The Hindenburg Disaster was 'only' the fifth-deadliest airship crash, and the last one before WW2, yet seems to have made a far greater impression on (Western) popular consciousness than earlier crashes like the Akron or the Dixmude. Why has the Hindenburg managed to be the best-remembered?
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I'm a first century Judaean pig farmer who's just seen a mystic drown all my pigs in a lake. If I wanted to press charges, could I? If so, how, and how likely would I be to get some sort of compensation?
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In 1796, Thomas Paine wrote in an open letter to George Washington that 'the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any.' Why was Paine so angry with Washington?
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Japanese castles seem to be built as a series of layers of earth held in with retaining walls, whereas European castles tend to have freestanding walls even if built on a hill. What led to these styles of fortification design being so different? Was one markedly more labour-intensive than the other?
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Did ancient civilians get PTSD? What do we know of the psychological effects of war on noncombatants, and how they dealt with them?
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In the film 'Hail, Caesar!' (2016), there is one scene in which a Protestant, a Catholic and an Orthodox priest and a Jewish rabbi are consulted about the titular film-within-a-film's depiction of Jesus. How far did film studios in the 50s actually try to avoid offending religious sensibilities?
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In the Ridley Scott film Kingdom of Heaven, Baldwin IV of Jerusalem is depicted wearing an ornate mask to hide his leprosy. Did the actual King Baldwin feel the need to conceal his condition in this way? How would contemporaries have perceived leprosy, and was this a cause of stigma against him?
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