askhistorians

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In 1503, the town council of Nuremberg, Germany, limited the playing of marble games to a meadow outside the town. Or so says Wikipedia. But is there any evidence for this claim? And if so, what might have occasioned this decision?	22
Hellenistic Jewish scholars such as Josephus and Philo often wrote in Greek. Did this help bring Jewish writing and scholarship to a wider audience? How was their work received in the classical Mediterranean world in Greek and Roman circles?	22
I have seen it asserted that the ratio of enlisted to drafted troops in the US Army was only 1:2 in WW2, but 2:1 in Vietnam. Is this true, and if so what accounts for this seemingly counterintuitive discrepancy?	22
What were relations like between immigrant African-Americans in Liberia and indigenous peoples within claimed Liberian territory? And what were Liberian relations like with other African polities in its vicinity?	21
On the internet (or the bits that I tend to end up on), the Soviet Union is often associated with militarised renditions of Russian folk music. How prominent was folk music in the USSR relative to other styles, and why was it so prominent in military choir settings?	21
Who was the Syagrius that was made prefect of Provence in 568? Was there any relation to the Syagrius based at Soissons who was defeated by the Franks under Clovis in 486?	20
How were the territories controlled by military orders like the Teutonic and Livonian Orders or the Knights of St. John administered?	20
Was there a significant opposition on religious grounds to the British invasion of Ethiopia/Abyssinia in 1868, given that the Ethiopians were not only Christian but also shared the English patron saint of St. George?	20
When did the cannon piece appear in Xiangqi (Chinese chess)?	19
At the start of Sergei Eisenstein's 'Alexander Nevsky' (1938) Alexander is approached by an emissary of the Golden Horde seeking to recruit him. What were relations like between the Mongols and the Russian states at the time of the Battle on the Ice?	19

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