askhistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
How would spectators at the Panhellenic Games know who was competing? Would there be lists of names put up? Would there be announcers of some sort?	17
W. S. Gilbert was inspired to write The Mikado (1885) thanks to the Knightsbridge Japanese Village, a travelling exhibition of Japanese culture employing over 100 Japanese men and women. What do we know of their perspective on the whole affair, and/or those of people in Japan?	17
Why was the Patriarchate of Rome so much bigger than the other four that made up the Pentarchy?	16
How were the territories controlled by military orders like the Teutonic and Livonian Orders or the Knights of St. John administered?	16
Early saints' lives seem to be full of stories about restoring sight to the blind, yet the restoration of hearing to the deaf seems much rarer. Why is this?	16
The Clint Eastwood film 'Unforgiven' prominently features 'English Bob', a British gunslinger who, according to dialogue, 'works for the railroad shooting Chinamen'. How much of this was plausible – the European immigrant gunslinger, the railroad hiring hitmen, and the specifically racist targeting?	16
Queen Victoria is supposed to never have actually uttered the phrase, 'we are not amused', but it has become indelibly associated with her in popular culture. When and how did Victoria come to be associated with this turn of phrase?	16
How did the US Marine Corps come to have its own air component?	16
In ‘The Mikado’, Pooh-Bah declares that he can trace his ancestry ‘back to a protoplasmal atomic globule.’ How well understood was the origin of life in 1885, and how widely?	16
Ravenna was capital of the Western Roman Empire from 402-455, while the Eastern Roman Empire's capital was at Constantinople for most of its existence, yet both entities called themselves 'Rome'. When, why and how did the state entity of Rome cease to be centred on the actual city of Rome?	16

« < > »