askhistorians

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What would Walt Whitman’s “Learn’d Astronomer” actually know about the stars?	5
How have the rhetorical styles of genocide denialism changed over time, particularly in the 20th century?	5
In the Hardy Boys novel Mystery on Vampire Trail (published in 1971), a gang counterfeits an extremely high-end credit card (the in-universe equivalent of today’s Amex Centurion). Who/what would’ve been the target of such scams at a time when credit cards were a relative novelty?	5
What was life like for South Koreans during the brief period of North Korean occupation at the beginning of the Korean War? Conversely, what was life like for North Koreans under coalition occupation later in the war?	5
How did Saddam successfully hang onto power for so long after the extremely costly invasions of Iran and Kuwait, the punishing sanctions regime, and being a Sunni in a Shia-dominated country? Was it the brutality, the relative secularism, or was there something more to it?	5
Why did Madison not formally ally with Napoleonic France in 1812? Jefferson (with Madison as Secretary of State) threatened to make an Anglo-American alliance over the Louisiana Territory dispute in 1802.	5
Is it true that most indigenous American cultures did not practice corporal punishment for children and picked up the practice from colonizers?	4
Throughout history, which people do you think would have been so strong nobody could militarily challenge them? What percentage of historians do you think agrees with your view?	4
Was the Meiji Restoration inevitable if Commodore Perry had not sailed into Uraga Bay and forced the opening of the country?	4
How did Stalin go from issuing a decree in November 1917 proclaiming the right to self-determination of minority nationalities to eventually subsuming them and enacting forced migration under his regime?	4

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