AskHistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
How great really was the civilizational gap between Greco-Romans and Celtic/Germanic "barbarians"? Has it been overstated in the popular consciousness?	100
Home Alone's film-within-a-film, Angels with Filthy Souls, is a convincing pastiche of 1930s gangster films. Would its mild profanity ("get the hell outta here") and non-gory but gleeful ultraviolence have passed the censors in the actual 1930s (both pre- and post-Hays Code)? (2nd attempt)	100
How recent is the notion of age-appropriate fashion for differently aged adults? For example, would a 50-year-old French count in the 1770s be ridiculed for dressing like a 20-year-old in the same station in life, or were all wealthy people expect to wear the same latest fashions regardless of age?	97
When did the idea of Northern Europeans as cold, disciplined, punctual, and restrained and Southern Europeans as expressive, lazy, lax about time, and impulsive appear? Was it the opposite, for example, in the Early Modern Period at the height of Spanish power?	94
In 1991, the PAN agreed with the PRI to burn the ballots from the 1988 Mexican presidential election. Why did they do this when their candidate (Manuel Clouthier) suffered from PRI fraud and died under mysterious circumstances in 1989?	89
Is it true that Hagia Sophia only took a decade to build, and that churches like Notre Dame took centuries to build not because Medieval construction methods were inefficient (as is popularly believed), but simply because of a lack of money?	89
In the not so distant past, Southern Europeans were stereotyped as lazier and more hot-blooded than Northern Europeans. Was this reversed in the Early Modern Period, when Spain and Portugal were at the height of their power?	88
In a famous episode of "I Love Lucy", Lucy and Ethel swap gender roles with their husbands. They decide to work at a chocolate packaging plant. Most interestingly, their supervisor is a woman. Would the sex of the supervisor have been (or seemed) unusual for the original 50's audience?	88
As Walpole lived until 1797, he witnessed the 1790's burst in popularity of the Gothic literary genre he created with The Castle of Otranto (1764). Did he comment on the new generation of Gothic writers exemplified by Ann Radcliffe & MG Lewis?	87
Why (at least in the US) are Victorian houses (particularly Second Empire ones, like that of the Addams Family) seen as spooky and haunted? Relatedly, why are the older Colonial and Early American houses not so often seen as such?	84

« < > »