askhistorians

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When did Toccata and Fugue in D Minor become associated with horror and the sinister? Does this association pre-date film?	2
Just how rigged was the 1988 Mexican presidential election?	2
By the time the Berlin Wall fell, had the more than 40 years of separation led to notable differences between the Standard German spoken on either side of the wall?	2
Did Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower know each other in person?	2
In Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera (1986), most of the music seems to fit the period in which it takes place (1880s)... except the fabulously anachronistic title song, which wears its 1980's-ness on its sleeve. How did theatre critics at the time take this artistic decision?	2
When was Old English literature rediscovered by Modern English speakers? When did Old English philology emerge?	2
At the 1988 US Vice-Presidential debate, Lloyd Bentsen got a zinger against Dan Quayle, saying that Quayle was "no Jack Kennedy" and that "Jack Kennedy was a friend of [Lloyd's]." Of course, having been dead 25 years, JFK couldn't confirm or deny Bentsen's claim. Were Bentsen and JFK really friends?	2
I just read an early-19th-c. novel set in Late Medieval France and Switzerland where a powerful duke with many enemies dresses a corpse on the battlefield in his clothes to fake his death and flee. Is there any historical precedent to this kind of trick?	2
If I'm not mistaken, a University-educated English gentleman from, let's say, 1790 to 1820 would've been expected to be well versed in Latin and Greek. Would he have also been expected to know any modern foreign languages? If so, which ones?	2
Ross Perot was maybe the strongest American voice against NAFTA in the 1990s. The Mexican left was also against NAFTA at the time. Did they come to see him as something of an ally within the US?	2

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