AskHistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
Before Hitler and the Nazi's, was there another go-to historical "worst person ever"?	2942
Names like "Jesus", "Muhammad" and "Moses" are common today among Christians, Muslims and Jews respectively. Would names like "Zeus" or "Heracles" have been common in ancient Greece? What about names like "Ra" or "Horus" in ancient Egypt?	565
It's common nowadays for teenagers to listen to music from the 1960s, some even complaining that "music was so much better then". Did similar sentiments exist in the 1960s regarding the music of the 1900s? How would a teenager in 1960 view the music of previous generations?	410
What was election season like in the first few US elections? Did candidates go around campaigning like they do now? Was there any sort of political advertising?	297
In "Society Must be Defended", Michel Foucault makes a big deal of the medieval myth that all European nations were descended from Troy. Is there any evidence of this myth being taken seriously by medieval Europeans, such as using it to argue against intra-European wars?	210
How common were duels in the 19th century? How did they go down? Did people usually die in duels?	206
Spy fiction was a pop-cultural hit in the west in the 50s/60s, often drawing on cold war fears. Was there an equivalent pop cultural phenomenon on the "other side"? Did the USSR or China have their own pulpy cold war fiction?	191
Ancient and medieval scribes made several errors and changes when copying the Bible, leading to several passages where the original version is disputed to this day, and several instances where errors have shaped the way key passages are understood. Is the same true of any sufficiently ancient text?	179
When Chinese Buddhism was first being developed in the 6th and 7th centuries, what was the relationship between China and India? How much would the Chinese people studying Buddhism have known about India?	164
In medieval Europe, money bags were often made of cat skins. Making items out of cat skins would be almost unthinkable today. When and how did our attitudes towards cats change?	113

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