askhistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
The Gunpowder plot involved 36 barrels of gunpowder in an undercroft beneath the House of Lords. Just how much damage would the explosion have done if it had gone off? Would it have accomplished its goal? Destroyed all of Parliament? Surrounding buildings?	2
In Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus decides to watch a play specifically because he expects it to be entertainingly bad. Are there any earlier examples of the "so bad it's good" mentality?	2
The Meiji Restoration famously introduced meat to the diets of many Japanese, largely in the hopes of improving the physique of the Japanese military. Was this successful? What was the health impact of this dietary change?	1
I've heard that pre-industrial agrarian families had a lot of kids because they were needed to work on the farm. Is there truth to this? Were farmers deliberately having lots of kids as a way to get cheap labor?	1
When was punctuation added to the telegraph code? When could messages use periods instead of the word "stop" after each line?	1
I've often heard "back in the day, people had big families because they needed hands to work on the farm". Did pre-industrial farmers really have big families intentionally for cheap labor, or is the explanation a modern fabrication?	1
Why did Jamestown have walls? What threat were they expecting to have to defend against?	1
Most major US holidays are referred to by name (Labor Day, Thanksgiving), but today is usually referred to by date (July 4th) rather than name (Independence Day). Is there a reason for the discrepancy?	1
Given that position in outer space is all relative, what was it that Galileo actually "discovered" that was so offensive to religion? Couldn't you just as easily say the Earth is stationary at the center and everything moves in a weird way around it?	1
Wikipedia claims that Alan Turing not only cracked the Enigma code, he was also responsible for inventing the original Enigma machine some 20 years prior. How much truth is there to this claim?	1

« < > »