AskHistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
In 1966, Beijing's Red Guards seized, "denounced", and destroyed the 350-year-old corpse of the Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Do we know what the corpse was accused of?	3141
Why did MAS*H become so incredibly popular? What chords did a show about army medics in the Korean War strike in the American popular consciousness?	2774
Was Vietnam-era basic training and troop culture significantly more violent and obscene (as represented in films like Full Metal Jacket) than in previous wars, or does this reflect American attitudes to the respective wars themselves?	1705
“I only said Jehovah!”: how were minor infringements of Mosaic law (not covered by Roman law) actually handled in Roman Judea? How about minor crimes against Roman law committed by Jews?	1611
The Greek and Roman pantheons were presumably harmonised over several centuries. Can we reconstruct a "palaeo-Roman" religion - the beliefs and practices of the Italic peoples prior to Hellenisation?	477
When coffee was beginning to catch on in Europe in the seventeenth century, was it used as a “working drink” (as today) or just a recreational one? Would a Dutch merchant have done his paperwork with a cup of coffee on his desk?	319
Did Homeric Greeks really throw their spears by hand, as modern perceptions would suggest? And if atlatls are so useful to increase spear-throwing force, why didn't they use them?	73
"Adultery" among noblemen in Renaissance Europe seems only to have concerned relations with noblewomen (usually the wives of men of higher rank), not commoners or prostitutes. Did the Church actually have this understanding, or did they just perpetually look the other way?	42
Why did the USA and USSR accumulate as many thermonuclear bombs as they did? What was the strategic interest in being able to "destroy the world" yet another time over?	40
Early Marxist revolutionary socialist parties were often called “Social Democrats”. When and why did this term become applied solely to reformism?	28

« < > »