/u/PIP_SHORT's posts in /r/AskHistorians

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The Chinese were using natural gas a couple thousand years ago, according to a Reddit TIL from a while back. I know they transported it in bamboo tubes, but how did they extract it? What did they use it for? Was it seen as magic? Basically I want to hear a story about ancient Chinese engineering.

1888 upvotes

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There's a famous photo of some construction workers sitting on a girder eating lunch, way above Manhattan. What were death\injury rates from falling? Where these guys paid more than regular construction workers?

387 upvotes

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Ferdinand I of Austria was super inbred and famously handicapped, but was married to the same woman, Maria Anna of Savoy, for a long time. Do we know anything about her feelings or thoughts toward her husband?

239 upvotes

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How long have we known about the dangers of inbreeding? Did the Hapsburgs (or other famously inbred royal houses) know what kind of damage they were doing to their gene pool?

188 upvotes

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There are a lot of farts in The Canterbury Tales. More than I expected. How taboo was fart talk in Chaucer's time relative to today?

36 upvotes

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How can we read super ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs if the Rosetta stone was created in 196BC?

17 upvotes

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How possible would it be, say 500 years ago, for a commoner to impersonate a member of the nobility?

13 upvotes

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Ancient (or at least pre-modern) descriptions of what we now call "hypnosis"?

12 upvotes

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What happened to the families of Romans who were compelled to fall on their swords?

9 upvotes

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Did people know Alexandre Dumas had African ancestry during his lifetime? Are there any records of him experiencing racial discrimination?

9 upvotes

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Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
The Chinese were using natural gas a couple thousand years ago, according to a Reddit TIL from a while back. I know they transported it in bamboo tubes, but how did they extract it? What did they use it for? Was it seen as magic? Basically I want to hear a story about ancient Chinese engineering.	1888
There's a famous photo of some construction workers sitting on a girder eating lunch, way above Manhattan. What were death\injury rates from falling? Where these guys paid more than regular construction workers?	387
Ferdinand I of Austria was super inbred and famously handicapped, but was married to the same woman, Maria Anna of Savoy, for a long time. Do we know anything about her feelings or thoughts toward her husband?	239
How long have we known about the dangers of inbreeding? Did the Hapsburgs (or other famously inbred royal houses) know what kind of damage they were doing to their gene pool?	188
There are a lot of farts in The Canterbury Tales. More than I expected. How taboo was fart talk in Chaucer's time relative to today?	36
How can we read super ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs if the Rosetta stone was created in 196BC?	17
How possible would it be, say 500 years ago, for a commoner to impersonate a member of the nobility?	13
Ancient (or at least pre-modern) descriptions of what we now call "hypnosis"?	12
What happened to the families of Romans who were compelled to fall on their swords?	9
Did people know Alexandre Dumas had African ancestry during his lifetime? Are there any records of him experiencing racial discrimination?	9