askhistorians

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Gengis Khan and Attila the Hun were ambitious conquerors who are seen in a very dark light in popular culture. Alexander the Great, a similarly ambitious conqueror, is highly regarded as a brilliant military leader. Is this an eurocentric bias or is there a deeper reason?	6657
The elves of contemporary fiction seem to be completely different from the elves from ancient mythology. How did this change occur? Was it all because of Tolkien, or is the evolution more complex? And where did this idealized form of elves come from originally?	115
In the classic Mexican slapstick comedy El Chavo Del 8, Don Ramón would regularly hit El Chavo (an kid he was not related to) as punishment for misdeeds. Was hitting someone's else's children a common occurrence in 70s to 80s Mexico, or in any other period?	54
In the movie Kagemusha (1980), an impersonator winks at the only person who knows his true identity. Did winking as a gesture of deceit exist in the Sengoku period in Japan? Is the origin of the wink known historically?	28
"Germany had no chance of winning WWII" But didn't they get a few kms away from Moscow? Was the Western Front so lopsided that even a victory in the East would have been meaningless?	10
How old is the idea of the Earth being a planet, equivalent in the broadest of terms to celestial bodies such as Mars or Venus? Was it an immediate consequence of the Heliocentric model, or did it develop independently?	6
Was there any reason for the abandonment of the city of Amarna besides the court's return to Thebes?	6
Scottish Football Association chairman George Graham said Scotland would only travel to the 1950 World Cup as winners of the Home Championship, and made Scotland withdraw when they ended second, even though they qualified. What was the reason for this condition?	2

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