askhistorians

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In The Great Gatsby, Tom reads white supremacist books and goes off on a racist tirade against interracial marriage. Nowadays we see this as proof he's a scumbag, but what would Fitzgerald's original audience have thought of it?	7843
The 1893 Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Yellow Face” depicts an interracial relationship and a mixed-race child with what seems like astonishing open-mindedness for the time period. What was the reaction to this when it was published?	2422
What mentality went into deciding the various national republics in the USSR? Or, why did the Ukrainians, Kazakhs, or Uzbeks get Soviet Socialist Republics that later became independent, but the Chechens, Buryats, or Yakuts didn't?	1977
In Western media, pursuing immortality is often portrayed as villainous (Voldemort, Palpatine, etc.). How did this trope come about?	681
Richard Nixon became a Representative in 1947, a Senator in 1950, and Vice President in 1953. That seems like a meteoric rise! How did he do it, and was it remarked on by his contemporaries?	596
In 1923 the United Kingdom became the first country to recognise the Soviet Union. Why did it do this and how did Soviet ambassadors handle working with British high society?	511
How did U.S. Military operational codenames become so dramatic?	447
In Guys and Dolls, Nathan Detroit claims that he hasn’t yet married his fiancée of fourteen years because he can’t afford “the blood test”. Why did you need a blood test to get married in 1950s New York?	382
How did a text like The Iliad just disappear from Western Europe for over seven hundred years?	296
Mein Kampf is atrociously written and a struggle to get through. Mussolini claimed to have never finished it. Was this a reason why the appeasers underestimated Hitler's ambitions?	246

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