askhistorians

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When I was younger I liked to think of Alexander the Great as a noble figure who wanted to unite the world and erase the differences between peoples. The more I think about it though, the more he seems to resemble a mere Hitler-like dictator. Is there any nobility in the historical Alexander?	430
Were past cultures as casually accepting of paedophilia as they're often believed? (Pedastry, young marriages, etc) If so, when did paedophilia come to be as it is now?	214
I'm not certain where to ask this, but why exactly was pretty much every computer from the 1980s made in that ugly beige colour, and why does that plastic yellow over time?	127
In this famous photo of 9 monarchs from 1910, why is King Albert looking in a different direction from the others? Is this a part of the pose or did he just look away?	81
Why is the Treaty of Versailles even today popularly considered to be so harsh and punitive?	35
Historians, do you prefer to use the classic "BC" and "AD" to describe years, or the newer "common era" system? Or do you simply not care?	27
I've heard several times that the M4 Sherman tank was vastly outdated and inferior to nearly all other tanks in WW2 in every regard except quantity; how much truth is there to this? Why would the US use an obsolete tank?	26
I don't know if this is answerable, but was Wernher von Braun, the famous rocket scientist who defected from Nazi Germany to America, likely to have truly supported the Nazi Regime?	22
What actual possibility is there that Alexander the Great was poisoned? Was the notion truly just a political ploy invented by his successors to discredit their enemies? (ie Antipeter)	17
I don't know if there is a more suited subreddit to this, but I'm curious: what is the origin of the term "computer crash," as relating to when a program or operating system suddenly fails?	16

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