AskHistorians

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I'm a poor farmer's child growing up in rural 19th-century America. My mother just taught me the alphabet, and it's time to start reading. She puts me on her knee and opens a copy of....what? What sort of reading material for children was available? The Bible? Plutarch's Lives? Some Shakespeare?	186
From Seneca's doctors sending him to Egypt in 20 A.D. to Doc Holliday being advised to head west in the 1870s, tuberculosis sufferers were told dry climates could heal them. How did this ineffective treatment become such a phenomenon, with sanitariums opening-up all over the world?	186
Greeks identified as Romans during Byzantine times, but after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, newly-freed Greece went with a Hellenic identity rather than a Roman one. Did the English and the French push a Hellenic identity, or was it Greek-driven? Was anyone pushing for Roman identity?	185
The Irish diet before the famine was 90% potatoes. What did the bodies built by such a diet look like, and how was their health?	179
Roman emperors often had idealized statues of their physique made, but Nero let it all hang out. His coinage and statues feature a fleshy face and double chin. Do we know why he didn't have artists "photoshop" his appearance? Was this fidelity to reality unusual in emperors?	176
Guardian Forests can be found all over Japan — Little islands of the wild amid farm fields and busy city streets. What's the history and purpose of these sanctuaries? Are the Japanese unique in their creation, or are were these forest shrines build elsewhere around the world but later destroyed?	175
Was Marcus Aurelius the first ruler to try to build a state centered around "free speech," "equality before the law," and government "which respects most of all the freedom of the governed", or merely someone carrying a torch of earlier reformers?	174
Door-to-door salesmen were still among the best ways to sell books in the late 1950s/early 1960s. When did that change, and what lead to their decline?	173
When and why did western generals and monarchs stop "leading from the front," on the battlefield? Was this considered prudent or cowardly? Did they get flack for it?	173
The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in 1862 but gave them no land or anything to start a life with. The Homestead Act of 1862 gave 160 acres of land to European immigrants just arrived in the country. Why wasn't some of this land given to former slaves?	170

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