AskHistorians

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One in five American adults — about 48 million people — struggles to read at a basic level. How does this compare to literacy 50 to 100 years ago, and in colonial times?	13
Were the Soviets still lagging western countries in technology by the 1960s? If so, were they attempting to make up the gap through theft/spying? How successful were they?	13
Everyone knows about revolutionary Ford Model T. Were models A through S worth writing home about?	13
Machiavelli thought Florence should stop hiring fickle and unreliable mercenaries and instead create a part-time citizen militia modeled on the Roman legions. He used it to defeat Pisa, but the experiment ended after a defeat and never spread to other cities. Why didn't the idea take hold?	13
Did the Spanish fishing industry cause the collapse of the Grand Banks cod fishery? Why didn't Canada head off the problem? Why were international fishing companies allowed to strip the whole fishery bare?	13
Roman Britain had the largest garrison in the empire. Did the Romans get enough value from the province to justify the expense of keeping them there?	13
Did the Whole Earth Catalog have a major cultural impact in the 1960s and 1970s? Why was it so popular, and what was the business model?	13
I'm a Roman explorer wandering around sub-Saharan Africa circa 1 A.D. Do you find large cities that remind me of home? Is the technology level roughly the same? Am I impressed by the civilizations I find?	13
The Romans viewed the first Christians as an existential threat, mobilized many legions to intercept the epistle of Paul, and burned Corinth to the ground to kill its Christians, according to Press Field's "A Man at Arms" Any of this true?	13
Were David Roberts's 19th-century paintings of the Middle East more fairy tale than reality? What's with the ruins everywhere? Were these settlements real?	13

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