askhistorians

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In Common Sense, Thomas Paine makes King George III out to be an uncultured brute. Is this accurate, or propaganda? Did Americans think of their king as a boorish despot before people like Paine demeaned him?	6
Did St. Benedict demand that his monks go without food for long periods of time? Are we talking one meal a day? One some days of the year? Did the fasts include total abstinence from all food or just meat?	6
Most European countries have taken a middle path between American-style suburban sprawl and their traditional compact development patterns since the end of WWII. Was this a conscious choice, or imposed by their preexisting development patterns?	6
Classical Greece never managed to unify, and its decentralized city-states were always clashing. This is often described as a bug, but was it also a feature?	6
How prominent were the Knights Templar in political and economic life in Medieval Europe? Did they do anything particularly innovative to become so wealthy, or were they just sucking up donations? Why were they able to generate so much more wealth than the King of France?	6
Columbus was a bad person by the standards of today. Was he a bad person by the standards of his day?	6
Did ancient civilizations recognize four seasons? Did Egyptians recognize Fall as a thing? Did anyone divide the year between wet and dry?	6
Were Americans angry that Roosevelt violated the unwritten two-term limit adhered to by all presidents since Washington?	6
Before the mass adoption of the metric system, were imperial units mostly used by Anglophone countries? What was the rest of Europe using to measure and weigh?	6
As Cortez and Pizarro slaughtered and conquered their way across the Americas, did Europeans back home debate whether aggression against peoples who held no threat to Europeans could be justified?	6

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