/u/Seswatha's posts in /r/AskHistorians
Did the neighbors of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth actively pursue its demise as national policy? If so, why?
108 upvotes
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In the Iliad, Bellerophon delivers a letter. Does this indicate during the period that writing was lost in ancient Greece that people still knew about writing? That is, no one knew how to write, but still knew it existed because of contacts with civilizations like Egypt?
107 upvotes
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80 upvotes
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Not sure if this violates the 20 year rule, but when I was a kid I remember police departments in the US start hiring psychics. When did this practice start and when did it stop? Was it ever a common phenomenon or was it limited to high profile cases?
77 upvotes
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At what age were men usually knighted? At what age would a given knight's skill peak? At what age did knights retire?
74 upvotes
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Holland is famous for its windmills. Did flour prices in medieval and early modern Holland fluctuate based on how windy a month was? Did millers mill more grain when it was windy and build stockpiles?
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Genghis Khan has just been born. How many people are within a given number (twenty? thirty?) miles of him? How dispersed were Mongol tribes?
73 upvotes
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What was life like for peasants before the 20th century in China? Did they live in nuclear families or extended families? Did most of them own their own land or were they tenants? To what extent did the state govern their lives?
71 upvotes
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