AskHistorians

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With the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination on the horizon (4th April), how has the historiography of King and his role in the civil rights movement changed over the last 50 years?	39
What were Mikhail Gorbachev's aims when he implemented his Perestroika and Glasnost reforms in the 1980's? Didn't he realise that this level of openness could (and would) help to dissolve the USSR?	38
What was it about the Vietnam war that saw more people engaging in 'artistic-type' opposition compared to other wars (e.g. Boer wars, World wars, Korean war etc) of around the same time?	37
In Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex", Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother. What was the historical context for this? How did Athenian society affect Sophocles' decision to write the play? How did the tragedy genre develop in Greek society?	37
Was there any attempt to revive the Weimar Republic's decadent & grandiose culture in Cold-War Germany? How were Women perceived (sexually) in Cold-War Germany?	32
I read that in 1807, François Isaac de Rivaz created the first hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine, known as the "De Rivaz Engine". In 1808, De Rivaz attached his "ICE" to a working vehicle. If this is true why did we switch from Hydrogen to Petrol in 1886 with the Benz Patent Motorwagen?	29
History of the Japanese Yakuza?	26
How much influence did the 1916 Easter Rising have on how Britain went about decolonising the rest of it's empire? & to a lesser extent how much influence did it have on how other european powers decolonised?	26
What's the history of Depression & Suicide? & How do historians use what we know happened in the past to try & predict what might happen in the future?	26
How, Why & When did English become the "ultimate" lingua franca spoken around the world?	25

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