AskHistorians

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When future President Henry Clay was 29, he was serving in the US Senate. There have been two other Senators in US history who have served before their 30th birthday, despite the age of 30 being a Constitutional requirement. Why was this allowed, and was there controversy at the time?	47
In 1905, the sailors of two Russian battleships mutinied in what many consider to be the very start of the Russian Revolution. One of these ships, the Georgii Pobedonosets, was recaptured, and 19 sailors got 185 years of hard labor. Do we know what eventually became of them?	40
My sister keeps insisting that the vast majority of the US founding fathers were athiest. Is that true?	40
At what point did Europeans realize that the "New World" wasn't India and that the natives there were not actually Indians?	33
"No taxation without representation" was a primary rallying cry against colonial grievances that eventually resulted in the American Revolution. What was the argument at the time AGAINST giving colonists the right to vote for representatives in Parliament?	31
In the antebellum South, many states passed laws that made it a crime for someone to mistreat, abuse, neglect, or murder a slave. Were these laws ever enforced? Are there any records of someone receiving punishment because of how they treated a slave?	23
We always hear about Stalin's infamous paranoia, and how harmful his great purge was to the military leadership before World War II. However, do we have any surviving evidence of any instances where Stalin's accusations turned out to be right?	17
Did the US Army intentionally distribute smallpox infested blankets to native Americans, or is that just a popular urban legend?	16
Why did Imperial Japan attack the United States and Great Britian, rather than coordinate a two pronged attack into the USSR with Nazi Germany? Was there not enough oil in the Caucasus to temporarily relieve Japan of the US oil embargo?	13
How long did it take for European explorers to realize that they were not in India after discovering the New World?	10

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