askhistorians

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It’s 1820 and I’ve just been elected to the US congress from Georgia. How do I go about actually claiming my seat? Without photo ID, how can I prove to anyone in Washington that I really am the new congressman?	251
I stub my toe, and involuntarily tell “Ow!” But a Spanish speaker would say “Ay!” and a German would say “Autsch!” How long have English speakers been saying ow, and how did these splits emerge?	204
I have heard that, while British settlers in America enthusiastically adopted Native American foods, British Australians had an almost superstitious taboo about avoiding aboriginal food. Is this true? If so, what accounts for the split?	187
Before the establishment of modern Israel, Hebrew was used mostly as a liturgical language and most European Jews spoke Yiddish in daily life. How did Israel go about teaching conversational Hebrew to millions of refugees?	75
In 1919, the movie stars Douglass Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and DW Griffith founded the United Artists studios. Fairbanks (né Ulman) was nominally Jewish and Chaplin was philosemite and antifascist, while Griffith was a Klan sympathizer and vicious antisemite. How did these men work together?	74
Still life paintings from the Dutch masters often feature popular foods such as fish, bread, poultry and.... bowls of peeled lemons? Were the Dutch of the golden age really chomping on lemons as a snack, or was this simply artistic license?	59
When Washington DC was first established, both Maryland and Virginia donated land to make a perfect square straddling the Potomac. Later, Virginia took their half back (today’s Alexandria), leaving only the Maryland territory. How and why did this happen?	45
Today is the start of Passover, the Jewish festival of liberation from slavery. How was this holiday celebrated in the slaveholding American South?	42
In Greek mythology, Zeus’ wife Hera also happened to be his sister. Was brother-sister incest seen as “ok” in Ancient Greece, or were gods held to a different standard?	36
When the American civil war broke out, what happened to students from Union states at colleges in the confederacy and vice-versa?	32

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