askhistorians

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Louis XVI sought a suicidal war with Europe to crush the Revolution. The Brissotins sought it for other reasons. Why did they trust their imprisoned king after his failed attempt to escape the country?	2
In Gore Vidal's fictional take on the life of Julian the Apostate, he suggests that Julian's conversion to the mystery cult of Mithra owed to a manipulative svengali figure. Was there any such figure in Julian's life?	2
What separates grain/bread riots that were summarily crushed from those that actually achieved price controls or other concessions?	2
How/why did new rules in chess (e.g. the two-space pawn move, en passant, castling) propogate and become the standard? Were there governing bodies that agreed such moves made a better game? Were chess players generally aware of new rules bubbling up in other regions?	2
Why were the more conservative wings of the French National Assembly the ones most ardently seeking to export the French Revolution by declaring war on nearly the whole of Europe?	2
Mirabeau and the Parisian citizenry knew what they were up against long before Louis fled to Varennes. So why did so many French Republicans still cheer "Vive le Roi" at every minor concession?	1
How did 1960s American television have room for The Addams Family and The Munsters? Weren't there only like three channels?	0
How and when did American catch-wrestling competitions become the faked theatrical events associated with traveling carnivals?	0
It's 1789 and I'm a comfortable, unremarkable Parisian lawyer. How many of my peers become Jacobins? What common cause do I find with starving peasants and a growing class of bourgeois creditors?	0
Does history have any examples of dramatized/predetermined fights comparable to today's pro wrestling?	0

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