askhistorians

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When did people start commonly viewing playing for it's own sake, as something that was good for children rather than a waste of time?	16
I saw an interview with George RR Martin where he claimed that for most of the history of English story telling critics didn’t make distinction between "literature" & "popular fiction", and "speculative fiction" & "realistic fiction" in the sense that we think of those distinctions today. true?	16
In 300BC where the San hunter gatherers still the only people living in the area of modern day South Africa?	16
Were Jews ever prejudice against the ancient Egyptians because of the Moses story?	16
1000 years ago if a commoner tried to kill the king of England would they just be executed in the normal fashion or would they be tortured in someway first?	16
Would the forced opening of Japan have been considered an important event in the U.S. in the 1850s?	16
suppose It's AD150 & I'm the captain of a ship taking grain from Carthage to Rome. what's my Method of navigation once I get out of site of land?	16
An SF writer I like, once said that both historical fiction and science fiction became popular in the 19th century because, thanks to the speed of technological change, it was the first time people had a strong sense of the past, present and future being different. Would you agree with that notion?	16
was having dark skin associated with being less civilized before the African slave trade?	16
There's a bit in The Bridge on the River Kwai when an American POW escapes from the camp and gets help from a village further up the river. In real life at the the time, 1943, how would normal people in that part of Thailand have likely really felt towards the Americans and Japanese respectively?	16

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