askhistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
Once I saw a play about Eleanor Roosevelt where she recounts a scene of a ship returning to the US at the end of WWWII. She says that several nurses committed suicide by jumping to the deck, because they couldn’t stand the cheering of the crowd after the horror they had seen. Did this really happen?	2019
In the Crown, Winston Churchill tells Queen Elizabeth that the monarch never offers the prime minister refreshment, and the prime minister never sits. In Darkest Hour, King George VI and Winston Churchill sit down to lunch together weekly. Who is right?	340
The first transatlantic cable must have been a sea-change in communications... is it correct to assume that the time it took for news to travel from the US to Europe went from weeks/months to instant? Are there firsthand sources of people marveling at this and the impact on life as they knew it?	235
When slaveholding statesmen like Washington and Jefferson visited wealthy British and European households, did they take enslaved Africans American valets and ladies’ maids with them? How were these enslaved servants received by the white household staff?	135
Why were chariots such a battlefield advancement? Wouldn’t a horseman shooting arrows from on horseback be equally effective, if not more, because a chariot’s wheels could get stuck in obstacles?	113
What technological advancements would made life more comfortable for a well-to-do person in the 1700s compared to the 1600s?	73
To Jesus's 1st century Jewish contemporaries, would it have been considered blasphemous to say that a human was an incarnation of God?	47
When did the British start drinking tea? What did they drink before? Before sugarcane was grown in the Caribbean, what was the source of sugar for cakes and confections ? Were those foods less common before?	34
How did Islam come to be an abrahamic religion? It makes sense to me that Christianity is, because Jesus was Jewish, as were his earliest followers. But the prophet Mohammed was not Jewish, nor were his early followers. So where did the idea originate that Muslims are descendants of Ishmael?	13
Did Hirohito consider suicide when Japan surrendered at the end of World War II?	5

« < > »