askhistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
Was Plato aware of Buddha?	5768
Why did so many ancient cultures consider the heart, rather than the brain, to be the seat of the mind? Surely they must have noticed that head injuries frequently result in mental impairment and personality change, but chest injuries never do?	3637
The Catholic church claims to know the complete list of all 266 popes who reigned from the 1st to the 21st century, starting with St Peter himself. They also give exact dates for the duration of their papacies for nearly all of them. How credible is this from the perspective of a historian?	3445
What is the cultural context of the infamous Japanese painting “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife”? NSFW	2479
It used to be common for governments to hold open, high-profile competitions for the best solution to some engineering problem. Examples include the longitude competition won by John Harrison, and the naval architecture prizes won by Leonhard Euler. When and why did this stop?	1808
The First Amendment was passed in 1791. How did Freedom of Speech/Religion actually look in practice afterwards? Could people in 1792 walk the streets of New York, shouting “Hail Satan!”, and not be punished?	1654
Saudi Arabia only abolished slavery in 1962. Was the fact that slavery still existed there a common political discussion point in the West during the 1950s, like Apartheid in the 1980s?	886
Wikipedia states that pharaoh Thutmose III reigned from 24 April 1479 BC to 11 March 1425 BC. How the $@#! do we know this with such precision?!?	813
When the Roman Empire gradually lost territory, was there a “postcolonial” reckoning where former dependencies actively tried to reverse Roman cultural influence and bring back their “native” culture?	618
Of the 10 American presidents between 1837 and 1869, 8 are usually ranked by historians among the worst presidents in American history (all except Lincoln and Polk). Do historians have an explanation for why that era produced so many bad presidents?	454

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