AskHistorians

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The US voter turnout in 1896 was nearly 80%. By 1920, fewer than 50% of eligible voters turned out. What explains such an extreme drop in voter turnout in such a short period of time?	7554
Hanukkah, despite being a relatively minor Jewish holiday (indeed it is a festival, not a holy day), has, in the broader culture, become "Jewish Christmas," even though religiously it's not nearly as important as Christmas.	4469
In 1765, a chimney sweep was banished from for 5 years from Edinburgh and expelled from the local chimney sweep organization for assisting after a hanging went awry. Were chimney sweeps notably anti-death penalty? Why was it a "grievous punishment" to be exiled to leith?	2372
Scottish "blackhouses" had no chimneys but burned peat inside, the smoke apparently escaped through cracks in the thatching. This seems...unhealthy. Did the crofters who lived in these houses have extremely high rates of lung disease?	348
It's Passover right now. Enslaved Africans in America identified with the Jews of the Exodus story. The song "Go Down Moses" was originally sung by freed Blacks - Harriet Tubman herself even sung it. Why, after emancipation, did they then become Christian and not Jewish?	261
The last time I was in Spain (Barcelona), a woman complained about all the petty crimes (pickpockets, etc) and said, "These things wouldn't have happened under Franco." Is that true?	144
Bob Dylan turned 80 today. People make a really big deal of his "plugging in" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, but was this truly seen as a big deal at the time?	29
Why did Francisco Franco hate the Freemasons and Freemasonry so much? Was there some sort of weird Jewish/anti-semitic conspiracy theory involved?	25
The 1969 French film "Army of Shadows" begins with a scene of Nazi soldiers parading triumphantly down the Champs Elysees in a newly occupied Paris. Did the filming of this scene in the middle of Paris generate any protest or response from Parisians who had to live through the Nazi occupation?	19
I am curious about the reason for the explosion of racial violence in 1919 that was to be called the "Red Summer. Did it come about due to years of anti-black domestic propaganda or something else?	18

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