askhistorians

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In Philip K. Dick's alternate history novel "The Man in the High Castle", the victorious Nazis are depicted as having completely wiped out the native population of Africa. Was a genocide like the Generalplan Ost in the Nazis' longterm plans for Africa?	7690
This list of causes of death for 1632 Londoners has some familiar causes (consumption, drowned, etc.) and others that are not so familiar, such entries for "Rising of the Lights" killing 98, and "Planet" killing 13. When did death records start being collected systematically in standardized form?	4168
A quick cursory glance at Wikipedia shows there is a debate on the historicity of Jesus, but not Muhammad among scholars. Is this simply because there are more contemporary non-Islam records of Muhammad versus non-Christians records of Jesus?	3834
During the 1300s, there were two competing courts in Japan. Today's emperor is descended from the Northern court, but in 1911 it was decreed the Southern court was the legitimate court, which would make the current Emperor's ancestors usurpers. What was the reasoning behind the 1911 decree?	2926
Did the Greeks have an "End of the World" scenario like Christianity and Revelations or the Norse and Ragnarok?	269
An American idiom is to add the phrase "and the horse you rode in on." to the end of a particular insult as a sign of contempt. However, it seems like no one exactly agrees upon what it means or originates from. When did this phrase emerge, and what was the context of its origin? NSFW	168
Does the traditional notion of the Middle Ages beginning with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and ending the fall of Eastern Roman Empire in 1453 still hold weight, or has the more nuanced view of the Antiquity-Medieval-Modern change as a process fully eclipsed it in historiography?	80
In just two years, the Mongols under Genghis Khan conquered the entirety of the Khwarezmid Empire and killed 1.7 million, a quarter of the population. Why was the invasion so devastating?	71
I just found out about Ulysses S. Grant's General Order Number 11... and uh, yikes. Was Grant an anti-Semite by today's standards, or was this an isolated incident?	53
The military rank "(field) marshal" has existed since the Middle Ages, and been used by dozens of militaries, but not the U.S. Army. Instead the equivalent "Five Star General" is used: why is the American military unique in not using "marshal"?	53

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