AskHistorians

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Before it was standardized, was spelling considered an art form? Was it considered to be like painting a picture of (for example) Adam and Eve, ie a basic format but plenty of wiggle room? Also, am I wrong in think the values placed on good handwriting and spelling have flipped over time?	5
One justification for segregation in the US was God had made different races on different continents, so black and white people needed to live apart. Did anyone at the time point out the hypocrisy of the slave trade having brung black people (other races) to white (US) continents in the first place?	5
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum site states “non-Jewish persons… primarily Germans, Czechs, Poles, and Soviet civilians… (would be) imprisoned… Such inmates… were to be detained for up to 56 days.. How did the Nazis stop these civilians from talking of what they’d seen once supposedly released?	5
I know back-diagnosing is not an exact science, but we do have records of symptoms Nikola Tesla displayed. What were these symptoms? What was thought of them at the time? What did Tesla think of them at the time?	5
As far as I can tell, a sizable amount of classic literature from the 1800s in Europe was very focused on “the Romans and Greeks.” Why were these authors always specifically praising “the ancients” as basically the best artists there ever was?	5
What’s up with s’mores? Where’d they come from?	5
AFAIK, time travel was associated with folklore before HG Wells’ The Time Machine. Is this true? How did public perception/knowledge of tt evolve after TTM published? Would someone before the book know what I mean if I said I want to go back to the future?	5
In the first sentence of the first Sherlock Holmes story, John Watson tells us "In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army." Which school at the UL would he have gone to?	5
A doctor telling loved ones their patient has “flat-lined” is a repeated occurrence in media. When did the flat-lining of a heart monitor become an iconic image in media? How did this medical device make its way into the media? Was it first through movies?	4
I recall reading somewhere that when the concentration camps were liberated, volunteers/nurses and medics tried to help the surgiría by doing their make up and hair, in effect to show them they saw them as people. Was this a one time event? How did medics go about treating survivors emotionally?	4

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