AskHistorians

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In America, privately issued currency was widespread until 1866; how was the transition to a state-backed, and only state-backed currency handled? What were the repercussions?	134
Charles Dickens's father spent time in debtors' prison. How did they work? Inmates were charged room and board, already unable to pay their debts; how could one hope to ever get out? Was there a set 'sentence', or were prisoners simply dependent on others paying their way back into society?	132
Peter the Great legendarily traveled incognito during his reign, even though he was difficult to miss at 6'8. Do we have any accounts from those he met in his travels?	128
Where did the notion of the "American Dream" come from? Was it directly tied to the notion of American exceptionalism, or did they evolve separately? Did they predate American independence, or were they products of the growth of the 19th century?	126
The Suez Crisis pitted the US and USSR against Britain, France, and Israel in the midst of the Cold War; how did the two superpowers wind up aligned against what are three of the US's traditionally closest allies? What were the long-term ramifications?	124
In the 1930s, Katharine Hepburn created a stir by wearing trousers at a time when it was considered a shocking thing for a woman to do; how did the norm that trousers were for men and dresses were for women become so entrenched?	123
Hemingway apocryphally "liberated" the Ritz bar when the Allies retook Paris following the D-Day invasion. What really happened? How did this story become the stuff of legend?	123
In 1824, John Quincy Adams won the Presidency despite garnering only 30% of the popular vote and less than a third of the vote in the electoral college. Do we know how the surviving founding fathers (such as Madison, the architect of the constitution) reacted to, or felt about, this?	122
Greensleeves is an English folk song written and registered in London in the 1580s. Would somebody have been making money off of it? If so, who, and how?	121
The land of the lotus eaters suggests that by Homer's time his society was aware of the addictive quality of narcotics; in the story, Odysseus's men want to stay there but he forces them back to their ships. Was this typical of his society's view towards addiction?	120

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