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1500 questions
24
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Was it possible for a young Japanese woman to end up enslaved in Great Britain in the mid-1600s?
I'm inspired to ask this by the horror visual novel The Letter, which chiefly regards a haunted building called the Ermengarde mansion, in the fictional English town of Anslem, near the equally-fictional city of Luxbourne. The mansion is stated to…
Exal
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24
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Why did people not tend to keep records or consider future consequences until very recently?
When I'm talking about recordkeeping, I don't mean cave paintings, or anything like that. Instead, I'm referencing writing down how something was repaired onto the object so people know what changes to expect, or how to undo a restoration (e.g on a…
Geza Kerecsenyi
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24
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Japan is known for being isolationist, so what cultivated its history of interventionism in the 20th century?
For much of its history, Japan was a very isolationistic country, and in fact, even in modern Japan, there is still a strong isolationist attitude among the Japanese people in some ways.
During the 20th-century, Japan has participated in the…
user10037
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24
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Why did quill pens persist until the early 19th century despite the capacity to make metal dip pens?
I recently toured Jefferson's Monticello and I was struck during the tour of the library by the description of some of the challenges that Jefferson faced using quill pens.
This seemed particularly surprising because the library is filled with…
DQdlM
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24
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Why did the Soviet Union not "grant" Inner Mongolia to Mongolia after World War Two?
In the brief Soviet anti-Japanese campaign of 1945, Soviet and Mongol troops entered Inner Mongolia. Mongolia itself had been essentially a client state of the Soviet Union since 1921. Also the communist leadership of Mongolia had pan-Mongolist…
the gods from engineering
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Who was the most successful German spy against Great Britain in WWII, from the contemporary German perspective?
Reading up on this it appears to me many of Germany's spy operations inside the UK were pretty quickly shutdown. I investigated a half dozen spies who were captured by the end of 1942.
Dorthy O'Grady arrested December 1940
George Johnson…
user28491
24
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2 answers
Why didn’t Christianity spread southwards from Ethiopia in the Middle Ages?
Christianity, having begun in 1st Century Roman Palestine, in the next few centuries spread rapidly across the Roman Empire and beyond, including beyond the southern boundary of Roman Egypt, via the Red Sea and the Nile. The Kingdom of Axum in what…
Timothy
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24
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Did Stalin kill all Soviet officers involved in the Winter War?
Did Stalin kill all of the Soviet officers involved in the Winter War, when it ended?
A documentary called "Warlords: Hitler vs Stalin" made this claim, but Wikipedia doesn't seem to mention this.
Actual quote from the film:
Finally, the Finns…
user26470
24
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1 answer
Was touching your nose a greeting in second millenium Mesopotamia?
I ran across a curious sentence today, in a Mesopotamian prayer to a personal god (the grammar looked better in verse format):
"Daily worship your god with offerings, prayers and appropriate
incense. Bend your heart to your god; That befits the…
Flux
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24
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What was the state of the German rail system in 1944?
Could an SS officer get from Auschwitz to Berlin by train in July/August/September 1944? I need to know how Allied bombing might have disrupted the system.
For context: I am writing a mystery which includes a memoir of a survivor of Auschwitz. I…
Olivia
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24
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3 answers
Did pre-Columbian Americans know the spherical shape of the Earth?
The Maya are known for their astronomy and mathematics, most notably their famous calculation of the length of a year. I was surprised to learn that they supported a flat Earth model, though to be fair, a spherical Earth wasn't yet fully accepted in…
Obus
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24
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2 answers
How old is the day of 24 equal hours?
According to Wikipedia, concepts superficially similar to the modern system of hours have been around since at least ancient Egypt c. 2800 BC. But their system divided "daytime" (after dawn and before sunset) and "nighttime" (after sunset and…
Mason Wheeler
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24
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4 answers
What are some Chinese sources testifying the extreme weather events of 535-536 CE?
The Wikipedia page Extreme weather events of 535–536 lists under "Documentary evidence" that:
Low temperatures, even snow during the summer (snow reportedly fell in August in China during the Northern and Southern dynasties, which
caused the…
mooncatcher
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24
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Does the Catholic church have a long history of child abuse, or is it something that started in our time?
There has been a debate on the causes of clerical child abuse is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding Catholic sex abuse cases. However, I wonder what is the history of child abuse in the Catholic Church.
Some Catholics, such as…
James Smith
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24
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1 answer
What prevented slaves in Classical Greece from running off?
I was once again reading the Old Oligach’s rant on slaves and how good they supposedly had it.
if it were customary for a slave (or metic or freedman) to be struck by one who is free, you would often hit an Athenian citizen by mistake on the…
Ludi
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