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1500 questions
22
votes
7 answers
How confusing was British currency compared to decimal currency circa 1850?
This question quotes Terry Pratchett's claim:
The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.
Is this a fair comparison with its inference that British currency was significantly more complex…
Pieter Geerkens
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votes
5 answers
Which Babylonian tablets contains the list of squares and cubes?
The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive writes
Two tablets found at Senkerah on the Euphrates in 1854 date from 2000 BC. They give squares of the numbers up to 59 and cubes of the numbers up to 32.
(though this has been copied, it seems, all…
Charles
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22
votes
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How did bank transactions (or "data" transactions) work when it took people weeks to travel vast distances?
I am designing a prototype for a distributed database that could work across vast distances of space, like the goals behind IPFS working at planetary, or galactic, scale. I want to solve the problem, at least theoretically (with a practical…
Lance
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22
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2 answers
Which lost historical documents, when uncovered, led to the most substantial revisions in historiography?
I have this romantic idea about the lost writings of Epicurus that perhaps somewhere at the bottom of the Aegean Sea there still lies a ship sunken in Ancient Greek times with copies of the philosopher's writings stored in some waterproof amphorae…
Drux
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22
votes
3 answers
Why was the Western Front so static in World War I?
Once the German advance was halted, neither side could seriously advance for two years. This seems like an extraordinarily long time. Why didn't anyone succeed at going around the trenches or striking through?
Harley Holcombe
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22
votes
1 answer
Did the Soviet leadership ever address the American people on American TV?
As part of the détente between the United States and the Soviet Union, American president Richard Nixon made an 18-minute address to the Soviet people, which was broadcast on Soviet state television on May 28, 1972. New York Times journalist Hedrick…
Psychonaut
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22
votes
3 answers
Are there historical instances of settlers who were largely uncontacted and undisturbed after settling?
I am looking for historical instances of a rather specific and strange scenario:
Settlers who settled a wild/unclaimed territory (ideally 100-300 in number) who after settling in the new place, were largely uncontacted and undisturbed for at least…
Alexander Gambon
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22
votes
2 answers
What is this old farm "combine"?
I am trying to chart my family's history with a spotlight on growing up on a farming homestead out west in Alberta. I have a picture with a tractor and some sort of machine to bundle wheat I guess. I would like to know exactly what kind of…
Cerulean
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22
votes
2 answers
Why didn't the British consider the USS President's attempted flight as a fake surrender?
In the War of 1812, the USS President was captured by the Royal Navy.
Wikipedia gives the final actions of the day:
President ceased fire at 7:58 pm and hoisted a light in her rigging, indicating that she had surrendered ... Following the standard…
Allure
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22
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1 answer
How did the monks whose job was to copy books react to Gutenberg's printing press?
It's typical to see people whose job it is to perform a manual task to - collectively - object when a new technology is introduced which makes their job obsolete (as the quintessential example, see Luddite movement).
Was there a similar situation…
DVK
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22
votes
2 answers
Had there been instances of national states banning harmful imports before the mid-19th C Opium Wars?
Background
To my current understanding, James Matheson in his »The British trade with China« argued that China might have originally had the right to refuse trading with Britain, but that they lost such right by consenting- even tacitly- to the…
Ludi
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22
votes
3 answers
Did the Byzantines ever attempt to move their capital to Rome?
Why was Constantinople (almost) always the capital of the Byzantines?
I understand they did not have Rome under their control until the AD500's, but is there any specific reason why the Byzantines did not move to the historical Roman Empire capital…
Samid
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22
votes
1 answer
Why didn't Britain or any other European power colonize Abyssinia/Ethiopia before 1936?
It is well mentioned while reading books on Africa or, the colonization or “scramble” for Africa, that two countries, Liberia and Ethiopia/Abyssinia, had retained their sovereignty as independent countries from European powers. Liberia was not…
Rohit Hari
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22
votes
2 answers
Why did Robert F. Kennedy loathe Lyndon B. Johnson?
Robert Kennedy despised Lyndon Johnson but it's not clear to me why.
Johnson was a dutiful vice-president and honored JFK's legacy by passing the civil rights act that Kennedy would likely have been incapable of passing himself.
One may say it was…
Duke Leto
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22
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1 answer
"Destructive force" carried by a B-52?
In the 1957 film Bombers B-52 an instructor says of the then-new B-52 Stratofortress:
“On a single mission one of these airplanes, just one, can carry greater destructive force than that of all the bombs dropped by the Allied Air Forces during the…
DaG
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