44
votes
How did Shakespeare get away with staging witchcraft in his plays such as Othello, Macbeth, or The Tempest?
The public saw the plays were fiction, perhaps even a warning against witchcraft, and the magic in them is divorced of religious overtones.
It is noteworthy that the two Shakespeare plays which deal ...
- 21k
43
votes
Accepted
Could you actually go around the world in 80 days?
Circumnavigation was nothing new. Speedy circumnavigation was new, but not unheard of, and Around the World wasn't positing anything outlandish or even vaguely sci-fi. It's a story celebrating what ...
- 4,890
40
votes
Why would one of Germany's leading publishers publish a novel by Jewish writer Stefan Zweig in 1939?
Samuel Fischer, who founded the S. Fischer Verlag in 1886 was also Jewish. After his death in 1934, his son-in-law Gottfried Bermann Fischer took over management of the publishing house, but in 1936 ...
- 44k
37
votes
Accepted
Was Odysseus considered unfaithful to his wife in the Odyssey?
No.
Introduction
To begin with, the question Has Odysseus been unfaithful to his wife? would not make sense to the people of ancient Greece. Such a question presupposes that the Greeks had a ...
- 22k
34
votes
Accepted
Were schoolteachers really paid substantially less than $45 per month in 1990s Ukraine?
As the OP's quote says, Ukraine's economy in the 1990s was indeed "wretched":
Ukraine’s economy contracted annually between 9.7 and 22.7 percent in
1991–1996. The country experienced ...
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33
votes
Could you actually go around the world in 80 days?
It was possible, but not easy. The difficulty of the task accounts for the substantial amount of the bet: £20,000 in 1873 is worth about £2,000,000 or more than US $2.5 million today.
William ...
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27
votes
Accepted
Why couldn't Mr Dobbins become a doctor in "Tom Sawyer"?
Teachers didn't require any training or licensure at this time.
The U.S. Department of Education has published a brief paper on the history of teaching in the U.S. here. Since Tom Sawyer takes place ...
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27
votes
Accepted
"My father declared he should invent a slip button"
The Kentucky Age for 10th February 1857 contains a short story which opens as follows:
A celebrated wit once said he had found out a patent “slip button,” so that when a bore laid hold of him, and ...
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27
votes
Accepted
"Miss" as a form of address to a married teacher in Bethan Roberts' "My Policeman"
Bethan Roberts is British, and My Policeman is set in Britain. In British schools, it's still the norm today to refer to all female teachers as "Miss" regardless of their marital status. As ...
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25
votes
Accepted
Was it common that the bridges of ditches or creeks had guarding gates in 1924?
Some geographical context might be helpful. The scene of the crime is the North Kent Marshes:
“A shocking tragedy has come to light in a meadow about a mile from Dartford. About two o’clock this ...
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25
votes
Why is a "cucumber sandwich" specifically used as what English faith has "only just enough teeth to get through"?
Even though cucumber sandwiches were at one point associated with poshness, as Rand al'Thor writes, I don't think this is the association on which the passage is based. Nothing in the passage ...
- 44k
24
votes
Were schoolteachers really paid substantially less than $45 per month in 1990s Ukraine?
90s are big.
Early 1990s salaries might be below survivable, so a lot of people, even in cities and towns, had allotments or dachas. In the late 90s it would start to change. In the beginning of 90s ...
- 341
22
votes
Accepted
How much of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is based on real events?
Ernest Hemingway traveled to Madrid in March of 1937 to observe the Spanish Civil war firsthand. He reported on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance. In March 1937, he traveled to ...
- 1,051
20
votes
Accepted
What was a "prince" in Dostoevsky's times, i.e. mid-late 19th century?
Something like a duke, and the title wasn't all that special.
The English word "prince" is translated from the Russian "knyaz (князь)", which could be used either to denote a ...
- 71k
18
votes
Accepted
Chilli peppers in fifteenth-century India?
This is an error introduced by the translator. The original Portuguese text says:
Sabei que estais na Índia, onde se estende
Diverso povo, rico e prosperado
De ouro luzente e fina pedraria,
Cheiro ...
- 22k
18
votes
Accepted
How was the free-born Englishman prevented from taking his ease in his inn in 1922?
Quoting Wikipedia
After the outbreak of World War I the Defence of the Realm Act was
passed by Parliament in 1914. One section of the Act concerned the
hours pubs could sell alcohol, as it was ...
- 1,959
17
votes
Accepted
What did the men use to destroy Sandleford Warren?
Is this some established rabbit-hunting technique?
Yes: it's called rabbit warren fumigation.
I found this by searching the internet for gas canisters rabbit warren, since I'd always assumed the "...
- 71k
17
votes
Was Philip Larkin factually correct when he implied that in 1955 the streets in Ireland were "end-on to hills" more often than those in England?
I don’t believe the poem is making any such claim.
Larkin lived in Belfast, specifically on Elmwood Avenue.
This street lies between Lisburn Road and Malone Road. All of the streets between these two ...
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16
votes
Accepted
Was Afghanistan considered tropical or was Holmes wrong?
Don't interpret "the tropics" with such scientific precision.
You originally posted this question on the Earth Sciences site, and you seem to have been thinking of this quote with a literal (I'd even ...
- 71k
16
votes
Accepted
What does Victor Hugo mean by "the red ant heaps of Toulon"?
By “the red ant heaps of Toulon”, Hugo means the Bagne de Toulon, a notorious prison where the convicts wore red jackets and red caps. This is the prison where Jean Valjean serves nineteen years for ...
- 53.5k
15
votes
What is "Galacian tobacco" and what is its significance?
According to the original text in Ukrainian:
it was clearly incoming smuggling;
the author seems to deliberately use the older Roman name of Spanish Galicia — probably, to avoid the possible ...
14
votes
Accepted
What was a "ward in chancery"?
It means a minor under the guardianship of the Court of Chancery.
This was a real concept in those days - indeed it still is, but such children are nowadays more often referred to as "wards of ...
- 71k
14
votes
Accepted
Is there an equivalent to Orientalism in Eastern scholarship of the West?
The counterpart to the term "orientalism" is, rather unsurprisingly, occidentalism, which Wikipedia defines as follows:
Occidentalism refers to and identifies representations of the Western ...
- 44k
14
votes
Accepted
What is "Galacian tobacco" and what is its significance?
Galician, not Galacian.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Galician smuggling cartels specialised in cigarettes and tobacco. It was a big illegal industry in Iberia, and perhaps extending further afield in ...
- 71k
13
votes
Accepted
What was "standard shift" in the 1920's?
Most likely this refers to the number of gears.
The phrase "standard shift" nowadays refers to the type of transmission: manual transmission or automatic transmission according to which is considered ...
- 71k
13
votes
Accepted
Why do peasants in 19th century Russian literature often have Greek names?
Firstly, why there are Greek names in Russia. Russia, being a Christian Orthodox country, had strong historical and cultural connections with Greece. So, many Russian names are of Greek origin. Most ...
- 1,225
13
votes
What would it mean for a 19th-century German soldier to "wear the cross"?
The “war of seventy” refers to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and this is confirmed by the mention of Otto von Bismarck, the Chancellor of the North German Confederation at the outbreak of the war, ...
- 53.5k
13
votes
Accepted
Origin and significance of E-I-E-I-O in the Old MacDonald song
As with any folk song, the origins of the lyrics can be a bit murky, but given transcriptions collected by folklorists in the early part of the twentieth century of this or related songs, we see that ...
- 3,005
12
votes
Why is Christopher Marlowe considered an atheist?
TLDR:
1 - Marlow was not an atheist in the modern sense.
2- Dr Faustus is not as clearly religious as it first appears
Let's start by pointing out that "atheism" doesn't necessarily stop an ...
- 21k
12
votes
Accepted
Why is a "cucumber sandwich" specifically used as what English faith has "only just enough teeth to get through"?
Cucumber sandwiches, specifically, are a stereotypical part of English "posh" culture, along with afternoon tea and "More tea, vicar?"
From Wikipedia:
Cucumber sandwiches formed ...
- 71k
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