Questions tagged [everyday-life]
Questions marked with this tag should concern habits and customs in normal people's lives. This can be limited to some epoch in history and to some region.
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Why does Japan use the same type of AC power outlet as the US?
Does it have something to do with the US taking part in aiding reconstruction of the country after WWII? I've tried googling around for an answer, but every site I find simply states the outlet style, ...
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How did people wash dishes before dish detergent?
Using a sponge and dish detergent is a convenient way to clean one's dishes and utensils, but how did people clean their dishes before the invention of dish detergent?
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What did babies eat before the advent of modern blenders?
Modern baby foods are commonly made using various strengths of blender, but what was used before then? I assume something like a potato masher, but that would only work for a few foods. So what was ...
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What was the typical peasant's diet like in Europe during the High Middle Ages?
I know that wheat, barley, rye, onions, lettuce-like plants and turnips were common but how common were other things like meat or cheese? I've heard the "plowman's lunch" was a concoction of the dairy ...
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How do ancient Chinese "mirrors" such as these in the National Museum function?
In the National Museum of China we find "mirrors" from various Chinese dynasties:
A photo I took of "mirrors" at the National Museum of China in Beijing
Notably, these mirrors ...
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Are there any accounts of everyday life during the Black Death?
How did everyday life looked like for people living during the Plague?
I'm mostly interested in trying to understand things from the point of view of a regular person living in Europe. For example, I ...
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Did active frontiersmen really eat 20,000 calories a day? How does this compare to other highly-active people in recorded history?
I am currently midway through this book, The Company: The Rise And Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire. It is really good.
One thing that keeps coming up is the amount of rations needed for each explorer, ...
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How did people deal with ice on the roads during the horse-and-buggy era?
Before there were cars, people traveled in a horse-drawn carriage, sometimes over cobble-stone covered roads.
Back in those days, was anything done to keep the traveled roads free from ice or snow? ...
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Was frequent bathing for personal hygiene in medieval Europe common or not?
The usual narrative: No bathing
There is a frequently debunked claim that medieval Europeans did not bathe. Occasionally, the claim is connected to pandemics of the era and extended to the idea that ...
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Did men and women feast together in early medieval East Francia?
I am interested in important feasts of the upper classes (nobility), e.g., Easter or the baptism of important heirs, in the Eastern Frankish kingdom around 900 AD, specifically the Duchy of Saxony.
...
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How does this bird trap work?
www.nuernberger-hausbuecher.de provides the illustration below:
I want to know how this bird trap mechanism works, as shown by this bird hunter of the medieval period on the book image, and it doesn'...
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What were birthdays like in Medieval times?
I considered putting this question on Worldbuilding SE, but decided it would be better suited here, as it is about history. I am doing some research for a fantasy medieval novel, and I was wondering ...
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Were there luxury restaurants in East Germany?
I was recently reading the excellent book Mac B, Kid Spy: Mac Saves the World by Mac Barnett.
It is set in 1989, and Mac crosses the Berlin Wall to infiltrate the Television Tower in East Berlin.
I ...
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How common was smoking in first half of the 20th century?
When watching movies that were made in first half of the 20th century, one can see many people are smoking (cigarettes), but it is not they smoke all time long. I refer to the movies, because they ...
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What were shoe soles made from in previous ages?
Today, nearly all commercial footwear has a sole made of either rubber or plastic with rubber-like qualities. It's a great material for the job, but it comes from a tree that's native to the Americas,...
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What was life like for an adult Victorian chimney sweep?
What was life like for an adult Victorian chimney sweep?
I'm looking into my family history at the moment and my great-great-grandfather is listed on an 1881 census as a chimney sweep. I thought this ...
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How did people have access to ice in warm areas before the industrial revolution?
In some cases, before the industrial revolution, nobles and other elites had access to ice in regions where it wasn't naturally available.
How could they get it?
Was it simply transported in big ...
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What would a Norseman in the early 11th century have worn as daily clothing?
Most of the Norse clothing we know about seems to come from burials. However, in many cultures, bodies dressed for burial are wearing either "good" clothes, or special clothes for the dead. Is there ...
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How was life in the Iron Age different from life in the Middle Ages?
Let's say you were from the Middle Ages, 1200s England or Germany, and you got thrown back in time to the Iron Age. It's still the same place, but it's 400 BC. Apart from the language, what would ...
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How did people in the desert stay cool in the past?
Putting on layers of clothing, building insulated shelters or simply lighting a fire are some simple yet effective ways of staying warm. Humans have shown they are quite adept at keeping themselves ...
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What would be accurate illustrations of vikings and viking culture?
Vikings didn't have horned helmets as is often depicted. Where can I find accurate representations how vikings and viking society looked?
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What is meaning of 4 letter abbreviations in Roman names like Titus Flavius T. f. T. n. Sabinus?
I am reading about Titus Flavius Sabinus (consul AD 47) and cannot find meaning of T. f. T. n. in his full name as written in Wikipedia, "Titus Flavius T. f. T. n. Sabinus."
All I have found is a ...
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How did people say “I have to go to the bathroom” before the bathroom and pipes were common?
I am writing a story in a medieval world of fantasy, and today a little girl is trapped next to her brother in a hole.
The girl has to go to the bathroom, but I do not know how to be someone that age ...
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How rich were carpenters in Roman Galilee in the 1st century AD?
According to the Biblical account, Jesus was the son of a carpenter, Joseph of Nazareth (Matthew 13,55).
How rich could a carpenter become in the Roman province of Galilee in 1st century AD? What ...
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How exactly were beer/bread made in Ancient Egypt?
I'm writing a novel set in large part in Ancient Egypt and am incorporating many tasks of everyday living into the narrative. The one I'm stuck on is the making of bread and beer (which were ...
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Was FDR right that a garden hose was really $15 in 1940 (c.a. $300 today)?
As FDR stated in a White House Press conference on December 17, 1940: "What I am trying to do is eliminate the dollar sign. All right! Well let me give you an illustration: Suppose my neighbor's ...
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When did people stop translating their names when moving from one country to another?
I was interested in the process of people changing their names from one language to another. Most monarchs have a different given name in different languages. However, this phenomenon also applied to ...
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When did European building interiors partitioned into rooms become commonplace?
My visit to Versailles many years ago confronted me with an alien concept of interior architecture: everything was a large hall, including the bedchambers, and getting to another part of the palace ...
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How large were Bronze Age settlements?
How large was the typical settlement in Europe during the Bronze Age? Did most people live in isolated farmsteads or something more like small villages?
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When did retailers stop wrapping purchases in paper and twine?
Listening to stories from relatives, it sounds like it was a near-universal practice (in the US, before the 1970s) to wrap retail purchases with brown paper and twine. Searching for information about ...
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What are the origins of knife and fork language etiquette?
There is an etiquette of placing knife and fork on a plate while resting or after finishing. For example this cheat-sheet (there are a lot of texts and images like this on the web):
I found this ...
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How many hours per day did a Sumerian farmer sleep?
I wonder about the life-styles of the inhabitants of ancient civilizations. As a particular case, if we consider the era of Sumer, what are the significant diversities compared to rural life today?
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When did nose-picking became socially condemned?
Nose-picking is a common and well known socially condemmed habit.
However, this condemnation seems to be a purely social behavior with very little grounds on medical risks; it is even done by other ...
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Who started/popularized the department store perfume gauntlet?
Anybody with functional olfactory senses who has been to a department store knows that nearly every one places the perfume counter right at the front of the store, where every patron is forced to walk ...
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Why are some amphoras pointed on the bottom?
Most liquid containers, such as barrels, are flat in the bottom and thus easy to store and pile up.
However, some ancient amphoras were pointwise in the bottom arguably making them less easy to store....
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Was there self-censorship in private correspondence in the early 19th Century?
I've been reading collections of letters and journals (generally relating to the Napoleonic Wars) published in the first half of the 19th century. Often these contain words that have been partially ...
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How did people cut their nails in the past?
How did people cut their toe and fingernails before we got nail clippers after the industrial revolution?
Would they have had a fair amount of ingrown toenails, especially in the colder regions where ...
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Buying/Renting/Leasing houses during history?
I was wondering about something. After the last financial crisis, many people have talked about not buying a house, but renting one, and they made it sound like a "new" idea. So what was it like ...
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How regularly did the Romans bathe?
I guess the answer may be different for rich people who had their own baths and others who visited the public baths.
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What did 19th century playgrounds look like?
In the beginning of the novel Cold Mountain, a character recollect his childhood at a school house (maybe in the 1840s or 1850s in rural North Carolina) and describes flinging his hat out onto the ...
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Life in the middle ages for ordinary people? [closed]
From studying medieval history and reading related literature, I know enough about day to day life in the sense of life expectancy, work, pleasure, etc.
My question is, given that human nature is ...
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1
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How common were private bathing facilities in Late Republican Rome?
For example, there are small private bathtubs in Pompeii, but this is about 150 years later and in a period that practices were changing, as more people became wealthy enough to have such things.
My ...
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Why were Roman dice elongated?
According to this article, Roman dice did not always have the modern cube-shaped form:
[I]n contrast with modern dice, they weren’t always exactly cubes.
Sometimes they were noticeably a bit ...
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How did pre-Columbian Americans shear their alpacas?
What tool did they use to separate wool from the animals?
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Did French people in 19th century not bathe every day?
I am currently watching Ikoku Meiro No Croissant episode 4. In this episode, Yune tried to take a bath, but it didn't work out nicely. So in the next morning, Claudel-san said that:
Only rich ...
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Before iron was common, what did common people use for door hinges?
Door hinges are very old, but they've usually been made out of iron or bronze. Before metal was widely available and inexpensive, what did common people use for door hinges?
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What is "Mary's Part"?
The poem on this gravestone in RI refers to "Mary's part." What does this phrase mean?
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What happened when the Çatalhöyük burial holes were full and the houses had no more room?
Çatalhöyük was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7100 BC to 5700 BC, and flourished around 7000 BC.
The deceased in ...
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Polite forms of address in Ancient Rome
My Latin dictionary only lists ere for sir, which is how a slave would address his/her master. But how would a lower status Roman address a person of higher status - for instance, a wage-labourer to ...
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How did people count before Fibonacci published Liber Abbaci? [closed]
Counting as we know it, including zero as a number, was brought to the traders and merchants of Europe by Leonardo of Pisa (whom we now know as Fibonacci) by his book "Liber Abbaci" in 1202. This ...