Questions tagged [travel]

Questions related to the movement of people between two or more distant geographical locations, whether over land, by water or by air, using various means of transportation, and can be for business, pleasure, or other purposes.

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34 votes
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How long was a sea journey from England to East Africa 1868-1877?

I'm trying to find out how long the sea journey took from England to East Africa in the period 1868-1877. One source I've found suggests something like 3 months earlier in the 1860s. It mentions a ...
Paul Frecker's user avatar
33 votes
4 answers
10k views

Were there any travel restrictions during the Black Death pandemic?

From the Wikipedia article Black Death: The Black Death, also known as the Pestilence, Great Bubonic Plague, the Great Plague or the Plague, or less commonly the Great Mortality or the Black Plague,...
Mikael Dúi Bolinder's user avatar
33 votes
2 answers
8k views

When did Britain learn about the American Declaration of Independence?

When did Britain learn about the American Declaration of Independence? We all know the declaration was made on July 4th, 1776. But when did news reach Buckingham Palace and do we have records of ...
CodyBugstein's user avatar
31 votes
2 answers
12k views

Were there inns and hostels in medieval Europe?

In fantasy novels or roleplaying games it is very common for the characters to stay a night at an inn, hostel or tavern. But I'm curious of what it was like for real in medieval times. I'm ...
Kristoffer Helander's user avatar
30 votes
4 answers
17k views

Why did the Soviet Union close its borders and restrict travel abroad?

It was virtually impossible for citizens of Soviet Union to move or travel abroad. Only some ethnic minorities (e.g. Jewish) with family members abroad could move out, yet with great difficulty. Why ...
qwaz's user avatar
  • 511
30 votes
2 answers
5k views

Was there a tax in the fifties for British citizens traveling abroad?

I have found a dialog in Roberto Rossellini's 1954 film Journey to Italy where the character played by George Sanders says it's expensive to stay abroad too much. That would seem natural, only the ...
cipricus's user avatar
  • 2,284
28 votes
4 answers
9k views

How would a family travel from Indiana to Texas in 1911?

What trails and/or travel modes would an Indiana farm family--2 adults, 4 children-- use to get to Texas in 1911? I can find detailed information about traveling East to West, but I have found nothing ...
Patricia's user avatar
  • 401
27 votes
2 answers
5k views

What was a plausible timetable for a train journey across Europe in 1870?

I'm writing historical fiction set in 1870 (June, some weeks before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war) in which some of the protagonists are traveling by train across Europe, from Calais to ...
rwallace's user avatar
  • 2,595
25 votes
1 answer
11k views

How long would it take to cross the Channel in 1890's?

For a story I'm writing, I'd like to know how long it would take to travel by ship from Calais to Dover in 1890's (as I read it was the easier way). Also, was it possible to take a boat from Calais ...
Emilie's user avatar
  • 345
25 votes
2 answers
5k views

What is the oldest road tunnel in the world?

At the Furlo Pass in the Apennines, the Via Flaminia passes through a tunnel built in 76 - 77 AD during the time of Emperor Vespasian, replacing an earlier tunnel. The tunnel built during the time of ...
Lars Bosteen's user avatar
24 votes
5 answers
9k views

How long did it take for a diplomat to travel between Berlin and Vienna in the 1770's?

I was reading the Wikipedia entry for the War of the Bavarian Succession, and it said (my emphasis): For some historians, the War of the Bavarian Succession was the last of the old-style Cabinet ...
Louis Rhys's user avatar
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23 votes
5 answers
4k views

Which European monarch of the middle ages died furthest from home?

After a lot of googling on this - and thinking the crusades might provide an answer - the best I've come up with is Louis IX of France who died in Tunis on the 8th crusade. That's 920 miles 'as the ...
JLK's user avatar
  • 2,213
23 votes
4 answers
17k views

When did Hinduism forbid overseas travel?

Reading a comment made on this site, I saw something very curious: Why not blame it on the ancient Hindu belief that traveling overseas pollutes a person irredeemably, thereby stunting the growth ...
Joe's user avatar
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22 votes
3 answers
5k views

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, ...
Lance's user avatar
  • 2,227
21 votes
1 answer
860 views

Six pregnant maidens from Kamchatka

Yuri Semyonov's history "The Conquest of Siberia: An Epic of Human Passions" says: Journeys to Siberia were always measured in years. In an old book the author, in order to make clear how ...
Aaron Brick's user avatar
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16 votes
8 answers
2k views

Are there examples of pre-industrial cruise ship?

A writing site I frequent is running a month-long contest in which the prompt involves a maiden voyage of any sort. The idea I've generated in response to this is one about an ancient-era (e.g. ...
Tyrannohotep's user avatar
16 votes
4 answers
13k views

How long would it take to travel from England to western Africa in the late 1890's?

I am trying to do some research for a book I am planning to write, and I would like to know how long it would take for a troop transport ship to travel from England to the Gold Coast region of Africa. ...
Steven Drennon's user avatar
16 votes
1 answer
990 views

Why did Pausanias travel to Greece?

Pausanias wrote his Description of Greece in the first century AD, which remains a priceless resource for classicists and archaeologists to this day. I've made a quick perusal of the text itself, as ...
Tom Hosker's user avatar
  • 2,083
16 votes
2 answers
2k views

How did nobles upon the Grand Tour evade or mitigate the danger of banditry?

The era of the Grand Tour was rife with banditry; and yet the rite of passage remained popular amongst the aristocracy. What reported methods did nobles use to either evade banditry or mitigate the ...
LateralFractal's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
3k views

Was hitchhiking common in ancient Rome?

I am writing a story about a soldier who survived an ambush and he hid several days. Then he walked to a village. While he was on the way (walking on a road) he saw a caravan ... So my question is: ...
Baalback's user avatar
  • 293
15 votes
1 answer
2k views

Did airports have security checks before the 1970s?

I just accidentally discovered a few pictures on the web, that seem to imply, that there were some sort of airport security checks on passengers all the way back in the 1960s. It was always my general ...
Kit Smith's user avatar
  • 351
15 votes
2 answers
480 views

What is the first recorded instance of jet lag?

Until recently, people didn’t often travel very far, and when they did, they traveled slowly, taking days to cross multiple time zones. The phrase “jet lag” obviously arose from the age of fast air ...
Tim's user avatar
  • 668
14 votes
2 answers
49k views

How long would it take to travel from the United Kingdom to America in 1890?

For a short story I plan to write, I was wondering how long it would take individuals to travel from the United Kingdom to America in 1890.
Rachel's user avatar
  • 325
13 votes
2 answers
1k views

Is there any evidence of post-landbridge travel across the Bering Strait?

During the era of the landbridge across the Bering Strait, evidence suggests that people traveled from Asia to North America by foot, becoming the first humans in the Americas and the ancestors of the ...
Nerrolken's user avatar
  • 7,692
13 votes
1 answer
446 views

When did passenger ships first have an on board duty-free shop?

According to several sites, the first duty-free shop opened at Shannon Airport in Ireland in 1947, since when duty-free shopping has become an enormous international business even though some airlines ...
Lars Bosteen's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
856 views

Where were visa documents invented?

Do we know where the first Visa documents were issued? The history of passports is old with Wikipedia dating them back to 450 BC. But when did Visas come into the picture? The etymology suggests a ...
Apoorv's user avatar
  • 2,942
10 votes
2 answers
1k views

How long did it take approximately for a person to travel from Basel to Hanover (1753) by any means of transport?

I am writing a short story on someone's journey from Basel to Hanover and was wondering if it was a reasonable amount of time to do so, if not I would love some other now day German city that would be ...
Lala's user avatar
  • 101
10 votes
2 answers
577 views

What happened to Soviet citizens living abroad?

Before the formation of the Soviet Union and/or before international travel restrictions were imposed, were there Russian, Ukranian, etc. citizens living legally in foreign countries (i.e., as ...
todofixthis's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
2k views

Which company offered this aircraft interior in the 60s?

I found this image on LinkedIn post. This was economy class back in the 1960s. [...] I'm not sure whether it's fake or not. Was there a company that offered this aircraft interior in the 60s? If ...
J. Doe's user avatar
  • 671
10 votes
1 answer
3k views

How common was it for Americans to visit Europe in the late 19th century?

According to this article, in 2009, around 13 million people from the United States travelled overseas, of which 35% visited Europe. Given the United States' population of 320 million, we can estimate ...
user avatar
10 votes
3 answers
1k views

Is there any overland route to Kamchatka?

The port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky was founded and visited by sailing ships. Even today no road connects it to the network of the rest of Russia -- it is reputed to be the second largest ...
Aaron Brick's user avatar
  • 27.6k
9 votes
4 answers
3k views

Were there any well-established land trade routes in the US colonies around 1700? What did they look like?

I'm considering running a ttrpg campaign set in the US colonies in the early 1700s. The campaign is going to begin around the Salem witch trials and go from there. The players will need to travel ...
Steven's user avatar
  • 199
9 votes
1 answer
1k views

How would an American returning from international travel prove his citizenship before 1914?

Apparently, international travelers didn't need any papers to travel (before WW1), at least in the USA and most parts of Europe. So how did a person 'prove' their nationality? From OP's comments: I'm ...
user38299's user avatar
9 votes
0 answers
159 views

What is the earliest supported example of an African traveling to Southeast/East Asia?

There are quite a few famous cases of Africans who traveled to Asia (voluntarily or involuntarily) prior to 1700s such as Malik Ambar (India), Yasuke (Japan), and Ibn_Battuta (India, Sri Lanka, China, ...
Christian Bueno's user avatar
8 votes
5 answers
591 views

Emigration restrictions in history

In the 20th century many states restricted the capacity of their populations to emigrate. Most famously, Churchill described the variety of emigration, financial and political restrictions in Central ...
Felix Goldberg's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
4k views

Time to travel around Europe in the 18th century

Is there a database, or something, available to find out what the average time for travelling inside Europe was in the 18th century for somebody not from nobility or diplomatic service. Was carriage ...
rachkouti's user avatar
  • 199
8 votes
1 answer
4k views

Why did the later Crusades seemingly focus more on naval traversal?

I was studying some general Crusade maps and I noticed the first crusades seemed to be more land based as compared to the latter ones and I was wondering exactly why that was (besides just changing ...
Robert Lee's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
788 views

What was the typical range of travel of a Pennsylvanian resident for everyday life in the late 18th early 19th Century Pennsylvania?

How much traveling did a typical Pennsylvanian resident do for everyday life in the late 18th early 19th Century (1775-1825) Pennsylvania, and what was the 'typical' range (in miles) from their home ...
CRSouser's user avatar
  • 651
8 votes
1 answer
7k views

What were the traveling practices of merchants, roughly between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance?

How did salespersons of the aforementioned period(s), whether affluent merchants or peddlers, tend to travel? I'm familiar with caravansaries/caravanserais, but how did this concept translate to ...
esckelbröd's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
123 views

Date of Transatlantic crossing postcard

I found this postcard in several shops in Lisbon, Portugal. It depicts the transatlantic voyage from Lisbon to several locations in North and South America. I wonder at what time this kind of ...
Stockfisch's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
658 views

Before the imposition of Sakoku, did any Japanese people travel to Africa, the Middle East or Europe?

There are many accounts of Europeans who travelled to the Far East, as they called it. There were some Chinese people who made the opposite journey, did anyone from Japan do it? If they returned to ...
Ne Mo's user avatar
  • 14.1k
7 votes
1 answer
826 views

What route would 1st century BCE travellers have taken from Alexandria to Jerusalem?

The Babylonian Talmud recounts a story in which a sage, Yehoshua ben Perachaiah, and one of his students travel from Alexandria, Egypt to Jerusalem (Sotah 47a, Sanhedrin 107b). The story takes place ...
Harel13's user avatar
  • 537
7 votes
1 answer
236 views

How did modern border security and crossing bureaucracy develop? [duplicate]

I was trying to read more on how present day border security and administrative framework (passports, visas etc) came into being but to not much avail. E.g. what was the first modern border crossing? ...
amphibient's user avatar
  • 1,193
6 votes
1 answer
386 views

How long was a coach journey from Coburg to St Peterburg in 1790s?

If someone had to get from Coburg to St Petersburg in the 1790s? Would they travel overland by stagecoach or go up to the north German coast and get a boat round to the Gulf of Finland and enter ...
Helen Rappaport's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
5k views

When did the modern visa system become widespread?

I was reading Malcolm X's autobiography and what surprised in the book was the fact that he was able to visit Saudi Arabia and numerous African states without obtaining a visa in advance. Nowadays ...
JonathanReez's user avatar
  • 4,291
6 votes
2 answers
3k views

What it was like to travel on a Viking ship?

What it was like to travel on a Viking ship back then? Please, focus on these points: How long it would take for a Viking raider group to get to their favorite destinations using a Viking warship? ...
sjaustirni's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
799 views

What was the typical speed of a tramp steamship?

What was the typical speed of a tramp steamship in their heyday? I mean cruising speed, not flank speed; the figure you would divide into distance to see how long it would take to travel between ports....
rwallace's user avatar
  • 2,595
6 votes
1 answer
523 views

Is this 60's Atlanta airport security picture geniuine, and if so, what is happening here?

Following the advice I got from the user Semaphore I would like to split my original airport security question into separate parts and go into a bit more detail in regards to what I would like to know ...
Kit Smith's user avatar
  • 351
6 votes
0 answers
153 views

Was it possible to travel between Riverdale and Midtown Manhattan via taxi during the 1940s?

I'm writing a book that takes place in New York City in 1943. I have a character that lives in Riverdale, but works in midtown Manhattan. If one needed to travel quickly, could you take a taxi from ...
user8160's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
3k views

How long would it take a Victorian to travel from central Germany to the UK?

Specifically from Lauscha in 1862, does anyone know how extensive railways were then?
Moneypenny's user avatar