143
votes
Accepted
Why did stock brokers go bankrupt after the crash of 1929?
To expand on Schwern's answer somewhat, using leverage as a trader works more or less like this:
Scenario 1: you have $1k of play money and use it to buy stocks. The market goes up 10%. You sell. You ...
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100
votes
Accepted
Why didn’t Japan attack the West Coast of the United States during World War II?
There were several well-known attacks.
Aleutian Islands Campaign
On June 6, two days after the bombing of Dutch Harbor, 500 Japanese
marines landed on Kiska, one of the Aleutian Islands of ...
- 1,841
86
votes
Why did stock brokers go bankrupt after the crash of 1929?
If they did, it would be because of the practice of buying on margin, a form of loan from your broker where you use the stocks themselves as collateral. This allows you to buy more stock than you have ...
- 55.5k
81
votes
Why did North America economically prosper, and maintain stable government and South/Central America didn't?
I don't believe the answer to this is known objectively. However, it may be worth looking at the different settlement histories of the two areas you are comparing.
Most of the American possessions, ...
- 121k
54
votes
Accepted
Why did North America economically prosper, and maintain stable government and South/Central America didn't?
T.E.D.'s answer is very good, and points to the most important issue: the difference between colonisation methods in North America vs Latin America. There are a few missing nexus that I feel could be ...
- 4,328
47
votes
Accepted
Why did Native Americans originally migrate to the Americas?
However, considering there was little to no knowledge of the new world I wonder why would the tribes risk to travel to far . . . it seems unreasonable [humans would] risk it to migrate towards the ...
- 97.5k
46
votes
Why was Washington State an attractive site for aluminum production during World War II?
Aluminium refining requires huge amounts of electricity so plants are often sited close to things like hydroelectric dams or abundant supplies of coal or natural gas. Bauxite (aluminium ore) needs to ...
- 666
36
votes
Accepted
Where are the Native American primary source documents?
The basic problem here is that scientific study of cultures (Sociology, Anthropology, etc.) is a relatively new discipline. There are indigenous social scientists today of course (my little sister is ...
- 121k
32
votes
Why did North America economically prosper, and maintain stable government and South/Central America didn't?
A large factor in the advancement/financial disparity between the U.S./Canada and its neighbors to the south is the difficulty of colonizing areas in tropical/subtropical climates vs. colonizing ...
- 445
29
votes
Why did Mexico encourage the settlement of Texas by Americans?
When Mexico won its independence in 1821, it covered an area from Central America northward to California, Utah, and Texas. In fact, Mexico in 1835 was just about as large as the United States at the ...
- 6,267
28
votes
What are the occurences of total war in the Native Americans?
SHORT ANSWER
"Total War" is a bit grandiose and ambitious, but as far as I know very few Native American or American Indian groups in the USA had any sort of rules against harming noncombatants in ...
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26
votes
Why was the last battle of the War of 1812 fought fully half a year after the official end of the war?
From Wikipedia:
On 30 June she [the Peacock] captured the 16-gun brig Nautilus, which was under the command of Lieutenant Charles Boyce of the Bombay Marine of the British East India Company in the ...
- 1,088
25
votes
Was there a Viking Exchange as well as a Columbian one?
The evidence for this is weak, but interesting and indicative of "on a much smaller scale", but not "as well" as in equally transformative:
From East to West:
They introduced the mouse to the ...
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23
votes
Why did stock brokers go bankrupt after the crash of 1929?
Brokers went bust due to an aspect of investing that isn't often covered by mainstream media: the margin call.
When you buy stocks on margin, meaning you're borrowing the money to buy a lot of the ...
- 3,421
22
votes
Why were North American indigenous peoples underdeveloped?
Why were Native Americans much more under developed then their neighbors in the south.
Copyright Skubasteve834, source: Wikimedia Commons, usage via CC-BY-SA.
It's not quite fair to classify native ...
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20
votes
What did indigenous North Americans trade amongst themselves before Europeans arrived?
Flint points, obsidian, buffalo hides, salt, pearls, shells and (as mentioned by T.E.D.) copper were among item traded by Native Americans before Europeans arrived. That said, trade in North America ...
- 108k
19
votes
Why didn’t Japan attack the West Coast of the United States during World War II?
Japan had a lot of targets closer to home. They included Southeast Asia (which they conquered), China, and India (Japan came fairly close). They did attack American possessions on the far side of the ...
- 104k
19
votes
Why did North America economically prosper, and maintain stable government and South/Central America didn't?
Of course there were many factors. But the Spanish/Portugal scheme was a rural patron/peon arrangement that had not reached the bourgeoisie stage, i.e. an educated third estate. The British and ...
- 199
18
votes
Why was Washington State an attractive site for aluminum production during World War II?
Aluminum manufacturing is very energy-intensive and requires large amounts of electricity, which the other comments have covered.
Washington State and the Pacific Northwest has an abundance of ...
- 2,196
18
votes
Accepted
Is there any documentation on the creation of Article 1 Section II of the US Constitution?
Yes, there is.
The deliberations took a while and the participants were all literate, letter-writing folk, so there is actually a lot more documentation about the deliberations than many people think.
...
- 121k
18
votes
Accepted
Are there any hypotheses on how the Dorset people disappeared?
There are several theories of disappearance of the Dorset people. Two are discussed in the article "Disappearance of Dorset Culture" published on the webpage of the Canadian Museum of History:
...
- 6,225
17
votes
Accepted
Was there anything in common between the War of 1812 between Britain and America and the War of 1812 between Napoleon and Russia?
Yes, the two wars were indeed related, and even rather closely. Both wars were tied to Napoleon's ongoing war with Britain.
Napoleon had set up the Continental system to boycott British trade; this ...
- 6,267
15
votes
Why did Mexico encourage the settlement of Texas by Americans?
After Mexican independence much of northern Mexico, infact most of many parts of Mexico, were devastated and sparsly populated. These northern areas were hard to defend against both indian incursions ...
- 6,667
14
votes
Could homo erectus have migrated to North America?
Its exceedingly unlikely.
There's no feasible route to the Americas at their level of technology that doesn't go through the Beringa (NE Sibera/Alaska) area. The period in question covers an ...
- 121k
13
votes
Why did North America economically prosper, and maintain stable government and South/Central America didn't?
TED's answer is fantastic; it covers the root causes of the problems. I'd like to add one more cause, specifically, US military and economic intervention in Central and South America have acted to ...
- 7,491
13
votes
When did “Duck, Duck, Goose“ migrate from Sweden to America?
A search of the Hathi Trust database turns up instances of the game under that name going back at least to 1922. From anonymous, "Springfield, Illinois, Course of Study with Suggestive Method for ...
- 456
12
votes
Was there a Viking Exchange as well as a Columbian one?
No. The number of viking transfers back and forth were too small to make a significant difference. We only know from recent finds the Vikings did set up a small temporary settlement in Newfoundland. ...
- 22.5k
12
votes
Accepted
What's the difference between Country Born and Mulatto people in the 18th century New England?
I assume the table you have been given is taken from A Prince among Pretending Free Men: Runaway Slaves in Colonial New England Revisited. If so, that table appears as Table 3 on page 98:
African ...
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11
votes
Was there anything in common between the War of 1812 between Britain and America and the War of 1812 between Napoleon and Russia?
The War of 1812 between Britain and America was very directly related to the Napoleonic Wars in Europe (which included the French invasion of Russia).
The War of 1812 was a by-product of the ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible