62
votes
Accepted
Were there any travel restrictions during the Black Death pandemic?
SHORT ANSWER
Yes, there were some restrictions on movement during the period 1347 - 51 but mostly (with a few exceptions such as some city states and Poland) they were haphazard and depended on local ...
- 108k
57
votes
Accepted
How long would it take to cross the Channel in 1890's?
Google Books has a copy of Bradshaw's Guide from 1887. To get to Paris, they recommended one of four options:
The numbers in the three rightmost columns are, respectively: approximate first-class ...
- 3,048
47
votes
How would a family travel from Indiana to Texas in 1911?
Your concerns about money notwithstanding, they almost certainly would have taken the train. In the early 1900s, the United States had a well-developed rail network (see, for example, this map from ...
- 8,544
44
votes
Accepted
Were there inns and hostels in medieval Europe?
SHORT ANSWER
Yes, there were, but information on inns and hostels before around 1300 is patchy at best and the evidence suggests that, for the early middle ages especially, travellers were often given ...
- 108k
41
votes
Accepted
When did Britain learn about the American Declaration of Independence?
The news reached London on the 10th of August. It was, of course, known by British officials in the colonies much earlier, but
It is astonishing how casually the Declaration was first reported to
...
- 108k
41
votes
Accepted
How did bank transactions (or "data" transactions) work when it took people weeks to travel vast distances?
Historically, the solution to this was the letter of credit, circular note, traveller's cheque, or similar. Basically, it was an attestation that the bearer of the document had deposited a certain ...
- 8,544
40
votes
Accepted
Was there a tax in the fifties for British citizens traveling abroad?
Currency restrictions existed between 1939 and 1979.
The main goal of these restrictions after 1945 was to insure that enough foreign exchange was available to finance needed imports from non-sterling ...
- 9,504
39
votes
Accepted
How long was a sea journey from England to East Africa 1868-1877?
We can find record of Thomas Wakefield's 1870 trip in the 1904 publication Thomas Wakefield : missionary and geographical pioneer in East Equatorial Africa at archive.org.
The ships and trips start is ...
- 38.7k
37
votes
How did bank transactions (or "data" transactions) work when it took people weeks to travel vast distances?
Quite simply, they did not guarantee atomicity or synchronicity, they guaranteed eventual consistency.
The general principle is simple: it doesn't matter when the money actually gets moved, provided ...
32
votes
Accepted
What was a plausible timetable for a train journey across Europe in 1870?
The excellent Timetable World website makes old railway, bus, and airline timetables available on the Internet. Obviously covering every possible route on every possible date would be a monumental ...
- 434
31
votes
Are there examples of pre-industrial cruise ship?
The Nemi ships
Caligula built two barges on Lake Nemi, one of which was essentially a floating palace.
The key here is that the ships were on a lake, not on the ocean. Dying at sea is a lot harder ...
- 809
29
votes
Accepted
Which European monarch of the middle ages died furthest from home?
The Danish King Erik I Ejegod (The Good) died in Paphos, Cyprus, 1736 miles / 2794 km from the then capital of Denmark, Roskilde.
Erik, who was born around 1056 or 1060 and reigned from 1095 to 1103, ...
- 108k
26
votes
When did Britain learn about the American Declaration of Independence?
Not repeating info in the other answer(s), but it should be realized that by the time the Declaration of Independence was written, the Battles of Lexington and Concord were already more than a year ...
- 118k
25
votes
Accepted
What is the oldest road tunnel in the world?
There is a tunnel under a mountain in Samos built around 530 BC. It is described by Herodotus,
book III, 60. In 1882 a tunnel which matches Herodotus description has been actually found. It is one ...
- 38.5k
25
votes
How would an American returning from international travel prove his citizenship before 1914?
Short answer
While it is true that there was no specific legal requirement for Americans entering the US to have a passport prior to WWI, passengers were not unused to being required to present some ...
- 108k
21
votes
Were there inns and hostels in medieval Europe?
Some of the early lines of Chaucer's prologue to The Canterbury Tales (circa 1386), tell of The Tabard inn in Southwark, just south of London Bridge.
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
Redy to ...
- 2,222
20
votes
Which European monarch of the middle ages died furthest from home?
Very likely Grand Prince Yaroslav II Vsevolodich or one of the many other princes in Eastern Europe who were ordered to go to Mongolia and died there. Mikhail Yaroslavich of Tver was canonized for ...
- 1,551
19
votes
Accepted
Why did Pausanias travel to Greece?
Short answer
Pausanias does not clearly outline his aims in his work Periegesis or, if he did, that part of text has been lost. Thus, historians have had to rely on clues in Pausanias' text and what ...
- 108k
18
votes
Were there any well-established land trade routes in the US colonies around 1700? What did they look like?
In 1700, the population of the British North American colonies was concentrated mainly along the coast. Roads were terrible and dangerous, and most people would have used the natural highways, the ...
- 5,275
17
votes
Accepted
Which company offered this aircraft interior in the 60s?
It seems that it's a mock-up image produced as publicity for the passenger model of the 747 aircraft by Boeing/Pan-American Airways.
It would have to have been from the late 1960s, since the 747 ...
- 77.4k
17
votes
How would a family travel from Indiana to Texas in 1911?
Update (more updates following the original post):
It has been expressed as dubious that children in 1911 could bicycle this distance with their parents. Let's investigate that.
The current road ...
- 72.3k
14
votes
Accepted
Why did the later Crusades seemingly focus more on naval traversal?
Politics, collaboration and trust dictated the routes of the armies to the Holy Land during the crusades.
Each crusade is different from the others, with different participants, different nations, ...
- 1,401
14
votes
Accepted
How did an English person get entry to East Germany during the Cold War?
I visited East Berlin and Dresden in 1978 with my mother and sister ( I was 18 at the time) from the USA. We had to obtain visas many months prior to our visit from a travel agent who specialized in ...
- 1,088
13
votes
Are there examples of pre-industrial cruise ship?
There were assorted royal barges.
There are precendents for very large galleys.
There were some cruises carrying pilgrims in the middle ages. The nature of the passengers might make this the closest ...
- 16.8k
13
votes
Accepted
What happened to Soviet citizens living abroad?
In "Gulag Archipelago," Alexander Solzhenitsyn made the point that the Soviet Union tried to attract its "citizens" living in Europe to return to the Soviet Union by playing on their homesickness. ...
- 104k
13
votes
What is the oldest road tunnel in the world?
There appear to be two candidates which can definitely be considered for oldest road tunnel in the world, and a couple of others which are older but may be disputed. Roughly in chronological order, ...
- 108k
11
votes
How long would it take to travel from England to western Africa in the late 1890's?
SHORT ANSWER
Based on evidence from the period 1894 to 1897, the trip would have taken between 21 and 35 days, depending on how many ports were stopped at on the way. Possible ports of call are shown ...
- 108k
11
votes
How long would it take a Victorian to travel from central Germany to the UK?
(The maps are from an Atlas Obscura article on Isochronic maps and the wikipedia entry on German Railways.)
Here's an isochronic map centered on London from the early 1880s to give a feel of how long ...
- 23.2k
11
votes
Which European monarch of the middle ages died furthest from home?
Just to throw in a few other names to add to Lars' answer:
Guy of Lusignan, King of Jerusalem and Cyprus, born in France, died in Cyprus. (Nicosia is ~3,000km away from Lusignan, so it's actually ...
- 23.2k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible