How's that dissertation coming? (I'm a late-stage PhD student, and have been for ... some time, shall we say).
"Why did the Germans build the best tanks?"
"Why didn't America build better tanks?"
My favorite question on the other hand requires a bit of a story:
I have a friend who is a Civil War historian, and he was at battlefield giving a talk and one of the on-lookers asked: "How did the troops march around with all these monuments here?"
I also have a friend in a reenactment group who got asked why all Civil War battles occurred in National Parks.
"Why was trench warfare so stupid?"
"Why were WWI generals so stupid?"
"Why did no one think to stop running into machine guns in WWI?"
"Why was WWI so useless?"
"Prove my belief that no one was more responsible for WWI than another / France was the most responsible." (not really a question but holy hell I get it a lot)
uhhh
"Why did people stand in lines and get shot all day?" or any variation.
I get annoyed with "why did guns take over bows" because I've personally answered it at least 12 times now and there's hundreds of them easily searchable...so it's just flat out laziness when people ask it but alas my need to nerd out over things surpasses all annoyance.
Something along the lines of "corsets were really damaging and horrible, amirite?" Because although I really love talking about corsets, I know that when I answer in the negative they're just going to insist that I'm wrong no matter what I say (so why ask??).
(ETA: This is mostly an RL thing - whenever I've been asked a question about corsets online, it seems to have been because people actually want to know my opinion.)
ah! this has actually been asked a couple of times, so check out these hugely popular posts for some earlier venting
and on the flip-side
"So why were African tribes so backwards?" In one question, you have massive conflation, scientific-racist hierarchies of human organization, and teleology, not to mention being plain old fifty shades of wrong.
What do you think about Sarah Palin?
(archaeologist of warfare/ combat archeology)
And the dreaded question is:
Who would win in a fight? (proceeds to pit two fighters from completely incompatible cultures, and then gets pissy/defensive when their favourite one does not win).
Examples include: viking vs samurai, medieval knight vs spartan, crusader vs mongol warrior, 300 roman legionaries vs 300 spartans, etc.
First of all, reducing a whole martial culture that spans millenia into just "something warrior" as if all vikings, or all samurai were the same is nonsensical.
Two: to a large degree, the political/historical map of the world accurately represents the class of local warriors and military across history. There is a good chance that (barring natural and economic disasters or cultural drift) if your favourite class of warrior did not manage to conquer a vast empire, and was conquered instead, it partly means that they sucked in actual combat.
As a history student, it was, "Oh, cool. Are you gonna be a teacher?"
"so what do you study?"
"Hellenic history."
"so like god sending people to hell right?"
"No, I do not study god or hell"
Guy proceeds too look up some random thing about Hellenic history
comes back
"so like you study Afghanistan, right..."
"why did the Taliban overthrow the Greek invaders in Afghanistan"
I just said "I have to go" and walked away....
Why were the Persians/Romans/Ottomans/Assyrians/etc so mean to all the smaller towns they conquered? Didn't the ancient Aztecs think that human sacrifice was kind of cruel? Why did they have to murder the emperor's children too? They're just innocent kids!
Basically anything that imposes today's moral standards and norms on a completely different era.
"Why is the Great Chinese Famine considered to be one of the worst famine in history? I heard that [country] had a higher death rate during the same time period. Are you trying to demonize Chairman Mao?"
Famine Olympics is the worst. -_-
"Tell me about a good aspect of the Great Leap Forward/Cultural Revolution."
Good is really freaking subjective. Plus, with the Great Leap Forward, I can't think of anything really positive without cherry picking my own knowledge.
"Why do you think tens of millions of people died in the Great Leap Forward? There's this estimate that says only at most three million died, plus there are people who visited who said that they never saw anyone starve!"
...
*dies inside*
Questions about why the Maya collapsed, how many people the Aztecs ate, and ewhy they thought Cortez was a god.
Then I tell them I study West Mexico and they get a blank look on their faces when I tell them there were no Aztecs or Maya there followed by the inevitable "well, why are you even studying that area?"
This is more of a question fit for a tuesday trivia thread. In fact, it's actually been covered here. BUT you can also recommend a repeat to /u/caffarelli if you still wish to see some fresh answers.
Oh, you're a historian? What year was "insert random event".
I am usually very patient when speaking to laymen about counterinsurgency, knowing that it is hard sometimes to understand how unconventional warfare and counterinsurgency go hand in hand and its socio-economic and political factors which play a larger part than the military factor.
But what I do hate is people who keep trying to argue that the United States won in Vietnam just because they "won more battles". This is not only a gross misunderstanding of the nature of fighting in the Vietnam War but also displays a huge lack of understanding of what counterinsurgency was and why the US lost in Vietnam out of a counterinsurgency perspective.
So the question I absolutely dread is: "Didn't the US win because my uncle Donnie told me we won because we won all the battles?"
Basically, anything that is something remotely out of my field or interest. I'm mostly versed in Scottish history in North America (Mostly North Carolina) and some other European History, but when someone asks: So what do you think of the Danish King's crumpet party of xxxx that ended in disaster and a war between the nobles and peasants, I have no idea and it's embarrassing that they think that I'm a history student I'll be like Noah Wyle in The Librarian where I know everything about anything.
I usually retort with something absurd that is out of their knowledge. If they're an engineer I ask them about Quantum Physics.
I'm only slightly bitter about it.
'History Chanel's Vikings - I bet you can't stand all the inaccuracies, huh?'
What bothers me about this (and I get it ALL the time, since people know I study stuff that's kind of like Vikings, ie before the late middle ages) is the idea that being a historian means I spend all my time obsessing about nit-picky details and facts.
In fact, I very much enjoy the series, not only because it's enjoyably written, but also because it's fun to see how the authors have chosen to selectively engage their source material (mostly medieval fiction, not factual documents anyways) and transform it into a fictional account that tells a story uniquely suited for the 21st century. The little details that they get wrong add up, but I'm interested in the construction of the narrative, the portrayal of medieval mentalities (often bad, but sometimes instructive), the attempts to imagine social dynamics that are poorly understood from texts that are hard to read, and to then bring these dynamics to life in a way that engages an audience. That's cool. Getting a brooch style wrong, or not reading anything about early medieval clothing for the costuming? Not the most interesting thing going on.
I'm not a stamp collector, I analyze the past and like to think about the bigger questions!
'What truly happened in September 30^th, 1965?'
Nobody truly knows what happened, dammit, there are too many conspiracy theories over there and everybody is fanatic about the theory they believe right.
As a reenactor, its a tie between "aren't you hot" and "is that a real {gun, sword, fire, apple, baby}."
As an 1812 reenactor specifically, its not a question so much as whatever set up an older (so far always white) gentleman uses to say 'well I read McCollough's book on John Adams and...."
What I want to say is "Sir, at this time John Adams was our nations least popular ex-president. Can we get back to talking about The Early Republic as a whole and not one guy who hadn't held office in 14 years."
Ever see any ghosts?
"So have you found a job yet?"
Alternatively, "Why didn't Japan launch a third wave at Pearl Harbor?"
As a medievalist, when I tell people that's my specialization, they assume that I know all 1000 years of history. Saints preserve me if I get something wrong, about something that happened in X location at Y time.
I usually distract them by talking about illuminated books or heavily decorated saintly remains.
I also cringe at "When are you starting the Ph.D?" "Have you found work?" questions.
It must have smelled so awful, been so uncomfortable, etc. Cause, you know, no one ever cleaned anything more than once a year, they all had lice, and wore clothing that nearly killed them every day.
I have one that frustrated the hell outta me... I am currently an undergraduate history major and in choosing my specializations as British History and the History of War, I am dedicating myself into those paths of study. In telling my SO about my choosing she asked this gem that still burns:
"British History? Why don't you study Russian History? Why don't you specialize in them all?"
I suppose she is right, because everyone is fully aware that a complete understanding of the history of the English people can be obtained in a semester or two before moving on to another history.