With 2020 in the books, it is time to wrap up the monthly Best Of and recognize the December choices!
The 'Flairs Choice' award was a tight race this month, with several frontrunners right up to the polls closing, but in the end /u/lord_mayor_of_reddit took the top honor by a hair's breadth, but well deserved for the topical "What the heck was going on in New York at Christmas in the 1770s? Wikipedia's history of Santa Claus describes "aggressive home invasions," "sexual deviancy" and a weird parody of Dutch culture."
The 'Users Choice' award saw quite a few worthy contenders, but in the end, /u/yourlocaltitanicguy came out in front, living up to their username with "Until the wreck was found, it was uncertain if the Titanic went down in one piece or split into two. What did the splitting look and sound like to eyewitnesses and why was it uncertain it really happened?". No Dark Horse award this month as /u/yourlocaltitanicguy took it outright!
For this month's 'Greatest Question', voted upon by the mods, while "I am a..." style questions might be contentious, how could we not love "I'm an average horse that is part of a baggage train during the Crusades. What kind of hoof care can I expect?", asked by /u/I_walked_east and with some wonderful insight from /u/WelfOnTheShelf to boot!
This month's Deluxe Edition Excellence in Flairdom award goes to /u/jbdyer and /u/tlumacz. We've spent years making jokes about 2021 being the year of the "Twenty-One Year Rule." The two of them put an enormous amount of work and patience into writing the post to deal with the reason for all our dread--a brilliant, readable mini-essay that will be linked time and again. Thank you so much. Both of you. You are champions.
As always, congrats to our very worthy winners, and thank you to everyone else who has contributed here, whether with thought-provoking questions or fascinating answers. And if this month you want to flag some stand-out posts that you read here for potential nomination, don't forget to post them in our Sunday Digest! And of course, with the year behind us, stay tuned for the Best of 2020 voting which will begin in a few days!
For a list of past winners, check them out here!
Hey! No idea what this means but thank you! I love talking about this stuff. Ironically, today I picked up an incredible piece of Titanic memorabilia I found tucked away in an antique store. I gasped when I saw it- so it's been a solid day of Titanic.
For more Titanic research, shout out to u/MGY401 for helping out with awesome research when I couldn't quite keep up with the questions. u/afty and u/painintheassinternet are also Titanic nerds who have valuable knowledge.
Thank you everyone!
Thank you so much. Both of you. You are champions.
But it's been no bed of roses, no pleasure cruise. I consider it a challenge before the whole human race and I ain't gonna lose.
Congrats all! Solid work, and well deserved!
Thanks so much! It was an intense and haunting way to finish an intense and haunting year.
(And thanks to all of you behind the scenes who helped!)
One bit that didn't make it into the post I want to share now, is this 15-minute interview that happened shortly after the events, on This American Life.
Lynn Simpson worked on the 89th floor of the World Trade Center. She escaped, along with the rest of her office, and now is trying to figure out what it means that's she's alive, and how her life is different now.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/194/before-and-after/act-one-0
Oh wow! This is great! Thanks so much to everyone! After such a terrible year, it was nice that I got this for an answer about Santa Claus and partying, haha! Thanks again to everyone.
And to all the regular AH contributors, a sincere thank you for all the amazing work you put into this sub. It wouldn't be a worthwhile place without you. The real honor is being part of this community - this would be a meaningless honor if the community wasn't already something special to begin with. So thank you all, and happy new year! I look forward to reading amazing answers throughout 2021!
Thanks y'all. That was a fantastic answer by u/welfontheshelf.
"there were a lot of them, and everyone was happy, or there weren’t enough of them, and everyone was unhappy" had me cracking up. Best tl;dr on medieval people's opinion on horses.
Congratulations to all the winners for helping end 2020 with such top quality work and thank you for enhancing our knowledge