ITT:
Questions you ask when someone says they're "into history" that you pray they can answer.
I ask three questions in descending order of difficulty/obscurity (I'm American btw)
"Are you familiar with history at all?"
"Yeah I think I know a fair bit."
Question 1: "Are you familiar with the Habsburg dynasty?"
"No not really. I'm really into WWII and the Civil War, you know."
Question 2: "Okay then, what was your favorite battle from WWII? Mine was Kursk."
"Yeah that was a good one. I think D-Day was pretty awesome, I would have been so scared."
Question 3: "So you like the Civil war too? What's your favorite aspect of 19th century warfare?"
"Um.... uhhh...."
>>1070981
You're questions are pleb tier shit, OP.
For instance, say someone says they're really into WW2. I would then ask them:
>Why were all major powers in the conflict pervasively unable to match their airframe production and their pilots/aircrew training? Every single one of them produced vastly more aircraft than they had trained personnel to fly, and even when you add in the extra vehicles to be sold to smaller allies who didn't have aviation industries of their own, you're still left with an enormous surplus.
And seriously, the Hapsburgs? Hapsburgs a shit. Go with the Hohenzollerns.
>When someone says they are interested in something I give them a pop quiz to find out if they know as much as I do
>>1071007
This desu. Acting like a patronizing idiot when the subject is something you know about is pretty stupid.
>>1070981
ITT: fedoras setting fedora-standards.
>>1070981
You're an idiot. People who study history cannot be expected to know more than the average person outside of their particular niche. I'm a history major and any historian will yell you that.
The most common thing historians cone across is people assuming they know everything about history when this is impossible. A Cold War historian isn't going to know shit about farming in renaissance Italy.
>>1070999
No one knows who Frederick the Great is, how do you expect them to know what house he belonged to?
And that's an incredibly long winded conversation opener on WWII, best response you'll get from someone is "Yea it was pretty crazy."
You obviously haven't spent enough time with non-history people. I use the Habsburg question because it will immediately tell me whether or not they know a damned thing about European history.
>>1071007
>>1071021
>>1071027
>>1071031
I never give the pop quiz unless I can tell someone is educated. I work with a lot of people from various backgrounds and if I can tell right away that they've probably never studied history in great detail, I spare them the lecture.
When someone is at least decently well spoken and seems a bit knowledgeable, I gradually get around to poking their historical knowledge. If they aren't able to answer that first question I drop the subject and move on. I understand that it's a broad topic with many disciplines and don't look down on people who don't find it as interesting as I do. My significant other doesn't give two shits about history and I still love and respect her.
Also, you'd be surprised how many people actually know about the Habsburgs, to whatever degree of understanding.
>>1070999
Increasing OCC dude, increasing OCC. Individual genius didn't matter as much as having frames in the air using shoot and scoot.
Also the production time for a fighter pilot is somewhere around 21 years, whereas the production time for an airframe is fewer than 21 weeks.
>>1071031
>A Cold War historian isn't going to know shit about farming in renaissance Italy.
Uh... you realise that a fair number of cold war historians are labour historians right?
