Questions tagged [travel]
Questions related to the movement of people between two or more distant geographical locations, whether over land, by water or by air, using various means of transportation, and can be for business, pleasure, or other purposes.
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What do the stamps on this English travel document mean?
It's an A3 sheet, on the recto is a Marriage License, perfectly obvious. But on the verso there are some rubber stamp marks from various railroad companies with filled in dates, a number, and signed ...
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How long would it have taken to travel from Southampton to Madeira by boat in the 1920s?
I’d like to know how long it would have taken to travel to Madeira by boat in the 1920s. I have archive material of my Father being seen off from Southampton docks on this journey. I assume it would ...
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In the 18th century Letters of Recommendation were used as a means of introduction. Was there anything equivalent used in 17th century Europe?
Benjamin Franklin wrote many such letters for people wanting to travel to the US when he served as ambassador in Paris .
I have not found any reference to such letters in the 17th century. When a ...
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How quickly did news travel in 12th century Eastern Europe?
I'm currently worldbuilding for a story set in the pre-Crusade Baltics, a couple of decades after the Crusades to the Holy Land had begun but half a century before the Crusader invasion of Baltic ...
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How common was holiday travel in Austria-Hungary?
How common was it to travel across different regions in Austria-Hungary for holiday trips? (e.g. people from Budapest to the beaches of Croatia)
If yes: How wealthy would have they been and what kind ...
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How long did the 19th century Europe Grand Tour take?
I’m writing a story set it 1815 and I want it to be as close as possible to history.
I know the countries that were visited and the routes they took, but I will love to know how much time it took ...
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When in 1980s did travel to and from USSR became possible?
Soviet borders were closed for traveling from USSR for most Soviet people until late 1980s. I don't recall, however, the year/month when the borders opened. After 1986 and before 1991, but that's all ...
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Travel between London and Lisbon in the 1350s: Philippa of Lancaster and King João I of Portugal context
Given the historical union between Philippa of Lancaster and King João I of Portugal in the late 14th century, there would have been significant communication and travel between England and Portugal. ...
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How long did it take approximately for a person to travel from Basel to Hanover (1753) by any means of transport?
I am writing a short story on someone's journey from Basel to Hanover and was wondering if it was a reasonable amount of time to do so, if not I would love some other now day German city that would be ...
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How long would it take to travel from Missouri to South Africa in late 1890s?
I'm writing a novel set in U.S.A., Missouri, in 1895-1896. To be realistic, how long would it take at that time to travel from Missouri to South Africa (former Republic of Transvaal), in direct trip ...
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Why did Christopher Columbus underestimated that much when planning his trip to India? [duplicate]
On the one hand, Europeans knew about the roundness and size of our planet since Eratosthenes (third century BCE). The measurement was extraordinarily precise (~1% error).
On the other hand, the ...
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What was life like in Korbach, Hesse, Germany during the 1700s?
I have been trying to learn about Korbach, Hesse relative to my family history. I have an ancestor who was born there around 1728. He married in Efferen (close to Cologne) in 1765 as a Catholic and ...
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How would a musician travel from Venice to Dresden around 1700?
I'm writing a historical fiction TV pilot and I need some help from the history buffs here. One of my characters, a young, aspiring, musician needs to travel from Venice to Dresden, Germany. I suspect ...
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What was the travel time from Zagreb to Pittsburgh in 1895?
Circa 1900, my ancestors made the trip from Zagreb, Croatia to Pittsburgh, USA several times. There were also seasonal workers who made the trip more than that. For the boat leg, Bremen, Germany to ...
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What was a plausible timetable for a train journey across Europe in 1870?
I'm writing historical fiction set in 1870 (June, some weeks before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war) in which some of the protagonists are traveling by train across Europe, from Calais to ...
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How fast and how far could one travel, by means of horse relay posts, in ancient China in 1500CE?
I'm trying to find out how people used to travel by horse, when they had to go to a very distant territory.
I have done research on horseback riding, horses and relay stations.
I found out that the ...
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What route would 1st century BCE travellers have taken from Alexandria to Jerusalem?
The Babylonian Talmud recounts a story in which a sage, Yehoshua ben Perachaiah, and one of his students travel from Alexandria, Egypt to Jerusalem (Sotah 47a, Sanhedrin 107b). The story takes place ...
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Were there any well-established land trade routes in the US colonies around 1700? What did they look like?
I'm considering running a ttrpg campaign set in the US colonies in the early 1700s. The campaign is going to begin around the Salem witch trials and go from there. The players will need to travel ...
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Are there any records of the travel times of 17th century Dutch Beurtvaart?
Are there any records of how long an average a trip on Dutch inland waterways took.
[Beurtvaart] was a Dutch line shipping system for (mostly) inland navigation, that existed from the late 15th ...
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Why did the steam locomotive take so long? [closed]
The steam engine was invented around the start of the 1700s (don’t quote me on that), but the locomotive was invented around a century later. Why is this? Did no one have the idea? Was the technology ...
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Did travelers need a pass to travel in Greco-Roman Egypt, particularly in and out of Alexandria?
I am writing a story in which people travel by boat in Greco-Roman Egypt (27 bce), and am wondering if there were internal controls on travel, or if people were pretty much free to come and go as they ...
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When did countries first allow travellers to import duty free alcohol and tobacco
When did duty-free allowances start? In which country and why? I am specifically asking about travellers being able to bring in alcohol and tobacco without paying duty or tax.
To be clear, I am ...
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Was there a tax in the fifties for British citizens traveling abroad?
I have found a dialog in Roberto Rossellini's 1954 film Journey to Italy where the character played by George Sanders says it's expensive to stay abroad too much. That would seem natural, only the ...
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How would emigrants travel the railway lines going from Grajewo to Bremerhaven in 1911 and from Grajewo to Rotterdam in 1917?
Grajewo was near the Prussian border. It also had a railway station but I don't know its route.
As I understand it: There were several lines that can be used traveling from Bialystok to Bremerhaven ...
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What was the best way to travel across Anatolia in 1914?
What was the best way to travel across Anatolia in 1914?
Specifically, I'm writing a story in which a character needs to travel from Constantinople to Van (a city which would later see protracted ...
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How long was a sea journey from England to East Africa 1868-1877?
I'm trying to find out how long the sea journey took from England to East Africa in the period 1868-1877. One source I've found suggests something like 3 months earlier in the 1860s. It mentions a ...
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Why did Pausanias travel to Greece?
Pausanias wrote his Description of Greece in the first century AD, which remains a priceless resource for classicists and archaeologists to this day.
I've made a quick perusal of the text itself, as ...
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What was Sir John Mandeville's source regarding Beersheba and its chronology?
After men have crossed this desert on the way to Jerusalem, they come to a city which is called Bersabee [Beersheba] which was once a fine city in habited by Christian men, and still there are some of ...
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What is the first recorded instance of jet lag?
Until recently, people didn’t often travel very far, and when they did, they traveled slowly, taking days to cross multiple time zones.
The phrase “jet lag” obviously arose from the age of fast air ...
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Was "Via Regia" the original name of the "Via Nova Traiana"?
This is a quote from Wikipedia:
The Via Traiana Nova or Via Nova Traiana (Latin for 'Trajan's New
Road'), previously known as the Via Regia or King's Highway, was an
ancient Roman road built by ...
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Why did wagons in the frontier era travel at night?
I'm currently reading 'The diamond diggings of South Africa' by Charles Payton, a first-hand account of a visit to the diamond mines in 1871.
On page 80 it says
For the first fortnight from leaving ...
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Do the edges of the CK3 map reflect real discontinuities in the medieval world?
Crusader Kings III was released a week or so ago, mostly to critical acclaim. I, too, have played the new release, and enjoyed it thoroughly. However, the while the new map is significantly better ...
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What is the earliest supported example of an African traveling to Southeast/East Asia?
There are quite a few famous cases of Africans who traveled to Asia (voluntarily or involuntarily) prior to 1700s such as Malik Ambar (India), Yasuke (Japan), and Ibn_Battuta (India, Sri Lanka, China, ...
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How did bank transactions (or "data" transactions) work when it took people weeks to travel vast distances?
I am designing a prototype for a distributed database that could work across vast distances of space, like the goals behind IPFS working at planetary, or galactic, scale. I want to solve the problem, ...
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How to travel from Koblenz (Germany) to Paris (France) in May 1805?
I'm trying to fill in some blanks in my family history.
In May 1805 an ancestor of mine traveled from Koblenz (Germany) to Paris (France).
He left most likely on May 16 or 17, maybe a few days later.
...
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How much was cost for a regular (standard class) passenger to come on passenger ship from Liverpool England to Canada between 1906-1908
What was the approximate, cost and length of trip in days to cross Atlantic from Liverpool England to New York USA or Quebec Canada, in the regular class of a passenger steamship between 1906-1908.
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What kind of canoes were used in 19th century Yucatán?
I’m specifically curious about seagoing canoes along the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in the mid-1800’s. Were they still typically of the dugout variety, or had they evolved to canvas on a wood ...
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What were the most popular destinations for British and American tourists on the Continent in the period 1880-1900?
How common was English and American travel to the Continent of Europe between 1880-1900? By businessmen, families, debutantes, honeymooners, politicians etc.
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Were there any travel restrictions during the Black Death pandemic?
From the Wikipedia article Black Death:
The Black Death, also known as the Pestilence, Great Bubonic Plague, the Great Plague or the Plague, or less commonly the Great Mortality or the Black Plague,...
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How did an English person get entry to East Germany during the Cold War?
I need to know how an English person was able to get authority to visit East Germany and what the most common crossing used was. Additionally, any information on how visitors were treated by Stasi ...
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Book (and/or podcast) recommendations for providing a historical & cultural context for Sichuan?
A couple friends and I plan on taking a tour in the southwestern region of China, specifically Sichuan & Yunan, around spring of next year. I find that it always makes the trip more engaging and ...
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What was the typical speed of a tramp steamship?
What was the typical speed of a tramp steamship in their heyday? I mean cruising speed, not flank speed; the figure you would divide into distance to see how long it would take to travel between ports....
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How would a family travel from Indiana to Texas in 1911?
What trails and/or travel modes would an Indiana farm family--2 adults, 4 children-- use to get to Texas in 1911? I can find detailed information about traveling East to West, but I have found nothing ...
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What was the technology in pre-war traffic recorders?
In 1936, Nevada was using an automated traffic recorder, a device that counts the number of passing vehicles:
The device must have included a vehicle detector and a recording mechanism. Today it ...
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Why did the later Crusades seemingly focus more on naval traversal?
I was studying some general Crusade maps and I noticed the first crusades seemed to be more land based as compared to the latter ones and I was wondering exactly why that was (besides just changing ...
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How long was a coach journey from Coburg to St Peterburg in 1790s?
If someone had to get from Coburg to St Petersburg in the 1790s? Would they travel overland by stagecoach or go up to the north German coast and get a boat round to the Gulf of Finland and enter ...
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How would an American returning from international travel prove his citizenship before 1914?
Apparently, international travelers didn't need any papers to travel (before WW1), at least in the USA and most parts of Europe. So how did a person 'prove' their nationality?
From OP's comments:
I'm ...
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How long would it take to cross the Channel in 1890's?
For a story I'm writing, I'd like to know how long it would take to travel by ship from Calais to Dover in 1890's (as I read it was the easier way). Also, was it possible to take a boat from Calais ...
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What is the average travel speed for railways between European capitals in the late 19th century?
Most sources I checked only present how the maximum train speed developed over time. For example, the top speed for a passenger train in 1854 was around 130 km/h. This record was set by a steam-...
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When did Britain learn about the American Declaration of Independence?
When did Britain learn about the American Declaration of Independence?
We all know the declaration was made on July 4th, 1776. But when did news reach Buckingham Palace and do we have records of ...
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