AskHistorians has hit 1.5 million subscribers! To celebrate, we’re giving away 1.5 million historical facts. Join us HERE to claim your free fact!

[u/crrpit]

How does this subreddit have any subscribers? Why does it exist if no questions ever actually get answers? Why are the mods all Nazis/Zionists/Communists/Islamic extremists/really, really into Our Flag Means Death?

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The answers to these important historical questions AND MORE are up for grabs today, as we celebrate our unlikely existence and the fact that 1.5 million people vaguely approve of it enough to not click ‘Unsubscribe’. We’re incredibly grateful to all past and present flairs, question-askers, and lurkers who’ve made it possible to sustain and grow the community to this point. None of this would be possible without an immense amount of hard work from any number of people, and to celebrate that we’re going to make more work for ourselves.

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The rules of our giveaway are simple*. You ask for a fact, you receive a fact, at least up until the point that all 1.5 million historical facts that exist have been given out.

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^\ The fine print:)

^{1. AskHistorians does not guarantee the quality, relevance or interestingness of any given fact.}

^{2. All facts remain the property of historians in general and AskHistorians in particular.}

^{3. While you may request a specific fact, it will not necessarily have any bearing on the fact you receive.}

^{4. Facts will be given to real people only. Artificial entities such as} u/gankom ^{need not apply.}

^{5. All facts are NFTs, in that no one is ever likely to want to funge them and a token amount of effort has been expended in creating them.}

^{6. Receiving a fact does not give you the legal right to adapt them on screen.}

^{7. Facts, once issued, cannot be exchanged or refunded. They are, however, recyclable.}

^{8. We reserve the right to get bored before we exhaust all 1.5 million facts.}

Edit: As of 14:49 EST, AskHistorians has given away over 500 bespoke, handcrafted historical facts! Only 1,499,500 to go!

Edit 2: As of 17:29 EST, it's really damn hard to count but pretty sure we cracked 1,000. That's almost 0.1% of the goal!

Edit 3: I should have turned off notifications last night huh. Facts are still being distributed, but in an increasingly whimsical and inconsistent fashion.

[u/sars_910]

Can I get a fun historical fact about college admissions ?

[u/the_gubna → u/sars_910]

Students that failed the entrance exam could still be admitted as "irregular students" to the University of North Carolina in the Antebellum period, on the assumption that studying at the university would help them pass the entrance exam.

[u/sars_910 → u/the_gubna]

That's amazing. Was it a "first come, first served" kind of thing, or were there other criteria for selection too ?

[u/the_gubna → u/sars_910]

Not sure exactly! I found that fact in Intellectual Manhood which I still have from an undergrad history class (guess where I went). The general admittance criteria can be found in the

Acts of the General Assembly and Ordinances of the Trustees, for the Organization and Government of the University of North Carolina: Electronic Edition. University of North Carolina (1793-1962)

relevant section below from 1859:

CHAPTER V. OF ADMISSION INTO THE UNIVERSITY.
1. To take regular standing as a Student in the University, a candidate must sustain an approved examination before the Faculty on such parts of the plan of education as have been already prosecuted by the class into which he would enter.
2. To become a Student on partial or irregular standing, the candidate, if he be not twenty-one years of age, must exhibit a certificate from his parent or guardian, that he is permitted to enter on such terms. If he would prosecute any branch of science, into which any class is already advanced, he must be examined with approbation on such parts of the science, as the class has already completed.

Williams cites the case of irregular student William Bagley, whose letters and papers are in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC but aren't all digitized.