The beginning, end and reverberation of the Taiping Rebellion — Exams are no fun to take for most. This is a feeling that has been felt since the inception of exams and there are few exams as old and influential as the Chinese imperial exam, an exam used to vet future imperial bureaucrats. …

When a Queen of nomads killed the King of Kings — The year is 529 B.C, Cyrus the Great has united most of the Persian and Median Tribes and founded the Achaemenid Persian Empire. He has conquered the ancient kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon granting himself the ancient Assyrian title of King of Kings. Having created the largest empire of it’s…

Depictions of the two minds colliding and why it is still relevant — The year is 336 B.C. The place is the Greek city-state of Corinth in the suburb of Craneion. The time is not specified, but it was during a sunny day that Alexander III of Macedon met Diogenes the Cynic, an interaction that spawned numerous paintings and philosophical and literary reinterpretations…

How rowdy students created one of the world’s most known universities — If you asked someone to produce a list of the universities that were considered most prestigious, Oxford and Cambridge would almost certainly be mentioned. Too many these universities seem interchangeable with each other. …

In the jungle all is fair game The red sun gleamed through the dark leaves of the rainforest as birds fluttered from their branches at the approach of the party of hunters who forged a path through the jungle, snaking through the vines and flora of the exotic forest, following…

Are you being authentic if you are trying to be authentic? The existentialist movement was a prominent one in continental philosophy. Beginning in the 19th century, the movement progressed into the 20th century and hit a fervour pitch after World War 2 with the French thinker Jean-Paul Sartre as its…

Her stories became legend — Boggarts were said to come out during the hottest days. At least the old folk of Perrybrook thought so. During the winter it was too cold for the spirits, so they hibernated under lakes and streams, and the ancient glaciers and mountains. But once the ice melted and the heat…

How past legends influence the present — We all know Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492 which subsequently opened the land to European colonization in the coming centuries. We also know that he was not the first European to cross the Atlantic, with the Vikings achieving that feat nearly five hundred years before with Leif Erikson…

Like many, I have often wondered the extent to which certain art is better than other art. This is commonplace for consumers of art. Like the clothes you wear or the way you talk, the type of art you consume tells something about yourself. It is for this reason that…