In 1869, Henry Morton Stanley went in search of the famous explorer, Dr. David Livingstone. Upon reaching the town of Ujiji, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, Stanley encountered a white man and uttered one of the most famous sentences in the history of exploration: “Dr Livingstone I presume?” This fateful meeting captured the minds Continue Reading
Issue 17! Christmas!
Is that time of year where the essays are piling on, nights in the library are getting longer and exam revision is looming. But the end of the semester does lead to one good thing: Christmas. To whet your Christmassy appetites we have been looking at the history behind London’s Trafalgar square tradition that we Continue Reading
Issue 16
In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued the summis desiderantes affectibus, a papal bull that recognised the existence of witches and gave full papal approval to hunt them. In the early modern period, between 40,000 and 50,000 people were accused of being witches, and were executed for their alleged crimes. Coincided with this, early modern Europe Continue Reading
Halloween: A History
‘[Halloween] is thought to be a night when witches, devils, and other mischief-making beings are abroad on their baneful midnight errands; particularly those aerial people, the fairies, are said on that night to hold a grand anniversary.’ Robert Burns, Halloween, 1785 Although the entomology behind the word ‘Halloween’ is Christian – ‘quite literally, the popular Continue Reading
Issue 15
Summer is over, and the chill in the Manchester air is a reminder that winter is imminent. So we have provided you with some fantastic reading material for those long rainy nights as you settle back into academic life. As the new editors we both thought it was important to bring something new to the Continue Reading