Thousands of years ago, the Koh-i-Noor Diamond was found sifted from India’s Alluvial mines. It means “Mountain of Light” in the Persian language. Not much is known about where the Timur Ruby was found but it is actually a spinel. It is associated with Timur, the founder of the Timurid empire. Like the Koh-i-Noor diamond, it exchanged hands multiple times. It isn’t definite where the diamond or ruby came from, but for both, the first written record comes from 1628, when Mughal Ruler Shah Jahan commissioned a magnificent throne to be created. The throne was adorned with the Timur Ruby and the Koh-i-Noor Diamond. Both the ruby and diamond had exchanged hands multiple times, eventually coming to Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh. After his death in 1839, the throne passed between four people in four years. Eventually, the stone made its way to his 10-year-old son, Duleep Singh. In 1849, after imprisoning his mother, the British forced Duleep to sign a legal document modifying the Treaty of...

By the time the story of Hansel and Gretel reached our ears it involved a witch, a candy house, and a happy ending. In the original there was murder, child abandonment, attempted cannibalism, and enslaved children. The time period of 1314 to 1322 was deemed The Great Famine in the Baltic regine, there was a famine that spread across Europe due to volcanic activity causing crop failure. It is estimated 30 million people died and 25% of the population was killed off globally. Older people chose to starve themselves to death, while some mothers abandoned or ate their children. People also often dug up graves and fed on the flesh of those who had passed. This is the reality of how the story of Hansel and Gretel was formed. The direct source for the story was Henriette Dorothea Wild who...