Nexus Knowledge Institute

Excited at this new chapter to begin!
This summer we will be celebrating 10 years of higher learning! As we come back from holiday break we will be offering new programs customized to each individual student to unlock their limitless potential. Programs will be designed with classes to challenge the student in their preferred field of study at a pace that works for them!

To find out more please message us or contact our Dean of Academia Dr Rhaenyra SC (Raia SC).

Happy 2025 and Happy Learning!

Stay tuned for something incredible!!

Art Lovers and Volunteers Recreate Georges Seurat's Famous Painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (1884) in Real Life along Beloit's riverfront in Wisconsin, in 2006.

In conceiving this tableau vivant, the organizers wanted to keep things modern. Thus, all participants are wearing contemporary clothes with umbrellas substituted in for the 19th-century parasols.

(Photo: Public domain via Wikipedia; credit: Mark Preuschl: Flickr; mymodernmet com); collage by SJ

The Casket Girls

In 1728 a small group of young women arrived in New Orleans each bearing a small wooden chest – called a cassette in French – that was shaped much like a small coffin. They became known as “Les Filles á la Cassette” – the casket girls. This was actually the third wave of such young women, the first arriving in the French colony of Mobile in 1704 and the second arriving in Biloxi in 1719.

Handpicked by the Bishop of Quebec by order of the French king Louis XV, these young women were plucked from the orphanages and convent schools and spent nearly six months traveling from France to New Orleans. The sole purpose for the trip was to provide wives for the men of New Orleans. Those who arrived in New Orleans were placed under the care of the Ursuline nuns until such time as they found husbands.

Here is where the history of these intrepid and perhaps naïve young women who survived the grueling voyage begins to take a series of unusual turns. Because they were described as being “very pale” upon their arrival, it was rumored that the casket girls had a more sinister purpose – and the vampire legends began. But that’s a story better told by one of the many tour guides in the French Quarter.

For an interesting account of the first women to arrive in New Orleans, consider Joan Dejean’s “Mutinous Women: How French Convicts Became Founding Mothers of the Gulf Coast.”

Fun Fact Thursday!!

During Prohibition (1920-1933), American moonshiners needed to dodge the police. So, they invented heifer-heels. These shoes made them resemble cows when moving through fields, preventing the cops from tracking their footprints. It's a unique way of "hoofin' it."

The day honours and remembers those who suffered and died as a consequence of the transatlantic slave trade, which has been called "the worst violation of human rights in history" in which over 400 years more than 15 million men, women and children were the victims.

It was first observed in 2008 with the theme "Breaking the Silence, Lest We Forget." The theme of 2015 was "Women and Slavery." The International Day also "aims at raising awareness about the dangers of racism and prejudice today."

With 2015 marking the start of the UN's International Decade for People of African Descent, a permanent memorial was unveiled at the UN headquarters in New York, entitled "The Ark of Return" and designed by Haitian-American architect Rodney Leon, who also designed the African Burial Ground National Monument.

Here's a fun fact you might not know: There's a Northernmost Point buoy in Angle Inlet, Minnesota (of the "contiguous" 48).

Do you think the lines ever get as long as they do for the Southernmost Point buoy?

Getting your picture in front of both of them could make a great bucket list item 😀
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The real "Rapunzel" Tower, in the English Countryside 👑

King Alfred's tower is 49 metres tall. Built between 1762 and 1779, it was designed by architect Henry Flitcroft who used more than a million red bricks. It is believed to mark the place where King Alfred the Great gathered his troops in 878.

The tower commemorates George III's ascension to the throne in 1760 and the end of the Seven Years War. The triangular tower is hollow, but it has an inside staircase (205 steps) to climb to the top. From there you can take in the spectacular vistas across Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset counties.

Fun and Interesting Places…

This is in a diving lake in Germany. Naturally, the truck is covered with algae and mussels but the windshield (and the name of the lake) gets cleaned perodically so you can look inside.

The whole lake used to be a pit mine for chalk for the cement industry and the truck sits in its "natural" pose on top of a structure called the "Rüttler" where - when the mine was still active - the trucks would unload the mined rocks to be processed.

There are also two planes, boats, some cars, trailers and some of the original mining equipment in that lake.