Held in the evening, outside of the Coliseum, pilgrims huddle together, holding candles as clergymen make their way around the imperial amphitheatre and up to Palatine Hill, where the service concludes.

BBC: Easter in Rome

For the Imperial Valley, it is a way to get others to pay for conservation and bring money in.

ECONOMIST: Water policy

Some of the army green dresses and coats featured a folkloric motif by way of black and crimson imperial brocade.

FORBES: NYFW Fall '13 Day 3: Lacoste, Prabal Gurung, Alexander Wang, Chloe Sevigny for Opening Ceremony

Much like the Reduced Shakespeare Company's performances of all the bard's plays in one evening, in 90 action-packed minutes units and display teams from the three armed services parachuted, charged, marched and drummed their way through a thousand years of imperial history.

ECONOMIST: The Empire strikes back

For France, on the other hand, it is a way of enhancing a diminished post-imperial role.

ECONOMIST: French blows its horn | The

The process of rooting out imperial administrations in the political sphere has been under way for centuries, as far back as Magna Carta in England in 1215, the Revolution in France in 1789, and on to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

FORBES: What Do The Events In Egypt Mean For Business?

He also knows that although the British as a whole may regard the empire as a source of national pride, many members of his own party would not see things that way, not to mention all those former imperial subjects who might have views on the subject.

ECONOMIST: The British empire

Imperial peace, both in ancient Rome and in other eras, was in a paradoxical way a cause of social and cultural dislocation.

ECONOMIST: The origins of Christianity

"Women switching to exemestane had fewer cases of cancer in the other breast, which also suggests that taking the drug after tamoxifen may be a better way to prevent breast cancer than taking tamoxifen alone, " said Professor Charles Coombes of Imperial College London, the study's lead author.

BBC: Drug 'boosts breast cancer fight'