Wednesday, April 22, 2015

23,320

Today is Memorial Day in Israel. Unlike Memorial day in the US, this is a regular workday.  A 2-minute siren goes off twice, and everyone stops what they are doing ans stands at attention for a moment of silence for those who have fallen in war or in acts of terrorism.

To date, that is 23,320 people.



Tuesday, April 21, 2015

1900

This date (April 21) in history:

in  1506 – The three-day Lisbon Massacre comes to an end with the slaughter of over 1,900 suspected Jews by Portuguese Catholics.

The Lisbon Massacre, alternatively known as the Lisbon Pogrom or the 1506 Easter Slaughter was an incident in April, 1506, in Lisbon, Portugal in which a crowd of Catholics, as well as foreign sailors who were anchored in the Tagus, persecuted, tortured, killed, and burnt at the stake hundreds of people who were accused of being Jews and, thus, guilty of deicide and heresy. This incident took place thirty years before the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal and nine years after the Jews were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism in 1497, during the reign of King Manuel I.

for more info, go to wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Massacre


Monday, April 20, 2015

420


Why is the number 420 used for pot?

One common belief is that 420 was the California police or penal code for marijuana, but there's no evidence to support those claims.

Another theory is that there are 420 active chemicals in marijuana, hence an obvious connection between the drug and the number. But there are more than 500 active ingredients in marijuana, and only about 70 or so are cannabinoids unique to the plant, according to the Dutch Association for Legal Cannabis and Its Constituents as Medicine.

A less-known explanation comes from the 1939 short story "In the Walls of Eryx" by HP Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling. The story describes "curious mirage-plants" that seemed fairly similar to marijuana and appeared to get the narrator high at, according to his watch, around 4:20. Since the story is from 1939, it's perhaps the earliest written link between marijuana and 420.

Steven Hager, a former editor of the marijuana-focused news outlet High Times, told the New York Times that the holiday came out of a ritual started by a group of high school students in the 1970s. As Hager explained, a group of Californian teenagers ritualistically smoked marijuana every day at 4:20 pm. The ritual spread, and soon 420 became code for smoking marijuana. Eventually 420 was converted into 4/20 for calendar purposes, and the day of celebration was born. Still, there's little evidence to prove Hager's story beyond the claims of a group of Californians who took credit for 420's origin.


Wednesday, April 15, 2015

74

Mt father would have been 74 today.  He died last November.  I miss him.