Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric, is a poisonous and
psychoactive basidiomycete fungus, one of many in the genus Amanita.
Native throughout the temperate and boreal regions of the Northern
Hemisphere, Amanita muscaria has been unintentionally introduced to many
countries in the southern hemisphere, generally as a symbiont with pine
plantations, and is now a true cosmopolitan species. The quintessential
toadstool, it is a large white-gilled, white-spotted, usually deep red
mushroom, one of the most recognizable and widely encountered in popular
culture. Although it is generally considered poisonous, deaths from its
consumption are extremely rare, and it is eaten as a food in parts of
Europe, Asia, and North America after parboiling. Amanita muscaria is
noted for its hallucinogenic properties, with its main psychoactive
constituent being the compound muscimol. It was used as an intoxicant
and entheogen by the peoples of Siberia and has a religious significance
in these cultures. There has been much speculation on traditional use of
this mushroom as an intoxicant in places other than Siberia; however,
such traditions are far less well documented.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1781:
German-born astronomer and composer William Herschel discovered
the planet Uranus while in the garden of his house in Bath, Somerset,
thinking it was a comet.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus>
1884:
Mahdist War: Forces loyal to self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad
Ahmad began a 319-day siege of a combined Anglo-Egyptian force defending
Khartoum, Sudan.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Khartoum>
1920:
The Kapp Putsch briefly ousted the Weimar Republic government
from Berlin.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapp_Putsch>
1943:
The Holocaust: Nazi German troops began liquidating the Jewish
Ghetto in Kraków, Poland, sending about 8,000 Jews deemed able to work
to the Plaszow labor camp (deportation pictured), with the rest either
killed or sent to Auschwitz.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_Ghetto>
1962:
Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer
delivered a proposal to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara called
Operation Northwoods to create public support for a war against Fidel
Castro and Cuba, which was eventually rejected by President John F.
Kennedy.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
hamiform:
Curved at the extremity, shaped like a hook.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hamiform>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The history of religions reaches down and makes contact with that which
is essentially human: the relation of man to the sacred. The history of
religions can play an extremely important role in the crisis we are
living through. The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious
ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of
meaning.
--Mircea Eliade
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade>