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
_______________________________ 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
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
hamiform: Curved at the extremity, shaped like a hook. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hamiform
___________________________ 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
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