The trade and usage of saffron reaches back more than 3,000 years and includes marketing for medicinal, culinary, and colourative applications. Saffron, a spice derived from the dried stigmas of the saffron crocus, has remained among history's most costly comestibles. With its bitter taste, hay-like fragrance, and slight metallic notes, saffron has been used as a seasoning, fragrance, dye, and medicine. Saffron is native to Southwest Asia, but was first cultivated in Greece. In both antiquity and modern times, most saffron was and is used in the preparation of food and drink: cultures spread across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas value the red threads for use in such items as baked goods, curries, and liquor. Medicinally, saffron was used in ancient times to cure a wide range of ailments, including stomach upsets, bubonic plague, and smallpox; clinical trials have shown saffron's potential as an anticancer and anti-aging agent. Since the 1980s, saffron has been used as a precursor in MDMA synthesis. Saffron has been used to colour textiles and other items, many of which carry a religious or hierarchical significance.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_and_usage_of_saffron

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1364: English forces defeated the French at the Battle of Auray in the French town of Auray, the decisive confrontation of the Breton War of Succession, a part of the Hundred Years' War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Auray)

1829: British Home Secretary Robert Peel founded the Metropolitan Police of Greater London, also known as the Met. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Police_Service)

1938: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier signed the Munich Agreement, stipulating that Czechoslovakia must cede the Sudetenland to Germany. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland)

1941: German Nazis aided by their collaborators began the Babi Yar massacre in Kiev, Ukraine, killing over 30,000 Jewish civilians in two days and thousands more in the months that followed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar)

1954: Twelve countries signed a convention establishing the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), currently the world's largest particle physics laboratory. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

xenogenetic: Being of foreign origin; having originated elsewhere. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/xenogenetic)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

Honesty is the best policy, I will stick to that. The good shall have my hand and heart, but the bad neither foot nor fellowship. And in my mind, the main point of governing, is to make a good beginning. -- Miguel de Cervantes (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes)