Originally published at Lughnasa 1998. Henbane, whose botanical name is Hyoscyamus niger, is a member of the Solanaceae order of plants which includes such innocuous members as the humble potato and tomato but also highly poisonous and notorious ones such as belladonna, mandrake and the daturas.
St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. English: The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (Massacre de la Saint-BarthÃ©lemy in French) was a wave of Catholic mob violence against the Huguenots (French Protestants).
The Plague of Justinian (AD 541â542) was a pandemic that afflicted the Eastern Roman Empire, including its capital Constantinople. At its peak, 5,000 people per day in Constantinople died from it, killing half the population. From there, the plague moved east and west, becoming antiquity's most lethal known pandemic.