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 Pottawatomie Creek Massacre. At Pottawatomie Creek, five men were dragged from their cabins and massacred by John Brown and his sons. John Brown was not a timid man. A devout reader of the Bible, he found human bondage immoral and unthinkable. The father of 20 children, he and his wife Mary settled in Kansas to wage a war on the forces of slavery.