Due to a petition with over 150k signatures the UK parliament is going to (hopefully but probably not) debate the legal use of weed in the near future.

However why was weed originally made illegal in the UK? A comment on a news article I saw was claiming that one of the reasons was...

"The reason cannabis was made illegal in the first place was to destroy the hemp industry as it threatened the profits of the petrochemical, oil and paper industries. The law was never put in place to protect people as they will claim but, like most things in this day and age, to protect corporate profits. "

Is there any truth in this statement? Or were people at the time just concerned about the health effects?

Thanks!

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The bible has some descriptions of Lucifer/Devil. But where do we get the imagery of the devil today. The hierarchy of demons, Biel, Baphomet, etc?

It seems that a large majority of current US politicians of varying scales (Presidents, Governors, Congressmen) are either career politicians or have backgrounds in business or law. I've always felt that our government could only benefit if it was comprised of people from more varied fields.

From my high school education, I recall our founding fathers coming from a large variety of backgrounds. What was the evolution/transition to today's relatively narrow span of politicians' backgrounds? What were common background professions for politicians at different times in American politics?

Wikipedia indicates that interest mostly started in 1933, and earlier mentions seem pretty dubious. For instance, one of the few claims, from 1871, a least seems to have only been related decades later:

One such sighting occurred in October 1871 or 1872, by a Dr D. Mackenzie of Balnain. [....] Mackenzie sent his story in a letter to Rupert Gould in 1934, shortly after popular interest in the monster skyrocketed.

So is the story entirely a modern creation, or is there at least some mythos surrounding the Loch that dates further back?

As an american my novice view of the USSR was that they had huge problems with production, organization, infrastructure, and corruption. Spread out over an entire country it seems like these things would cripple their economy. I understand that the USSR eventually fell (probably contributed to by these things) but how were they able to keep up with the incredible economic might of the post-war USA for so long?

I've been researching for a story I'm writing and I have not been able to find this information anywhere. I have several diagrams of the way the sails look and the names of the sails, but I can't find information on how they would adjust it for the weather. I know furling sails is a thing and several other tactics they'd use but nothing on what scenarios they're used in- ie, when a strong storm dissipates, how do they adjust the sails to compensate? And what was the minimum generally needed to do this work, in addition to the other jobs on the ship? I know that Magellan's Victoria returned to Spain with a crew of eighteen, but could it go lower than that? The ships in question I'm researching specifically are a carrack and a fluyt.

To my knowledge, the very successful F-15 project was based on countering the massive planforms of the Mig-31. But that was itself based on countering planforms they saw in bombers or fighter bombers.

Meanwhile the Mig-31 was only intended as a high altitude interceptor. Not a medium-altidude dogfighter like the US Air Force thought.

Were the spies planted by the soviet union in the UK effective at leaking information to the soviets, or did the MI6 control what information they leaked?

There seems to be a relatively constant stream of posts which outright ask, or include in the text a question about the legitimacy and reliability of the author they're. Currently reading/planning to read. Often the answers are succinct but good critiques of said authors. So how about a sidebar link of author reviews with a grading system based on user input, with user sourced reviews (perhaps flaired users could have higher voting weight also) to help those of us looking to learn?

Just doing some research for a short story. My intial google searches have informed me about Operation Green and 'The Passing of the Great Race'. The Irish have been on the receiving end of a lot of racism all across the world. Were the Nazis any different? Would they have been treated like Slavs and Poles?

Basically, Bismark spent his life unifying Germany, had a strong policy about not expanding its borders with unnecessary war, despite his Brash attitude towards everyone. Wilhelm and his desire to "grow his empire" basically lead to World War I, and ultimately is early departure as the leader of "Germany" because of the very things that Bismark was against?

Or was he full of himself and cared nothing at all for Bismark until the very end thinking he was a great ruler with no regret? Despite losing respect from all his military leaders as well as the rest of military and people.

If Lincoln hadn't been killed so quickly after the war would he have hung Jefferson Davis. I haven't been able to have found anything about this, but I was wondering if anyone knew anything about this.

I recently went to the holocaust museum and can't help but wonder whether there was a high suicide rate amongst staff at concentration camps - it's not a something that I've heard much about.