Today is a special day for pot smokers, as 420 is slang for "smoking pot".
I see that the number is most credibly attributed to a group of 5 stoner students at
San Rafael High (Marin Co., N. Calif.) way back in
1971, promoted by 1 of their group while working as a roadie for the band Grateful Dead, and popularized by the publication
High Times.[†]
Uh,
huh. I lived in the S.F. Bay Area for more than a dozen years, beginning late in that same decade, and I don't remember it--the slang, that is. I certainly remember my years in the SFBA, plus the fact that I never attended a concert by the very conveniently located Grateful Dead.
Today is 4/20/18.
Only when using the
inside-out notation peculiar to the U.S.A., which is not only illogical but also sometimes
dangerously ambiguous (e.g., expiration dates printed without any punctuation-marks on packaging for medicine).
San Rafael is more significant to Catholics as the site of "
Mission San Rafael Arcángel", which was the 20
th (i.e., next-to-last) of the "California Missions". The mission was founded among the Coast Miwok people of
Alta California under Spanish imperial rule in 1817, thus predating Mexican rule. (Once again I digress, but with the honorable intention of adding some genuinely
Catholic content to this
topic.)
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Note †: "Here's the Real Reason We Associate 420 With Weed". By Olivia B. Waxman.
Time Magazine. "Updated:
April 13, 2018 9:15 AM ET[;] Originally published: April 19, 2016". <
http://time.com/4292844/420-april-20-marijuana-pot-holiday-history/>.