[Henldyhl]

Some interesting tid bits on the history of the color black.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black#Etymology

The word black comes from Old English blæc ("black, dark", also, "ink"), from Proto-Germanic *blakkaz ("burned"), from Proto-Indo-European *bhleg- ("to burn, gleam, shine, flash"), from base *bhel- ("to shine"), related to Old Saxon blak ("ink"), Old High German blah ("black"), Old Norse blakkr ("dark"), Dutch blaken ("to burn"), and Swedish bläck ("ink"). More distant cognates include Latin flagrare ("to blaze, glow, burn"), and Ancient Greek phlegein ("to burn, scorch"). Black supplanted the wonted Old English word sweart ("black, dark"), which survives as swart, swarth, and swarthy (compare German schwarz and Dutch zwart, "black"). A "black day" (or week or month) usually refers to a sad or tragic time. The Romans marked fasti days with white stones and nefasti days with black.

* E.g., the Wall Street Crash 1929, the stock market crash on October 29, 1929, which is the start of the Great Depression, is nicknamed Black Tuesday, and was preceded by Black Thursday, a downturn on October 24 the previous week.
* Black Monday, stock market crash on October 19, 1987.
* Black Wednesday caused Britain to pull out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
* Black Friday, various tragic events. # Black months include:

* the Black September in Jordan, in which thousands of people were killed.
* Black July killing of the Tamil population by the Sinhalese government in Sri Lanka.
* Black Spring 2001 (Printemps noir), in the Berber region of Kabylia (Algeria), when the police shot and killed more than 100 people.

# The Black Death, also known as the Black Plague, was a pandemic in Europe that killed tens of millions of people.
# The Black Hole of Calcutta was the overcrowding of an impromptu prison cell in which many died.