more at http://quickfound.net "Government agents burn confiscated opium near unfinished San Francisco City Hall, and destroy other confiscated Chinese drugs." The new San Francisco City Hall, rebuilding after the 1906 earthquake and fires, can be seen in the background. The opium and paraphernalia are destroyed by burning, so don't forget to hold your breath. Public domain film from the Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The film was silent. I have added music created by myself using the Reaper Digital Audio Workstation and the Independence and Proteus VX VST instrument plugins. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_City_Hall San Francisco City Hall, re-opened in 1915, in its open space area in the city's Civic Center, is a Beaux-Arts monument to the City Beautiful movement that epitomized the high-minded American Renaissance of the 1880s to 1917. The structure's dome is the fifth largest in the world. The present building replaced an earlier City Hall that was completely destroyed during the 1906 earthquake, which was 2 blocks from the present one. It was bounded by Larkin Street, McAllister Street, and City Hall Avenue (a street, now built over, which ran from the corner of Grove and Larkin to the corner of McAllister and Leavenworth), largely where the current Public Library and U.N. Plaza stand today. The principal architect was Arthur Brown, Jr., of Bakewell & Brown, whose attention to the finishing details extended to the doorknobs and the typeface to be used in signage. Brown's blueprints of the building are preserved at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Brown also designed the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, Veterans Building, Temple Emanuel, Coit Tower and the Federal office building at 50 United Nations Plaza... The current City Hall building is a replacement for an original building which was completed in 1899 after 27 years of planning and construction. The original city hall was actually a much larger building which also contained a smaller extension which contained the city's Hall of Records. Reconstruction plans following the 1906 Earthquake wanted the buildings design and plans to work with noted city planner and architect Daniel Burnham's plan to rebuild the city, and in particular, the Civic Center complex in a neo-classical design as part of the city beautiful movement, as well as a desire to rebuild the city in time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. After Arthur Brown Junior's design was selected, construction started in 1913 and was completed by 1915, in time for the Exposition. The main rotunda had also served as the location of many prominent state funerals. General Fredrick Funston, hero of the Spanish-American War, Philippine-American War, and the 1906 Earthquake had his there in 1917. A story of President Warren Harding's body being laid in state in San Francisco City Hall following his death in San Francisco in 1923 is apparently false. Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were married at City Hall in 1954... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium Opium (poppy tears, lachryma papaveris) is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum). Opium contains approximately 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes the alkaloid codeine and its similarly structured cousin thebaine. It also contains non-analgesic alkaloids such as papaverine and noscapine. The traditional, labor-intensive, method of obtaining the latex is to scratch ("score") the immature seed pods (fruits) by hand; the latex leaks out and dries to a sticky yellowish residue that is later scraped off, and dehydrated. The word "meconium" (derived from the Greek for "opium-like", but now used to refer to infant stools) historically referred to related, weaker preparations made from other parts of the poppy or different species of poppies. The production of opium itself has not changed since ancient times. Through selective breeding of the Papaver somniferum plant, the content of the phenanthrene alkaloids morphine, codeine, and to a lesser extent thebaine, has been greatly increased. In modern times, much of the thebaine, which often serves as the raw material for the synthesis for hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and other semi-synthetic opiates, originates from extracting Papaver orientale or Papaver bracteatum. Opium for illegal use is often converted into heroin, which is less bulky, making it easier to smuggle, and which multiplies its potency to approximately twice that of morphine. Heroin can be taken orally, by intravenous injection, intranasally, or smoked (vaporized) and inhaled...

• published: 28 Aug 2013
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