Black Friday (shopping) the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. When this was recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period when retailers would no longer be "in the red", instead taking in the year's profits. The earliest known published reference to this explanation occurs in "The Philadelphia Inquirer" for November 28, 1981. In 2013, an internet rumor alleged that the phrase originated in the American south before the Civil War, from the practice of
The Pool of the Black One been published in the collections "The Conan Chronicles Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle" (2000) and "" (Del Rey, 2003). "The Pool of the Black One", which appeared in "Weird Tales" magazine a month after "The Slithering Shadow", is a pirate-themed adventure story and occurs in the Western Sea of the Hyborian Age. The story begins with Conan adrift at sea, after escaping from a council of pirates in the Barachan Isles. He climbs aboard "The Wastrel", a ship belonging to a different pirate order who are bitter rivals of the Barachan ones. After a tense conversation with