Cannabis Plant is domesticated in Central Asia as a source of Fiber (hemp rope) and and Nutrition (seed)

Earliest finding of cannabis seed in the area of modern day Germany. (Eisenberg/Thuebingen)

550 BC – The Persian prophet Zoroaster gives hemp first place in the sacred text, the Zend-Avesta, which lists over 10,000 medicinal plants.

500 BC – Gautama Buddha said to have survived by eating hempseed. Cannabis used in Germany (Hochdorf Hallstatt D wagon burialsite). First botanical drawings of cannabis in Constantinopolitaus.

"Cannabis was used in India in very early medical applications. People believed it could quicken the mind, prolong life, improve judgment, lower fevers, induce sleep and cure dysentery...

The first major work to lay out the uses of cannabis in  medicine was the Ayurvedic treatise of Sushruta Samhita written in 600 BC... Within the Sushrita, cannabis is cited as an anti-phlegmatic and a cure for leprosy."

In ancient Greece, cannabis was used as a remedy for earache, edema, and inflammation in 100 BC.

200 BC – Specimens of hemp paper were found in the Great Wall of China.

China begins to use hemp to make paper (100 BC)

1300- Arab traders brought cannabis from India to Eastern Africa, where it spread inland.

1000-1464 AD- Arabic scholars Al-Mayusi (1100 AD) and AL-Badri (1464 AD) regarded cannabis as an effective treatment of epilepsy.

Christopher Columbus voyages to the shores of North America on ships hung with hemp sails and rigging in 1492 

"During the Middle Ages, hemp was central to any herbalist's medicine cabinet. William Turner, the naturalist considered the first English botanist, praises it in his New Herball, published in 1538."
                                                      Cannabis: A History, 2005

A Chinese medical text (1578 AD) [Bencao Gangmu Materia Medica, by Li Shizhen] describes the use of marijuana to treat vomiting, parasitic infections, and hemorrhage. Marijuana continues to be used in China as a folk remedy for diarrhea and dysentery and to stimulate to appetite.

The first hemp crop was planted in Danville 

1753 – Cannabis Sativa classified by Linnaeus.

George Washington, hemp farmer (and first president of the USA) 

Thomas Jefferson, American President and hemp grower.

1776: Declaration of Independence is drafted on hemp paper

Napoleon invades Egypt with forces that include a scientific expedition team. In addition to discovering the Rosetta Stone, the team brings cannabis back to France in 1799. The cannabis was investigated for its pain relieving and sedative effects in Europe and became more widely accepted in Western medicine.

Cannabis is added to the list of prohibited drugs in the UK's "Dangerous Drugs Act in 1928." Cocaine was added in 1920.

1941- Henry Ford built a car out of plastic from hemp and other plant material that ran on hemp fuel

During the war years in Germany, hemp cultivation was increasingly propagated and also practised.

May 4, 1937 - American Medical Association Opposes the Proposed Marihuana Tax Act and Supports Research on Medical Cannabis

Until 1937 approx. 80% of the worldwide used twines, ropes and thaws were made of hemp. Main producer between 1740 and 1940 is Russia. The American trade journal „Mechanical Engineering“ listed hemp advantages in numerous pages and head-titled the whole article: “The Most Useful Domestic Plant, One Can Wish For.”

"Up to World War I, pharmaceutical supplies of cannabis indica were entirely imported from India (and occasionally Madagascar), in accordance with the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, which specified that it come from flowering tops of the Indian variety.
Finally, in 1913, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Plant Industry announced it had succeeded in growing domestic cannabis of equal quality to the Indian. When foreign supplies were interrupted by World War I, the United States became self-sufficient in cannabis. By 1918, some 60,000 pounds were being produced annually, all from pharmaceutical farms east of the Mississippi."

Nov. 5, 1991 - First Medical Marijuana Initiative Passed in San Francisco

Nov. 5, 1996 - California Becomes First State to Legalize Medical Marijuana