Skull and crossbones

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Skull and crossbones is a symbol consisting of a human skull and two long bones crossed together under the skull. It is used in several contexts:

• Skull and crossbones (poison), the use of the symbol as a warning of danger (usually in regard to poisonous substances)
• Skull and crossbones (military), variations on the symbol used by several military forces
• Skull and crossbones (fraternities and sports), the use of the symbol, for various reasons, by many American college fraternities, sororities, and secret societies founded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
• Skull and crossbones (Spanish cemetery), the use of the symbol to mark the entrances to Spanish cemeteries (campo santo)
• Unicode represents the symbol (☠) as codepoint U+2620, in its Miscellaneous Symbols block

[edit] See also

• Jolly Roger, the name given to any of various flags flown to identify a ship's crew as pirates, which often included the symbol
• Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut
• Crossbones (comics), a Marvel Comics supervillain
• Cross Bones, a disused burial ground in Southwark, London
• Freemasonry, where the sign of skull and crossbones is used to denote a master mason