During the 900 days of the siege of Leningrad in the Second
World War, 1,500 people were accused of cannibalism.
Mary Stuart, queen of England from 1553 to 1558,
had 274 people burned at the stake just for being
Protestant Christians.
The Mongolian ruler Ghengis Khan imposed the death penalty
for urinating in water because water was so precious in the
Mongolian desert.
During the time of Henry VIII of England, who reigned from 1508
to 1547, the punishment for poisoners was to be boiled alive.
Monks in Sicily, Italy, mummified dead bodies until 1920. A display
of
6,000 can be seen in catacombs in Palermo, standing around or lying
on shelves.
The fifteenth-century German king Wenceslas was so angry with his
chef after a particularly bad meal that he had him roasted alive.
During witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts,
USA, in 1692, 25 people were condemned to death
on the flimsy evidence of a group of hysterical girls
In Africa, it was common to bend back springy saplings and tie
them beneath the ears of someone about to be beheaded,
so that the person’s last sensation would be of their head
flying through the air.
Until 1868, criminals could be transported from England – sent to
Australia for seven or fourteen years – for even
petty crimes.
The youngest victim was a boy of nine, transported for stealing.
In Ancient Babylon, a doctor who
accidentally killed a patient had his
hands cut off
In 1685, a wolf that terrorized a
village near Ansbach in Germany
was sentenced to be dressed in
human clothing and hanged.
The body of William the Conqueror was too big
for his coffin, so two soldiers jumped up and
down on him to try to squish him in. This broke
his back and made his stomach explode