On this date in 1924, “colored male” Frank Johnson was electrocuted in Florida.

He was, in fact, the very first to die in the Sunshine State’s electric chair.

The original Florida electric chair.

“Old Sparky” (numerous electric chairs shared this nickname) was brand new here in the Roaring Twenties, a jerry-built contraption outfitted with “homemade accessories” to replace the icky old gallows with a brave new world’s brave new mankiller.

Top: a scantily-detailed penitentiary “personnel card” for Frank Johnson. Middle: details of the execution. Bottom: Florida’s official typed list of its early executions.

All images are from this Florida Department of Corrections page.

This same furniture that killed Johnson would ultimately take the lives of 265 men and one woman — notables from Giuseppe Zangara to Ted Bundy, milestones like John Spenkelink, and scores of strange and forgotten perps among them.

Notoriously error-prone by the end of its run, the device was finally replaced in 1999.

On this day..

• 1938: Adam "Eddie" Richetti, Pretty Boy Floyd sidekick
• 2004: Ken Bigley, Iraq War hostage
• 1967: The Asaba Massacre
• 1415: Lello Capocci, schism victim
• 1989: Francis Minah, Vice President of Sierra Leone
• 1546: The Fourteen of Meaux
• 1998: Jonathan Wayne Nobles
• 1536: Sebastiano de Montecuccoli, poisoner of the heir?
• 1898: Alfred C. Williams
• Unspecified date: British soldiers by urophagia
• 2007: Five women in Hoiryeong Public Stadium
• 1943: 98 American civilian contractors on Wake Island