You might have noticed, it’s been in the news lately.

Despots and their retainers, nervously watching the news.

Conveniently for these pages, that region is also perennially among the busiest when it comes to the death penalty. Aside from China, and the inscrutable North Korea, no country regularly keeps up the official execution pace of Iran, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia. And that’s leaving aside the messy extrajudicial fare that the region’s intractable conflicts have fostered.

• March 10, 2010: Two lovers in Egypt
• March 11, 2006: Two al-Qaeda terrorists in Jordan
• March 12, 2006: The family of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi
• March 13, 2005: A gay couple in Saudi Arabia
• March 14, 2009: Four Iranians

On this day..

• 1653: Felim O'Neill
• 1431: Thomas Bagley, Lollard martyr
• 1931: Alfred Arthur Rouse, Blazing Car Murderer
• 1714: A Tyburn dozen
• 1992: Robyn Leroy Parks, botched lethal injection
• 1899: Cordelia Poirier and Samuel Parslow
• 1865: Amy Spain, liberation anticipation
• 1777: James Aitken, aka John the Painter, terrorist of the American Revolution
• 1762: Jean Calas, intolerably
• 2010: Jihan Mohammed Ali and Atef Rohyum Abd El Al Rohyum, lovers
• 1799: The defenders of Jaffa, at Napoleon's command
• 1615: St. John Ogilvie
• 1302: Dante Alighieri condemned