On this date in 1924, Felix McMullen was hanged in Ireland.
McMullen had attempted to rob a bank in Baltinglass …
… and in the process shot dead a civic guard who gave him chase. (Patrick O’Halloran was just the third member of that force to die in the line of duty in the history of the young Irish Republic.)
Jurors proved highly reluctant to convict him, with a first jury discharged because it refused to come to a murder verdict, and a second panel issuing the conviction when forced to choose between murder and outright acquittal. (No manslaughter half-measures.) Both juries then petitioned for McMullen’s reprieve.
On this day..
- 1872: John Kewish, the last to hang on the Isle of Man
- 1630: Guglielmo Piazza and Giangiacomo Mora, colonna d'infamia
- 1938: Mikhail Viktorov, Soviet naval commander
- 1766: James Annin and James M'Kinzy
- 1595: Gabriel de Espinosa, the confectioner of Madrigal
- 1831: John Bell, age 14
- 1548: Seraphin d'Argences
- 1556: Joan Waste, in Windmill Pit
- 1946: Andrei Vlasov, turncoat Soviet general
- Feast Day of the Holy Maccabees
- 1997: Norio Nagayama, spree killer and author
- 1917: Frank Little of the IWW lynched