On this date in 1799, Neapolitan Republican Nicola Fiorentino went to the gallows.

A precocious and multitalented scholar, Fiorentino (Italian Wikipedia link; almost everything to his name on the Internet is in Italian) was all of 19 years old when he obtained the professorship of mathematics at the royal school of Bari in 1774 although this honor was a bit delayed since he’d won a competition for a similar chair in Aquila when he had not yet attained the minimum age of 15.

Health problems would bring the Renaissance man back to his native Naples in 1780s, where he distinguished himself in law, commerce, and increasingly in politics: his various texts in politics and economics trending ever more reformist through the years, until he went full Jacobin when Naples got her own short-lived republic in early 1799. Fiorentino’s “Hymn to San Gennaro for the Preservation of Liberty” (image) from that heady moment appeals to the patron saint of Naples to inspire “ardor for Equality and Freedom” so that in their new-made country would prevail “not privilege and flattery, but merit and virtue.”

Instead, a speedy Bourbon reconquest clinched the other thing.

Having held no office in the Republic he was ridiculously condemned for nothing but his prominence and the credibility his adherence lent to the republic.

Fiorentino has the consolation of a present-day Neapolitan street named in his honor.

On this day..

• 2011: Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser
• 1868: The Reno brothers and Charles Anderson lynched in New Albany
• 1924: A day in the death penalty around the U.S.
• 2013: Jang Sung-taek, North Korean purgee
• 1888: Tsimequor, indigenous Snuneymuxw
• 1957: Jorge Villanueva Torres, Monstruo de Armendáriz
• 1996: Lem Tuggle, Tim Kaine client
• 1952: Hard Luck Billy Cook
• 1942: Klava Nazarova, Hero of the Soviet Union
• 1777: Rev. Benjamin Russen, child rapist
• 1984: Alpha Otis O’Daniel Stephens: hear it live
• 1635: Ivan Sulyma