(Thanks to Robert Elder of Last Words of the Executed — the blog, and the book — for the guest post. Fans of this here site are highly likely to enjoy following Elder’s own pithy, almanac-style collection of last words on the scaffold. -ed.)

“A few minutes before this happened if anyone had told me that I would be here, I would have said they were crazy. But remember, anything can happen to anybody. You can walk out on the street and die of heart trouble. Or you can go out on the street and get run over. I think that will be all.”

-George Criner, convicted of murder, hanging, Montana. Executed October 16, 1935

Criner came home very drunk one night and tried to take his girlfriend’s diamond ring. She refused to let him, and he beat her with an iron poker and cut her with a pocketknife, then shot the police officer who tried to intervene. At the preliminary hearing, Criner said that he very much wished he hadn’t been there.

On this day..

• 1817: Manuel Piar, Bolivarian general
• 1814: Juan Antonio Caro de Boesi
• 1752: William Jillet, Daniel Johnson, and David Smith
• 1771: Mary Jones, hanged for shoplifting
• 1555: Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, Oxford martyrs
• 1730: Nevsehirli Damat Ibrahim Pasha, Tulip Era Grand Vizier
• 1946: Neville Heath, torture-killer
• 1891: William Rose
• 1675: Samuel Guile, Puritan rapist
• 1975: The Balibo Five, before the invasion of East Timor
• 1946: The Nuremberg Trial War Criminals
• 1793: Marie Antoinette