On this date* in 1879, would-be regicide Alexander Soloviev was hanged

Soloviev (English Wikipedia entry | Russian), a Narodnik revolutionary, was one of the less competent assassins to have a go at Tsar Alexander II.

Surprising the undefended sovereign on the latter’s morning constitutional near Winter Palace, Soloviev couldn’t connect with his revolver from four meters’ distance. As Alexander fled, Soloviev gave chase, firing four more times in the process to no effect before the gathering crowd wrestled him to the cobblestones.

Soloviev admitted the crime — the admission was hardly necessary — and hanged before a crowd of 70,000 souls. Despite the ensuing police crackdown on subversives (resulting in still more executions), many of those 70,000 surely numbered among the gawkers two years later for the hanging of the Narodnaya Volya terrorists who at last successfully assassinated Alexander.

* May 28 was the local (Julian calendar) date for the execution; by the Gregorian calendar prevailing outside Russia, it was June 9.

Part of the Themed Set: Terrorism.

On this day..

• 1754: Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, the first Washington atrocity
• 1345: Arnaud Foucaud, jobbing trooper
• 1753: George Robertson, prick
• 1794: The neighbors of Susan Sorel, the female atheist
• 2015: A day in the death penalty around the world
• 1213: Peter of Pontefract, oracle
• 1829: George Chapman, besotted
• Themed Set: Old New York
• 1686: Paskah Rose, Jack Ketch interregnum
• 1872: Franks survives Fiji's first hanging
• 2002: Napoleon Beazley, who threw it all away
• 1871: The Paris Commune falls
• 1987: Valery Martynov, betrayed by Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen