Our subject today is the journal Franz Schmidt, the redoubtable master executioner of the German city Nuremberg. On February 11-12 in 1584, Schmidt made an end of a gang of near-feral youth burglars with colorfully outlandish nicknames — an occasion notable enough to merit an illustration in the Nuremberg chronicle.

• Feb. 11, 1584: Silly Mary and Country Kate
• Feb. 12, 1584: Five young thieves

On this day..

• 1918: The Cattaro Mutineers
• 1876: Owen Lindsay, of the Baldwinsville Homicide
• 1751: William Parsons, Grub Street fodder
• 1584: Silly Mary and Country Kate
• 1957: Fernand Iveton, pied-noir revolutionary
• 1691: Sylvester Medvedev, bread-worshipper
• 1896: Bartholomew "Bat" Shea, political machine ballot-stuffer
• 1751: James Field, pugilist
• 1992: Johnny Frank Garrett, "kiss my ass because I'm innocent"
• 1984: Maqbool Bhat, for Kashmir
• 1585: Frederick Werner, the executioner's brother-in-law
• 1944: Twenty-two or more Poles
• 1869: Patrick Whelan, Canada's first assassin?