Tang Dynasty warlord Qin Zongquan was beheaded on this date in 889.

A military governor under Emperor Xizong, Qin made common cause with the rebel/usurper Huang Chao, who briefly established himself in the capital during the early 880s where he asserted himself as the Emperor of Qi. Huang was defeated and killed in 880, but his rebellion proved a mortal blow to the Tang, which succumbed by 907 to a transitional era of unstable dynasties and fractured, rivalrous kingdoms.

Qin Zongquan helped to assure that was so, by carrying on the insurrection after Huang’s death that kept China embroiled in civil war for the remainder of the decade, until a subaltern turned Judas and overthrew him for the benefit of the Tang. (Who by now had a new emperor themselves.) He’s said to have left onlookers in stitches with his last words shouted to the official orchestrating his beheading: “Minister, I, Qin Zongquan, was not committing treason. It was just that my faithfulness was not expressed well.”

On this day..

• 1918: Paul von Rennenkampf, tsarist general
• 1592: The Uglich Bell
• 1464: Johann Breyde, via Schandbild
• 1698: Katharina Sommermeyer, Beierstedt witch
• 1307: Murcod Ballagh, beheaded
• 2013: A day in the death penalty around the Persian Gulf
• 1916: Gabrielle Petit, Belgian spy
• 1872: William Frederick Horry, Marwood's first
• 1942: Not Hersh Smolar, saved by Genesis
• 1965: John Harris, white anti-apartheid martyr
• 1691: Jack Withrington, highwayman
• Themed Set: Selections from the Newgate Calendar
• 325: Licinius, Constantine's last obstacle