Tiny Liechtenstein last conducted an execution 230 years ago today: Barbara Erni — the legendary “Golden Boos”.

Nicknamed for her strawberry blond hair, the Golden Boos had an ingenious scam that required every bit of her Bunyanesque strength: she would wander the countryside and check into inns with a large chest or pack. Intimating that the parcel contained something of great value, she would insist upon its overnight safekeeping in a very secure room.

Once the inn had tucked in for the night, a diminutive accomplice would emerge from the trunk, plunder the lonely room of its valuables, and the two would escape into the night. Evidently, secure rooms in 18th century Liechtenstein were never secured from the inside.

She admitted to 17 such thefts. Liechtentein, whose population at the present time numbers fewer than 40,000 souls, had to import the executioner to chop off Barbara Erni’s Golden Boos on a public scaffold in Vaduz on February 26, 1785.

Liechtenstein officiall abolished the death penalty in 1987.

On this day..

• 1947: Jonas Noreika, "General Storm"
• 1852: Hélène Jégado, serial arsenic murderer
• 1838: William Moore, thirsty for blood
• 1858: Maniram Dewan, tea infuser
• 1765: Juan de la Cruz Palaris
• 1462: John de Vere, Earl of Oxford
• 1909: C.Y. Timmons
• 1870: Wyatt Outlaw lynched by the Ku Klux Klan
• 277: Mani, dualist
• 1939: Stanislav Kosior, Vlas Chubar and Pavel Postyshev
• 1839: An opium merchant
• 1853: János Libényi, who stabbed an emperor and built a church