Filipino politician/guerrilla/national hero Wenceslao Vinzons was executed by the occupying Japanese on this date in 1942.

He gained prominence as a Manila university activist under U.S. administration for Malaysian-Indonesian-Philippines unification, then went on to co-found the Young Philippines party and become a delegate – at the tender age of 24 — to the 1935 Constitutional Convention that set the framework for his homeland’s independence. He’s the youngest signer of that constitution.

Subsequently governor of Camarines Norte and then a legislator in the National Assembly, Vinzons found his political trajectory interrupted by Japan’s December 1941-January 1942 takeover. Vinzons wasted no time trying to work within the system: he immediately began organizing armed resistance, building a guerrilla army some 2,800 strong over the course of the next months.

An informer betrayed him to the occupiers and after refusing every blandishment to collaborate, Vinzons was bayoneted to death at a Japanese garrison at Daet on July 15, 1942. Several of his family members also executed afterwards, although other surviving descendants have remained fixtures of public life down to the present day.

His hometown — formerly “Indan” — is now named “Vinzons” in his honor, and he’s renowned as the “Father of Student Activism in the Philippines”. A number of buildings and institutions connected to education are named for him.

On this day..

• 1958: Nuri al-Said
• 1857: Danforth Hartson, again
• 1738: Baruch Leibov and Alexander Voznitsyn, Jew and convert
• 1381: John Ball, radical priest
• 1936: Charlotte Bryant
• 756: Yang Guifei, favored concubine
• 1883: Leoncio Prado, for defending his homeland
• 1927: Three persistent escapees
• 1907: Qiu Jin, Chinese feminist and revolutionary
• 1953: John Christie, a little late in the day
• 1977: Princess Misha'al bint Fahd al Saud and her lover
• Themed Set: The Feminine Mystique
• 1685: James Scott, Duke of Monmouth