On this date in 1774, Daniel Wilson was hanged before a throng of 12,000 in Providence, Rhode Island, for rape.

A journeyman carpenter turned small-time New England crook, Wilson had a gift for escape and busted out of the Providence jail three times — never retaining his liberty long enough to get clear of the gallows’ shadow. Our friends at the wonderful Early American Crime blog cover the man’s career here … absent the rape, whose particulars seem to have escaped the documentary trail and which Wilson also delicately elides in his hang-day broadsheet.

On this day..

• 1972: King Ntare V of Burundi
• 1947: Karel Čurda and Viliam Gerik, Czechoslovakia resistance betrayers
• 2014: Two crucifixions in Raqqa
• 1836: Isaac Young/Heller, axman
• 2015: Eight drug smugglers in Indonesia
• 1862: Mary Timney, the last woman publicly hanged in Scotland
• 998: Crescentius the Younger
• 1945: Dachau Massacre
• 1951: Ospan Batyr, Kazakh freedom fighter
• 1968: Lin Zhao, martyr poet
• 1676: Anna Zippel, Brita Zippel and the body of Anna Mansdotter
• 1818: Alexander Arbuthnot and Richard Ambrister