“The war has done great good for some persons, it has taught them discipline, and made honest and honourable men of people who started badly. But the brutalities of war may have made more vicious a person who was vicious before.”
–Sir Percival Clarke, prosecuting Great War returnee Henry Perry (aka Henry Beckett) for slaughtering the Cornish family of Stukely Road in Forrest Gate, London. For more, see the indispensable Capital Punishment UK Facebook post here.
On this day..
- 1507: Paolo da Novi, Doge of the people
- 1941: George Johnson Armstrong, under the Treachery Act
- 1835: Ruel Blake, "often seen among negroes"
- 1535: Jacob van Campen, Amsterdam Anabaptist
- 1584: Francis Throckmorton, plotter
- 1654: Gerard the conspirator, and the Portuguese envoy's brother
- 1917: "John Nelson", mystery man
- 1946: Public Execution in Debica
- 1950: American soldiers during the Korean War
- 1976: Costas Georgiou and three other mercenaries in Angola
- 2000: Dmitry Chikunov, secretly
- 2007: Zheng Xiaoyu, former Director of the State Food and Drug Administration