Above: Cristus Factus Est, composed by the black Venezuelan musician Juan Antonio Caro de Boesi. He was shot on this date in 1814 by the notoriously brutal royalist caudillo Jose Tomas Boves, for his support of independence.
There are oddly conflicting claims that he shared an orchestral martyrdom with Juan Jose Landaeta, the composer of Venezuela’s national anthem; however, most sources date this man’s death to as early as 1812, not in connection with a firing squad but an earthquake. This might be an instance where the unreliable narrator that is Clio has conflated the biographies of two similar figures.
For both of these and others besides from that generation of strife and birth, we submit Caro de Boesi’s Misa de Difuntos (Mass of the Dead).
On this day..
- 1817: Manuel Piar, Bolivarian general
- 1752: William Jillet, Daniel Johnson, and David Smith
- 1771: Mary Jones, hanged for shoplifting
- 1555: Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, Oxford martyrs
- 1730: Nevsehirli Damat Ibrahim Pasha, Tulip Era Grand Vizier
- 1935: George Criner, "anything can happen to anybody"
- 1946: Neville Heath, torture-killer
- 1891: William Rose
- 1675: Samuel Guile, Puritan rapist
- 1975: The Balibo Five, before the invasion of East Timor
- 1946: The Nuremberg Trial War Criminals
- 1793: Marie Antoinette