On this date in 1989, Panamanian Gen. Moises Giroldi Vera was shot in the San Miguelito barracks for his coup attempt the previous day.

With tensions mounting between strongman Manuel Noriega and his U.S. patrons — Washington had laid Panama under sanctions, indicted Noriega, and by year’s end invaded to depose him — Giroldi shot his shot by attempting to topple the regime from within.

U.S. intelligence provided minimal help to a man one described as “a bastard, a sort of mini-Noriega,” skeptical of the rebel officers’ capacity for completing the putsch. But they came pretty close, actually capturing Noriega on the morning of Oct. 3; the plotters’ dithering about handing him over to American agents enabled the dictator to summon help and reverse the attempt.

Giroldi and ten other soldiers involved in the abortive coup were tortured at a hangar at the Albrook air base, and all of them killed. Nine of them died at that site so their collective fate is known as the Albrook massacre, notwithstanding the venue change for Giroldi’s own summary execution. Legend holds that Noriega himself pulled the trigger.

On this day..

• 1578: Jacob Hessels, "to the gallows, to the gallows!"
• 1564: Fabricius
• 1938: Two anti-Nazi spies
• 1793: The slave Nell
• 1872: John Barclay
• 1925: Shi Congbin, grievance
• 1648: Alice Bishop
• 1570: Rev. John Kello, the Parson of Spott
• 1843: Allen Mair, irate
• 1689: Quirinus Kuhlmann, mystic poet
• 1917: Jesse Robart Short, Etaples mutineer
• 1621: Not Katharina Kepler, thanks to her son Johannes