On this date in 1984, Libyan television broadcast the live hanging of dissident engineer Sadiq Hamed Al-Shuwehdy (or Shwehdi). Needless to say, the embed following is Mature Content.

Arrested a couple of months previous protesting against the government of Muammar Qaddafi, Al-Shuwehdy was horribly exhibited bound and kneeling at the center of a Benghazi basketball stadium packed with students surprised to discover they were about to witness a public execution. There he vainly pled for mercy while Qaddafi loyalists chanted for his death — during Ramadan, no less. It remains one of the most viscerally memorable atrocities of the colonel’s 42-year reign.

As the prey strangled slowly on his noose, a monstrously opportunistic university student named Huda Ben Amer vaulted herself to instant national fame or infamy by rushing out of the crowd and pulling on Al-Shuwehdy’s legs to kill him. “Huda Al-Shannaga” — “Huda the Executioner” — earned the eye of the dictator who was himself watching the broadcast, and was quickly elevated into powerful posts in the Libyan government. She was mayor of Benghazi until the 2011 civil war.

On this day..

• 1825: Odysseus Androutsos
• 1806: Dominic Daley and James Halligan, hated foreigners
• 1797: Martin Clinch and Samuel Mackley
• 1891: Christian Fuerst and Charles Sheppard
• 1688: Constantine Gerachi, the Siamese Falcon
• 1919: Eugen Levine, Bavarian Soviet leader
• 1573: Meister Frantz Schmidt's first execution
• 1318: John Deydras, aka John of Powderham
• 1963: Nora Parham, the only woman hanged in Belize
• 1723: Margaret Fleck, with a fresh dempster
• 1935: Pat Griffin and Elmer Brewer
• 1568: The Counts of Egmont and Hoorn, insufficiently Inquisitorial