Spanish conquistador Jorge Robledo was beheaded on this date in 1546

Robedo (English Wikipedia entry | the more detailed Spanish) emerges onto history’s stage as a marshal from the train of Francisco Pizarro, dispatched to the new Spanish colony of Popayan in the Colombian Andes.

There he founded several still-extant cities, like Santa Fe de Antioquia.

After a few years back in the mother country, Robledo returned to Popayan intending to install himself as an authority in those cities or still better, the province as a whole — a project that necessarily pitted him against the incumbent boss Sebastian de Belalcazar. Several months’ skirmishing produced a verdict for the latter, who had his rival publicly executed with several aides-de-camp.

Belalcazar himself was in 1550 condemned to death for this severity. He died of natural causes while preparing to sail for Spain to appeal it. Belalcazar has been in the news recently because a statue of him was torn down in 2020 in protest of centuries of brutality towards indigenous peoples.

On this day..

• 1866: The Richard Burgess gang, for the Maungatapu Murders
• 1822: General Berton
• 1737: Five Johns
• 1802: Sanite Belair, tigress
• 1736: Herry Moses, Jewish gangster
• 610: Phocas, "will you rule better?"
• 1943: 1,196 Jewish children from Bialystok
• 1900: Coleman Gillespie
• 1816: Camilo Torres, Manuel Rodriguez, and other leaders of independent New Granada
• 1922: C.C. Stassen, white miner
• 1949: Yoshio Kodaira, soldier turned serial killer
• 2007: A factory manager in a packed stadium