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Willem Hugonet and Guy van Brimeu, officials of the collapsing Burgundian polity, were executed in Ghent on this date in 1477 for their failed diplomatic intrigue. This moment fell just weeks after Burgundy itself had received her own fatal blow, at least as far as independent political standing goes: the death in battle on January 5 of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Charles had proven himself an energetically expansionist prince. Charles’s dominions compassed not only Burgundy itself, but a swath of territory running up to Flanders and the Low Countries, a strip that was being squeezed by the rising...

On this date in 1828, William Dyon, 45, and his son, John, 23, were hanged for the murder of William’s brother, who was also named John. The brothers had fallen out over their father’s inheritance; William Dyon Sr. had favored John’s family over William Jr.’s. Writing dramatically of the case in his book Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Doncaster, Stephen Wade described the brothers as sons of a Lincolnshire farmer, and the two boys were so different that this tale almost attains a biblical resonance, with jealousy, brooding and resentment, and finally a deathly hatred that led one brother...

In Haiti today violence on the streets at last one person killed... A ship claiming to be from Yemen trying to hail a merchant vessel... President Trump posting a 175 million dollar bond... Israel says it is urgently probing the deaths of five aid workers... "We urgently call on the Israeli leadership to abandon the practice of provocative military operations in Syria and other neighboring countries" That statement from Russia's foreign ministry tonight... North Korea firing a ballistic missile eastwards into the Sea of Japan (East Sea)... UK politics 20 Labor Party local council members in Lancashire resigning from Labor...

“In the yeare 1307 the first of Aprill,” Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland records, “Murcod Ballagh was beheaded neere to Merton by sir David Caunton knight.” First published in 1577, this document — heavily mined by Shakespeare for his histories — is silent as to the further particulars of the beheading. But the accompanying image depicting the execution surprisingly presents a guillotine-like device being employed for the task. s John Wilson Croker’s History of the Guillotine observes, this one illustration 270 years after the fact scarcely suffices to establish that a guillotine precursor really was in use in...

Bangladesh on this date in 2007 hanged six Islamic militants* for a terrorist bombing wave two years prior. Several were agents of the terrorist organization Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, notable for a headline-grabbing coordinated bombing on August 17, 2005 that saw hundreds of explosions throughout Bangladesh. That organization’s chief Shaykh Abdur Rahman was among those executed on March 30, 2007, as was “Bangla Bhai” (Siddique ul-Islam), the leader of the Al Qaeda-aligned Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB).

The Brazilian Supreme Court denying a request from former President Jair Bolsonaro... In southern Russia three foreign nationals detained accused of planning a terrorist attack... The Indian Navy rescuing 23 Pakistani nationals from Somali pirates... Russian Aerospace Forces attacked a terrorist base in Syria's Homs Region... The US is sending more bombs and F-35 fighter jets to Israel... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorizing Israel's foreign and domestic spy chiefs to resume hostage talks... In Rockford, Illinois Christian Soto...suspect in series of stabbing attacks, speaking of "laced" marijuana... The Moscow terrorists were headed for Kiev Ukraine's capital city... A 16-year...

Before they ramp up the wars and confiscate our wealth to pay for out-of-control spending the Uniparty powers that be in Washington DC have to censor our speech... The Moderate Centrist Liberal Capitalist Globalists are running the show pushing an agenda carry out "The Great Reset" demanding compliance from all nations including Israel... What I Have Been Posting This Week On "Free Republic"... This week Congressman Ken.... Lauren Boebert has been in that sexualized spotlight in the context of her conduct and I'm not here to talk about that but I am here to say it like I said it...

On this date in 2005, Iran “desert vampire” was flogged to the point of collapse and hanged before a bloodthirsty throng in Pakdasht. Bijeh confessed to raping and murdering 16 boys age 8 to 15 over a yearlong spree. His modus operandi? Lure them into the desert on the pretext of hunting animals. Unsurprisingly a figure of intense public hatred, Bijeh stolidly endured his own death before a jeering mob. Riot police held back the angry crowd, but at one point a brother of one of the victims managed to break through and stab Bijeh in the back.....

There was an attack warning tonight in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen...The US Central Command reports... The Palestinian Authority appointing a new prime minister... In Buenos Aires tonight Argentina's Senate voting against a sweeping decree from President Javier Milei... The Russian Ambassador in the United States Anatoly Antonov expects provocations associated with Russia's Presidential Election... Tonight, French President Emmanuel Macron saying France will not lead on Ukraine policy but follow the... Dutch Mediator Pushing Towards New Government With Bureaucratic Cabinet Ministers Not Led By Geert Wilders... A major disruption of the internet affecting African nations... The United...

The Centrist Liberal Capitalist movement of President Emmanuel Macron trying to contain taxes and inflation for the moment. The Macron faction hoping to maintain a plurality of support from the French electorate in the upcoming June 7th European Parliament elections. Social issues emphasized to suck in voters further to the Left as the Right in France solidifies behind notions ranging from peace in Ukraine to limits on immigration and an end to disintegration of French culture and tradition... ...a unanimous vote in France's National Assembly this week for legislation to pay reparations to 10,000 gay people discriminated against by laws...

February 27 is honored to be the feast date of Saint Honorina, patron of boatmen (a field of metaphorical import to this site) as well as liberated prisoners (which is more literal import). She’s a standard issue we-don’t-know-much-about-her Diocletian martyr, locally revered in Normandy where she was executed by the pagans and pitched into the Seine. Her significance in this area led her devotee monks to carry her relics further inland in 876 to protect them from Viking raiders; this established them at a town at the confluence of the Seine and Oise rivers, aptly named Conflans. There the valuable...

The latest from US Central Command three drone boats, two missiles and one drone destroyed in and around Yemen... After a meeting in Paris tonight a ninth coalition of nations to send long-range weapons to Ukraine...French President Emmanuel Macron..."We will do whatever it takes to ensure that Russia cannot win..."... Late tonight in Ukraine explosions... US politics Joe Biden telling reporters he hopes for a "ceasefire" in Gaza by next Monday... At the US Supreme Court today arguments on social media laws passed by the Republican controlled states... Late on October 6th last year Israeli intelligence notices activation of SIM...

On this date in 1601, Queen Elizabeth’s last great favorite became the last man beheaded in the Tower of London. Vain and dashing Robert Devereux rolled into the royal court in 1584 around age 19 and immediately established himself as the new favorite of the monarch, 30-some years his senior. They spent long walks and late nights in enchanted private company, and Devereux “commeth not to his owne lodginge tyll the birdes singe in the morninge.” Ye olde walke of shayme. In becoming the (presumed) lover* of the aging Virgin Queen, the Earl of Essex was only following the family**...

On this date in 1799, the Bishop of Potenza was lynched by the faithful. Andrea Serrao English Wikipedia entry | Italian) was a late disciple of the reformist Jansenist movement which tended among many other things to such Enlightenment-friendly notions as liberty of conscience, the reduction of the papal authority, and “regalism” — the doctrine of secular supremacy over ecclesiastical. According to Owen Chadwick’s The Popes and European Revolution, Serrao as Bishop of the southern Italian city of Potenza.....

The US Army in Europe and Africa is spending its budget to train Ukrainian soldiers... In Stockholm, Sweden a gas smell incident at the headquarters of the Swedish Security Service... Russian authorities report a fire at metallurgical plant...may have been caused by a drone... ...balloon tracked over the Western United States... Two Mississippi National Guard members killed in a helicopter crash... A New York jury finding the National Rifle Association and its longtime CEO Wayne LaPierre liable for lavish spending... President Trump calling for 'immediate action" in Alabama to reverse...Supreme Court decision affirming the humanity... An investigator for President Donald...

On or about this day in 1629, one John Dean, described in court documents as “an infant between eight and nine years,” was hanged in Abingdon, England for setting fire to two barns in the nearby town of Windsor. According to Historia placitorum corone: The history of the pleas of the crown, Volume 1 by William Axton Stokes and Edward Ingersoll, this juvenile felon was indicted, arraigned and found guilty all on the same day, February 23, “and was hanged accordingly.” The actual date of his execution is not known, but it can’t have been long afterward. The wheels of...

On this date in 1942, poet Olena Teliha and her husband Mykhailo were shot by the Nazis at Babi Yar for their Ukrainian nationalist activism. Having lived in Czechoslovakia (where they met and married) and then Poland during the interwar period, the Telihas weren’t present for the worst of Soviet depredations in Ukraine. Mykhailo, a bandurist, might have been in an especially bad way, since his musical genre of choice harkened to subversive themes of Cossack insurrection, and was therefore heavily persecuted. Instead, they moved to Kiev as the German invasion opened the prospect of returning to their ancestral homeland....

On this date in 1942, 200-plus Australian and Dutch prisoners captured after the Battle of Ambon earlier that same year were summarily executed near Laha Airfield on present-day Maluku, Indonesia. It was the last and the largest of a series of POW executions in the days following the February 3 conclusion of the battle; collectively, they’re known as the Laha Massacre.* The individual incidents, timelines, and body counts of the several incidents are reported with a good deal of variance and conflation in the sites describing these horrible days, but the evening of February 20 as the consummating atrocity appears...

On this date in 1329, as Wikipedia puts it, Antipope Nicholas V “presided at a bizarre ceremony in the Duomo of Pisa, at which a straw puppet representing Pope John XXII and dressed in pontifical robes was formally condemned, degraded, and handed over to the secular arm (to be ‘executed’).” Despite the show of force, Nicholas V was on his last legs at this moment as antipope. He’d been elevated to the putative papacy by Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV. In this, Nicholas was a throwback to an old rivalry between popes and emperors compassing both authority within the church,...

New Zealand got itself permanently out of the execution business after hanging Walter Bolton this date in 1957 for the murder of his wife. The 68-year-old farmer was condemned after his wife finally succumbed to a year-long bout with some mysterious recurring ailment — and the post-mortem revealed long-term arsenic poisoning. Since Bolton turned out to have been having an affair with his wife’s sister, the pieces just fell right into place. Jurors found these circumstances credible enough to stretch Bolton’s neck, but there’s the small problem that Walter Bolton himself also tested for arsenic poisoning. The defense argued that...