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It was on this date that the Jesuit missionary Saint Jean de Brébeuf was martyred by indigenous Iroquois near present-day Midland, Ontario. Brebeuf was of Norman stock, kin to poet Georges de Brebeuf. Ordained in 1622, Brebeuf soon decamped to the New World to Christianize the natives. There he teamed up with another Jesuit missionary named Gabriel Lalemant and established the Sainte-Marie among the Hurons mission. As the name advertises, this outpost aimed to minister to the Hurons (Wyandot); to that end, Brebeuf — who learned the local tongue well enough to write a catechism and a dictionary — composed...

On this date in 1719, Mary (Marie) Hamilton, lady-in-waiting upon the tsaritsa Catherine I, was beheaded in St. Petersburg for infanticide. Lady Hamilton — her Scottish family had emigrated generations earlier — did not like to wait on her libido. She could tell you if Peter the Great deserved his nickname, and dish on any number of other courtiers, nobles, and hangers-on. This pleasing sport, of course, assumes with it the risks imposed by an equally impatient biology. Hamilton’s gallantries two or three times quickened her womb. Her decision to dispose of these unwanted descendants in the expedient way —...