Off With Their Heads: A Brief History of Capital Punishment

Here are some interesting methods of execution I've come across and the history of their practice.

• Animals. In South Asia, you could be crushed by elephants up until the advent of Colonialism. Romans threw Christians and other undesirables to wild dogs or lions. Quartering (ripping apart by four horses,) was used in Medieval Europe and Imperial China. The caliphs of early Islam used horses to trample prisoners.
• Henry VIII and the Mongols were partial to boiling people alive. Henry used it to punish poisoners and counterfeiters. The Mongols used it on defeated commanders.
• The breaking wheel, or St. Catherine's wheel was popular in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. It comes in various forms, but essentially a person is strapped to a large wheel, spun around, and beaten to death.
• In Ancient Rome, Vestal Virgins who became less than virginal were buried alive, as were unrepentant killers in Renaissance Italy, several saints, criminals living in feudal Russia, and Chinese civilians during World War II. The only recorded use of this in America was during a New Orleans slave revolt.
• Romans after the time of Christ were partial to burning. The Celts had their wicker men. For centuries the Catholic Church maintained burning as the official punishment for heresy. Burning was actually immensely popular during the Renaissance, but it was apparently seen as being a brutal one. Henry VIII was given the chance to decide the fates of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. When given the choice of beheading or burning at the stake, he went with the kinder, gentler option and had them both beheaded. Several slaves in Colonial America were burned at the stake in Massachusetts and New York. Between 1681 and 1741 at least 34 people were killed in this manner in the colonies. The Catholic church burnt their last victim in Latin America in 1732, and the English banned the practice in 1790 after the execution of a woman for counterfeiting.
• Of course, there is the infamous Brazen Bull of Ancient Greece. It was essentially a giant oven to roast people alive.
• Crucifixion is perhaps the most famous form of execution. It was practiced by most ancient civilizations, most notably the Romans. But it was introduced in Japan in the 1400s.
• Crushing was practiced by the Romans, Carthaginians, Aztecs, medieval Europeans, and once in the Colonies during the Salem witch trials.
• Beheading is also very famous and was extremely widespread. It was supposedly painless, though I doubt many people came back to complain afterwards. It was practiced in China, Japan (you've likely seen the photograph of an Australian POW about to be beheaded), Pakistan, in Korea until 1896, and in Thailand as recently as 2005. Romans loved to put their victims' heads on stakes. This most famously was the fate of Cicero. In the early 1990s there were a number of beheadings in Bosnia. In France the guillotine was the only permissible form of execution for nearly 200 years, from the French Revolution until 1981 when the death penalty was abolished. Not surprisingly, the Nazis also liked to behead people. The first people executed by the Third Reich were beheaded. Also beheaded was the man falsely convicted of burning the Reichstag and the college students who formed the White Rose resistance group.
• Drawing and quartering consists of hanging a prisoner to the point of death, then castrated, disemboweled, beheaded, and chopped into four pieces. Then little bits of traitor confetti were displayed all over the city. This punishment was very English, and from 1351 was reserved only for men convicted of treason. For the sake of decency, lady traitors were burned. This only occurred twice in the Colonies in the 17th century.
• The electric chair has only been used in the US and in the Philippines (introduced during the US occupation). The first electrocution was in 1890 in New York, and it didn't go very smoothly. (On a side note, the word "electrocution" originally only applied to executions. But because no word existed for accidents, the word was just applied to that too.) Anyway, the first shock only knocked the prisoner out. But they couldn't shock him again right away, the generator had to recharge. Well, the second time, his blood vessels exploded and he caught on fire. Obviously, he died that time. The whole thing took eight minutes. The first woman (Martha Place), was electrocuted in 1899. Here's a shout-out to Sweet Home Alabama: the last person to be electrocuted involuntarily (as opposed to being able choose lethal injection instead) was Lynda Lyon Bock in 2002 in Alabama.
• The gas chamber was first used in the 1920s. At least they eventually figured out how to quickly electrocute people. They never quite got gassing down. In 1983, it took more than 8 minutes for Jimmy Lee Gray to die. Reporters were escorted out when he began beating his head against a steel pipe and gasping. And in 1992, an Arizona gassing took more than 11 minutes. After that, the practice was banned. Kind of. The last person to die in a gas chamber was German national Walter LaGrand, who died in 1999. He was convicted before the 1992 ban on such executions.

This one will have to be a two-part article. I can only handle so much execution in one sitting. By the way, sorry I didn't post anything yesterday. Our internet was out.