1600: With his "tongue imprisoned because of his wicked words," philosopher Giordano Bruno was stripped, hung upside down, and burned at the stake for heresy at Campo de' Fiori in Rome. Bruno advocated the Copernican theory.
1634: A Star Chamber sentenced Puritan pamphleteer William Prynne to life in prison for publishing Histrio Mastix: The Players Scourge, or, Actors tragoedie, a denunciation of the theatre that was interpreted as a slam against Queen Henrietta Maria, an occasional actress. He was also fined £5,000, deprived of his Oxford degree, expelled from Lincoln's Inn, his ears cut off, and pilloried.
1838: Zulu forces killed hundreds of Voortrekkers (Dutch settlers) along the Bloukrans River, Natal, Africa, in the Weenen massacre.
1865: Columbia, S.C., burned as the Confederates evacuated and Union forces moved in.
1880: Alexander II of Russia survived an assassination attempt by the "Will of the People," a revolutionary terrorist organization. A workman planted dynamite under the dining room floor during a remodeling of the Winter Palace. The night of the planned assassination, a late guest caused dinner to be postponed, so when the timer detonated, the family was just leaving the drawing room and escaped unharmed. Eleven members of the Finnish Guard in the Guard Room below the dining room were killed, however. The explosion could be heard all over St. Petersburg.
1964: Military personal toppled Gabonese president Léon M'ba and installed his political rival Jean-Hilaire Aubame in his place. Three days later French forces restored the legitimate government.
1970: U.S. Army captain Jeffrey MacDonald murdered his pregnant wife and two small daughters in their Fort Bragg home.
1974: U.S. Army private Robert K. Preston, upset over his military career trajectory, buzzed the White House in a stolen helicopter. With Maryland State Police chasing him and White House security shooting at him, Preston landed on the South Lawn and he was taken into custody.
1992: Armenian troops massacred more than 20 Azerbaijani civilians during the Capture of Garadaghly.
1992: A Milwaukee judge sentenced serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to 15 consecutive life terms in prison. A fellow inmate killed him in 1994.
1995: A Nassau County judge convicted Colin Ferguson of six counts of murder and 19 counts of attempted murder in the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings.
1998: A Texas jury convicted U.S. Naval Academy cadet Diane Zamora, 20, of capital murder for killing Adrianne Jessica Jones, a romantic rival. The victim's family requested prosecutors not to seek the death penalty and Zamora was sentenced to life in prison.
2012: The president of Germany, Christian Wulff, resigned over a corruption scandal. He was later acquitted of all charges.
2012: In a brazen daylight robbery, two thieves stole approximately 70 ancient Olympic artifacts from the Museum of the History of the Olympic Games in Greece.
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