1127: Sword-wielding knights under the auspices of the powerful Erembald family struck down Charles the Good, Count of Flanders, as he knelt in prayer. Charles sought to bring down the Erembalds because they were hoarding bread and inflating its price during a famine.
1807: The U.S. Congress passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, effective January 1, 1808. Slaves continued to be imported illegally after that date and the domestic slave trade was not affected by the law’s enactment, as seen by the next item:
1859: Slaveowner Pierce Mease Butler sold more than 400 people to pay off his gambling debts at The Great Slave Auction near Savannah, Georgia. Also called “The Weeping Time,” the event was the largest sale of enslaved people in U. S. history.
1865: Fanatic members of the Pai Marire, a movement combining Christianity and traditional Māori beliefs, hanged and decapitated German-born Protestant missionary Carl Sylvius Völkner in New Zealand. Pai Marire prophet Kereopa Te Rau immediately preached a sermon at Volkner’s pulpit standing next to his severed head, then gouged out his eyes and ate them.
1867: Six robbers held up the private banking house of Judge John McClain in Savannah, Missouri. When the judge refused to hand over the key to the vault, a nervous gunman shot him in the chest and all the robbers fled—with no cash. The judge survived his wound. The holdup has been attributed to a group of bushwhackers copycatting the James-Younger gang.
1882: Aspiring poet Roderick MacLean attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria with a pistol as she departed Windsor railway station in the royal carriage but missed when two alert Eton schoolboys attacked him and spoiled his aim. McLean had sent his poetry to Her Majesty and was insulted by her curt response. The Scotsman was tried for high treason, found “not guilty, but insane,” and spent the rest of his life in Broadmoor Asylum. Annoyed by the lenient verdict, the Queen ordered parliament to create the option of “guilty, but insane.”
1962: In Burma, the army led by General Ne Win seized power in his second coup d'état.
1975: Police in Los Angeles stopped a Lincoln Continental driven by former Beatle Paul McCartney for running a red light and arrested his passenger, wife Linda McCartney, for possession of marijuana. The LAPD eventually dropped the charges against Linda and never charged Paul.
1995: German authorities arrested fleeing British trader Nick Leeson for speculative and illegal trades that caused the collapse of Barings Bank PLC, the UK’s oldest merchant bank. Working from the Singapore office largely unsupervised, Leeson made fraudulent investments and caused an unrecoverable billion-pound loss for the bank. He spent six years in prison.
2000: UK Home Secretary Jack Straw authorized the release of former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet on the grounds of ill health. British authorities arrested Pinochet in 1998 using “universal jurisdiction” and placed him under house arrest in Surrey as he awaited extradition on torture charges. He died in Chile in 2006 without ever standing trial.
2015: A serious case review found the Thames Valley Police and Oxfordshire Social Services negligent in protecting more than 300 underage girls targeted by seven men convicted of rape, sexual exploitation, and other charges in 2013. The agencies disbelieved the girls’ claims.
2015: Searchers found the body of missing 16-year-old Becky Watts of Bristol, England. Her stepbrother and his girlfriend had kidnapped her, suffocated her, chopped her up into eight pieces, and stored her remains in a garden shed. The killers were sentenced to a total of 50 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment