TODAY IN CRIME: March 9

1562: The city of Naples banned public kissing, punishable by death.

1566: Lord Darnley, husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, along with several allies, murdered David Rizzio, private secretary to the queen, in the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. They dragged him from the dining room where he was supping with Mary, held the pregnant queen at knifepoint, and stabbed Rizzio to death. Darnley suspected Rizzio was the father of Mary’s unborn baby, James VI.

1721: The House of Commons imprisoned British Chancellor Exchequer John Aislabie in the Tower of London Tower for his involvement in the South Sea Bubble, a speculation scheme that ruined many investors.

1762: The Parliament of Toulouse sentenced to death cloth merchant Jean Calas, a Huguenot, for the murder of his son Marc-Antoine, who was considering converting to Catholicism, the state religion. Calas insisted his son killed himself over gambling debts. To force Calas to confess to murder, authorities pulled all his limbs out of their sockets, poured 17 litres of water down his throat, broke all his limbs twice with an iron bar, tortured him on the wheel, and finally strangled him to death. He died protesting his innocence. They burned him to ashes and buried his son as a Catholic martyr.

1765: A 50-judge panel in Paris exonerated Calas posthumously after Voltaire took an interest in the case and roused public opinion that anti-Huguenot prejudices had influenced the lower courts. King Louis XV fired the chief magistrate in Toulouse and paid the Calas family 36,000 livres in compensation.

1841: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. The Amistad that mutinous slaves from the Spanish schooner La Amistad were free. 53 people snatched from their homes in Sierra Leone had taken over the ship and killed the captain and the cook. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that the mutineers were not merchandise but victims of kidnapping and therefore had the right to use any means to escape.

1893: Allies of the Congo Free State cannibalized thousands of defeated Arab combatants in the Eastern Congo during the Congo-Arab war.

1905: Belgian Vice-Governor General of the Congo Free State Paul Costermans shot himself to death following an investigation of colonial abuses.

1907: Indiana Governor Hanly signed a law mandating the involuntary sterilization of "confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists and imbeciles" in state custody. The Indiana Supreme Court declared the legislation—the first of its kind in the world—unconstitutional in 1921, but forced sterilization laws resurfaced again in 1927. Approximately 2500 Indiana residents were sterilized before the state repealed all sterilization laws in 1974.

1916: Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa invaded New Mexico with 500 guerrillas, killing 18 Americans. U.S. President Wilson ordered General Pershing to pursue Villa into Mexico.

1936: The German press warned that the Reich would arrest and prosecute any Jews who voted in the upcoming Reichstag elections.

1956: British authorities arrested Archbishop Makarios of British-held Cyprus under suspicion of supporting terrorism—he was an advocate of unification with Greece—and deported him to the Seychelles. He returned to Cyprus and in 1960 became the first president of the newly independent country.

1956: Soviet troops opened fire on students in Georgian SSR demonstrating against Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy. Tanks eventually dispersed the protestors the next day but by then at least 22 people had been killed.

1964: The U.S. Supreme Court issued its N.Y. Times v. Sullivan decision, ruling public officials must prove malice to claim libel and recover damages.

1977: Twelve heavily armed Hanafi Muslims stormed three buildings in Washington, D.C. and held 149 people hostage, killing a reporter and wounding two others. Muslim ambassadors from Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran finally convinced them to end the siege after 39 hours.

1993: Rodney King testified at the federal trial of four Los Angeles policemen accused of violating his civil rights that he “was just trying to stay alive” as the officers repeatedly struck him.

1997: An unknown gunman killed 24-year-old rapper The Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace) in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. Investigations by the LAPD and the FBI reached no conclusions.

2007: The U.S. Justice Department released an internal audit that found that the FBI used the Patriot Act improperly and unlawfully to obtain information about U.S. residents.