TODAY IN CRIME: May 25

photo credit: ozy.com

1521 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V declared Martin Luther an outlaw and ordered his writings burned because he refused to recant his heretical Ninety-Five Theses.

1895 English Judge Sir Alfred Wills convicted playwright Oscar Wilde of “committing acts of gross indecency with certain male persons” and sentenced him to two years' penal servitude with hard labor. After his release Wilde left the UK forever and spent his last three years in poverty.

1925 A Tennessee grand jury indicted teacher John Scopes for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution. The Butler Act prevented public schoolteachers from denying the story of Divine creation as taught in the Bible. After a sensational trial, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100; the verdict was overturned because of a legal technicality.

1926 Sholom Schwartzbard assassinated Symon Petliura, the head of the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic headquartered in Paris during exile. Schwartzbard held Petliura personally responsible for the deaths of 15 family members in the 1919 pograms and freely admitted shooting Petliura. A sympathetic jury acquitted him.

1977 The Chinese government lifted a decade-old ban on William Shakespeare's work, effectively ending the Cultural Revolution started in 1966.

1978 The first bomb of a series of bombings orchestrated by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski detonated at Northwestern University. Campus police officer Terry Marker received minor cuts and burns when a suspicious package exploded as he opened it.

1979 In the worst air disaster in U.S. history (excluding the Sept. 11 attacks), a DC-10 crashed at Chicago's O'Hare airport, killing over 270 people. The American Airlines maintenance crew was found to be at fault and the airline fined $500,000. One of the mechanics responsible killed himself.

1979 The state of Florida executed convicted murderer John Spenkelink in the electric chair. He was the first person to be executed in Florida after capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.

1992 Three men shot and killed Khalil Rountree, tour manager for the Grammy Award-winning R&B group Boyz II Men, in a confrontation in an elevator at the Guest Quarters Suite Hotel in Chicago. Rountree’s assistant was also wounded in the assault. Only one of the suspects went to trial and served time.

2006 A Texas jury found Enron chief executives Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling guilty of fraud and conspiracy. The executives took part in a major accounting scandal that led to the largest bankruptcy in history up to that time. Lay died before he could be sentenced. Skilling was sentenced to more than 24 years.

2011 An Arizona judge ruled that Jared Lee Loughner, the man accused of wounding U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killing six in a shooting rampage, was incompetent to stand trial.

2013 A gas cylinder exploded on a school bus in the Pakistani city of Gujrat, killing 17 children and a teacher and injuring 7 others. The fire started when the driver of the dual-fuel van converted from CNG fuel intake to petrol fuel intake. He fled the van and left it to burn with 25 people inside and was later arrested in a nearby town. The government awarded approximately $7,000 for those killed and $1,000 to those injured.

2018 Two-thirds of the people of Ireland voted to repeal the Eight Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland that prohibited abortion except when the mother’s life was threatened.