TODAY IN CRIME part one: November 23

800 Charlemagne arrived in Rome to investigate the alleged crimes of Pope Leo III. After the pope swore an oath of purgation claiming he was innocent of the adultery and perjury charges, his accusers were exiled.

1227 Rivals-to-the-throne assassinated Leszek I the White, High Duke of Poland, at an assembly of Polish dukes at Gąsawa, and a struggle for succession ensued.

1499 British authorities hanged pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck for plotting to overthrow King Henry VII. Werbeck had invaded England in 1497, claiming to be one of the “Princes in the Tower”—the lost sons of King Edward IV—but later confessed he was actually a merchant from Belgium.

1765 In defiance of the Stamp Act of 1765, twelve Maryland magistrates composed a resolution known as the Repudiation Act that allowed businesses and officials to proceed without the use of the stamped paper England required for most documents. It is considered the first official defiance of the colonies against the British government, eight years before the Boston Tea Party.

1867 Officials at New Bailey Prison in Manchester, England, hanged the Manchester Martyrs for killing a police officer while freeing two Irish Republican Brotherhood members from custody. 10,000 people witnessed the hanging.

1876 U.S. Navy frigate USS Franklin delivered corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Magear Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) to authorities in New York City after his capture in Spain.

1921 To close a loophole in the National Prohibition Act, U.S. President Warren G. Harding signed the Willis-Campbell Act (anti-beer bill) that forbid doctors to prescribe medicinal alcohol.

1974 On the orders of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia executed sixty imprisoned Ethiopian politicians, aristocrats, military officers, and other persons in the Massacre of the Sixty.

1976 Memphis police arrested singer Jerry Lee Lewis outside the gates of Graceland after he showed up for the second time that night and made a scene by shouting, waving a pistol, and demanding to see Elvis Presley.

1979 The Republic of Ireland sentenced Thomas McMahon to life imprisonment for the assassination of Earl Mountbatten and three others. McMahon, a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, exploded a bomb on Mountbatten’s fishing boat the previous August. He was released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

1979 Police in Oslo, Norway, arrested singer Marianne Faithful at Oslo Airport for possession of marijuana.

1985 U.S. Marshals arrested Larry Wu-tai Chin, a retired CIA analyst, for spying for China. Facing two life terms in prison and fines totaling $3.3 million, Chin committed suicide in prison a year after his conviction for multiple charges of espionage and tax violations.

1985 Gunmen of the terrorist organization Abu Nidal hijacked EgyptAir Flight 648 en route from Athens to Cairo. When the plane landed in Malta, Egyptian commandos stormed the aircraft and 58 people died in the raid.

1989 The U.S. flew Lucia Barrera de Cerna, survivor of the massacre at Jose Simeon Canas University in El Salvador on November 16, to Miami for protective custody. de Cerna worked as a housekeeper for the six Jesuit priests killed by Salvadoran Army soldiers November 16; her coworker and her coworker’s teenaged daughter were also killed in the raid.

1994 Police in Nagpur, India, created a panic and triggered a stampede that killed 114 people after they charged a crowd of protesters with their batons. The crowd of 50,000 Gowari people were demanding tribal status. The victims, mostly women and children, were crushed to death. The Maharashtra Minister of Tribal Development accepted responsibility for the tragedy and resigned, although the Maharashtra state government found no one responsible.