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.

TODAY IN CRIME: May 4

1436 Swedish aristocrat Måns Bengtsson assassinated petty nobleman Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson, leader of a national movement against despot Erik of Pomerania, king of the Kalmar Union (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), in a private dispute. Engelbrektsson's martyrdom fueled growing discontent and the Swedes overthrew King Erik.

1535 The English state executed three Carthusian monastics, a Bridgettine monk, and a priest for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church of England. The martyrs were hanged, disemboweled while still alive, beheaded, and quartered, then their parts stuck on pikes and displayed in public places.

1886 A labor demonstration for an eight-hour workday at Haymarket Square in Chicago turned into a riot when a bomb exploded. Eight people died in the violence that day.

1897 A fire at a charity bazaar in Paris killed 126 people, mostly women. The operators of the malfunctioning cinematograph lit a match to fix the lamp and set fire to the ether in it. The draped canvas serving as a suspended ceiling then spread the fire; some exit doors did not open outwards. The Court of the Correctional Tribunal found the President of the Charity Bazaar Committee, the Baron of Mackau, guilty of negligence and imprudence and fined the prominent Conservative Party member 500 francs. The cinematograph operators received prison sentences in addition to fines.

1916 British authorities at Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, executed four Irish republicans for their part in the Easter Rising, an armed rebellion against British rule in Ireland. Fourteen men were executed by firing squad between May 3 and May 12. The executions were intended to stop the move toward nationalism but only increased it.

1919 Beijing students demonstrated in Tiananmen Square, protesting the Treaty of Versailles which transferred a Chinese territory to Japan. After weeks of nationwide protests, the government reluctantly agreed to dismiss pro-Japanese officials, accept the resignations of the cabinet members, and reject the peace treaty with Germany.

1932 Mobster Al Capone, Public Enemy Number One, started his prison sentence for tax evasion at Atlanta Correctional.

1946 In San Francisco Bay, U.S. Marines from the nearby Treasure Island Naval Base stopped a two-day riot at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. Five people were killed in the riot.

1948 The Hague Court of Justice convicted Nazi SS officer Hanns Rauter of Crimes against Humanity. He was executed by firing squad in 1949. Rauters was the leading SS leader in the occupied Netherlands and reported directly to Himmler.

1961 South African police arrested African National Congress leader John Nkadimeng for entering a prohibited zone without a permit. He was detained until 1 July, convicted, and fined £25.

1961 Thirteen civil rights activists, called "Freedom Riders," left Washington, D.C., for New Orleans to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals.

1968 Dancer's Image won the 94th Kentucky Derby almost two lengths ahead of the nearest horse, but officials announced May 7 they had found traces of phenylbutazone, an anti-inflammatory drug, in his urine after the race and declared Forward Pass the winner. The Kentucky Racing Commission legalized phenylbutazone in 1974.

1970 Ohio National Guardsmen shot down four Kent State University students and injured nine others during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration.

1978 The South African Defence Force attacked a South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) base at Cassinga in southern Angola, killing about 600 people. Debate continues as to whether it was a massacre of civilians in a refugee camp or a highly successful military operation against insurgents.

1989 Federal prosecutors won a partial victory in their case against former White House aide Oliver North, a central figure of the Iran-Contra affair: he was convicted of three felonies but acquitted of nine other charges. The convictions were later vacated and reversed.

1992 Dudu Mntowaziwayo Ndlovu (Dudu Zulu), a band member of Johnny Clegg & Savuka, died of a gunshot wound in Zululand, South Africa, as he walked to his home from a neighbor’s. Police determined the popular percussionist and vocalist was probably an unintended victim of feuding taxi drivers.

1994 Singer Courtney Love was cleared of drug charges. L.A. police arrested her April 7—the day before her husband was found dead—on suspicion of narcotics possession after she became ill at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. Actually, she had suffered an allergic reaction to prescription medication and requested hospitalization herself. Doctors found no evidence of narcotics in her system and police found no illegal drugs in her room.

1998 A federal judge in Sacramento, Calif. sentenced Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski to four life terms plus 30 years under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty. His series of bombings killed three and injured 23.

2006 A federal judge sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison for his role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The day before, the jury decided against the death penalty. Moussaoui’s attorneys had argued he should face life in prison, rather than achieve martyrdom through execution.

2007 A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge sentenced Paris Hilton to 45 days in jail for violating probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case.

2012 Authorities discovered 9 people hanging from the Colosio Bridge in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and a few hours later found 14 decapitated bodies in garbage bags stashed in a van. The four men and five women dangling from the bridge were handcuffed, blindfolded, and showed signs of torture. The heads of the 14 corpses were found stuffed into three ice chests dumped near the town hall. All the victims were suspected members of the warring Zetas and Gulf drug cartels.

2014 Three people were killed and 62 injured when homemade bombs exploded on two buses packed with commuters in Nairobi, Kenya. The Kenyan government blamed Al-Shabaab for the incidents. The al-qaeda-linked group vowed to avenge the presence of Kenyan troops helping neighboring Somalia fight Islamic extremists.

2019 At the 145th Kentucky Derby, stewards disqualified winner Maximum Security for interference and declared Country House, a longshot, the victor. Stewards determined that Maximum Security cost two other horses better positions when he swerved into their paths and forced them to check their strides. It was the first DQ of the champion for an on-track infraction in race history.