The Samlesbury witches were three women from the Lancashire village of Samlesbury—Jane Southworth, Jennet Bierley, and Ellen Bierley—accused by a 14-year-old girl, Grace Sowerbutts, of practising witchcraft. Their trial at Lancaster Assizes in England on 19 August 1612 was one in a series of witch trials held over two days, among the most famous in English history. They were unusual for England at that time in two respects: Thomas Potts, the clerk to the court, published the proceedings in his The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster; the number of the accused found guilty and hanged was unusually high, ten at Lancaster and another at York. However, all three Samlesbury witches were acquitted. The charges against the women included child murder and cannibalism. In contrast, the others tried at the same assizes, who included the Pendle witches, were accused of maleficium—causing harm by witchcraft. The case against the three women collapsed "spectacularly" when Grace Sowerbutts was exposed by the trial judge to be "the perjuring tool of a Catholic priest". Many historians, notably Hugh Trevor-Roper, have suggested that the witch trials of the 16th and 17th century were a consequence of the religious struggles of the period, with both Catholic and Protestant Churches determined to stamp out what they regarded as heresy.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samlesbury_witches

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1850:

German composer Richard Wagner's romantic opera Lohengrin, containing the Bridal Chorus, was first performed under the direction of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt in Weimar, present-day Germany. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohengrin_%28opera%29

1914:

In the first naval battle of World War I, British ships defeated the German fleet in the Heligoland Bight area of the North Sea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Heligoland_Bight

1924:

The August Uprising, an unsuccessful insurrection against the Soviet rule in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, began. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Uprising

1955:

African-American teenager Emmett Till was murdered near Money, Mississippi, for flirting with a white woman, energizing the nascent American Civil Rights Movement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till

1963:

Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., describing his desire for a future where blacks and whites would coexist harmoniously as equals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

unfurl (v): 1. To unroll or release, especially a sail or a flag. 2. (figuratively) To roll out or debut anything http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unfurl

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

To which of the warring serpents should I turn with the problem that now faces me?

It is easy, and tempting, to choose the god of Science. Now I would not for a moment have you suppose that I am one of those idiots who scorns Science, merely because it is always twisting and turning, and sometimes shedding its skin, like the serpent that is its symbol. It is a powerful god indeed but it is what the students of ancient gods called a shape-shifter, and sometimes a trickster. --Robertson Davies http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robertson_Davies