The Halifax Gibbet was an early guillotine, or decapitating machine,
used in the town of Halifax, West Yorkshire, England. It was probably
installed some time during the 16th century as an alternative to
beheading by axe or sword. Halifax was once part of the Manor of
Wakefield, where ancient custom and law gave the Lord of the Manor the
authority to execute summarily by decapitation any thief caught with
stolen goods to the value of 13½ pence or more, or who confessed to
having stolen goods of at least that value. The device consisted of an
axe head fitted to the base of a heavy wooden block that ran in grooves
between two 15-foot (4.6 m) tall uprights, mounted on a stone base
about 4 feet (1.2 m) high. A rope attached to the block ran over a
pulley, allowing it to be raised, after which the rope was secured by
attaching it to a pin in the base. The block carrying the axe was then
released either by withdrawing the pin or by cutting the rope once the
victim was in place. The date of the gibbet's installation is uncertain,
so it cannot be determined with any accuracy how many were executed
using the Halifax Gibbet. By 1650 public opinion considered beheading to
be an overly severe punishment for petty theft; use of the gibbet was
forbidden by Oliver Cromwell, and the structure was dismantled. The
stone base was rediscovered and preserved in about 1840, and a non-
working replica was erected on the site in 1974.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Gibbet>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1645:
English Civil War: The Parliamentarians destroyed the last
Royalist field army at the Battle of Langport, ultimately giving
Parliament control of the West of England.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Langport>
1921:
One day after a truce between the Irish Republican Army and
British forces, violence between Catholics and Protestants in Belfast
resulted in sixteen dead.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1921)>
1925:
Indian mystic and spiritual master Meher Baba began his silence
until his death in 1969, only communicating by means of an alphabet
board or by unique hand gestures.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meher_Baba>
1941:
The Holocaust: A group of non-Jewish ethnic Poles from around
the nearby area murdered hundreds of Jewish residents of Jedwabne in
occupied Poland.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedwabne_pogrom>
1962:
Telstar (pictured), the world's first active, direct relay
communications satellite, was launched by NASA aboard a Delta rocket
from Cape Canaveral.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar>
1973:
John Paul Getty III, grandson of American oil magnate J. Paul
Getty, was kidnapped in Rome.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Getty_III>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
badinage:
Playful raillery; banter.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/badinage>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.
--Marcel Proust
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marcel_Proust>
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