John Martin Scripps (1959–1996) was a British spree killer who murdered three tourists—Gerard Lowe in Singapore, and Sheila and Darin Damude in Thailand—with another three unconfirmed victims. He posed as a tourist himself when committing the murders, for which British tabloids nickname him "the tourist from Hell". He would stay in the same hotels as his victims in a room near theirs. Once he had an excuse to be in their rooms, he would use an electroshock weapon to immobilise them before killing them. Martin was arrested in Singapore when he returned there after murdering the Damudes. Photographs of decomposed body parts were shown as evidence during his trial, making it "one of the most grisly" ever heard in Singapore. He defended himself by saying that Lowe's death had been an accident and that a friend of his had killed the Damudes. The judge did not believe Martin's account of events and sentenced him to death by hanging, making him the first Briton in Singapore since Singapore's independence to be given the death penalty. Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Martin_Scripps> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1789: With the first use of his new 1.2 m (3.9 ft) telescope, then the largest in the world, William Herschel discovered a new moon of Saturn, which was later named Enceladus. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus_(moon)> 1845: The first issue of the popular science magazine Scientific American (cover pictured) was published, currently the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_American> 1901: Silliman University in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental, Philippines, became the first American private school to be founded in the country. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silliman_University> 1909: A military coup d'etat against the government of Dimitrios Rallis began in the Goudi neighbourhood of Athens, Greece. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goudi_coup> 1955: African American teenager Emmett Till was murdered near Money, Mississippi, for flirting with a white woman, energizing the nascent American Civil Rights Movement. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: battle of the sexes: (game theory) A situation in which two people want to do different things, but do them together. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/battle_of_the_sexes> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day: The best among our writers are doing their accustomed work of mirroring what is deep in the spirit of our time; if chaos appears in those mirrors, we must have faith that in the future, as always in the past, that chaos will slowly reveal itself as a new aspect of order. --Robertson Davies <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robertson_Davies>