A penalty for blasphemy recorded in Bronze Age Ugarit (modern-day Syria) was to be forcibly inebriated, thrown off a building, stoned and then crucified.
Fact of the Day
Quote of the Day
"Shoot, you devil! Shoot, in the devil’s name! Shoot, or it will be worse for you!
"
~ William II reportedly speaking to the renowned bowman Walter Tirel on a stag hunt, just before Tirel missed and killed the king
On This Day
193 Roman emperor Pertinax was stabbed to death by his Praetorian Guard.
845 Vikings sacked Paris, possibly led by Ragnar Lothbrok. They left after being paid 7000 livres of gold and silver.
1917 Women were recruited for service with the British army in a non-nursing capacity for the first time.
1941 Writer Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse in Sussex.
1987 Maria von Trapp, who provided the inspiration for The Sound of Music, died of heart failure, aged 82.
1991 A jury returned a verdict of 'accidental death' at the inquest into the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.