SEPTEMBER 8, 1914, Chateau Combreaux, Tournan-en-Brie , France - Private Thomas James Highgate was a British soldier during the early days of the First World War, and the first British soldier to be convicted of desertion and executed during that war. Posthumous pardons for over 300 such soldiers were announced in August 2006, including Highgate.

Highgate was part of the British Expeditionary Forces, and faced heavy fighting during the Battle of Mons in Belgium on August 23, 1914. Unable to bear the carnage he wittnessed around him, he fled and hid in a barn.

Highgate was tried by court martial on September 6, 1914, where he was undefended and called no witnesses in his defence, because all his regimental comrades had been killed, injured or captured, but claimed that he was a ’straggler’ trying to find his way back to rejoin his regiment having got separated from his comrades.

Highgate’s execution was almost as hasty as his trial, and senior officers insisted that he be executed “At once, as publicly as possible.” Highgate was informed of his fate at 6:22 AM on 8 September in the presence of a Church of England clergyman. An officer then ordered a burial party and a firing squad to prepare, and Highgate was shot, aged 19, at 7:07 AM in front of men from the First Battalion Dorset Regiment and First Battalion Cheshire Regiment. News of his fate was also distributed to the remainder of the British Expeditionary Force via Army Routine Orders.

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AUGUST 3, 1892, FALL RIVER, MA. - Andrew Jackson Borden and his second wife, Abby Durfee Borden, were murdered in the family home. The only other people present at the residence at the time were Andrew’s daughter, Lizzie and the family maid, Bridget Sullivan. Emma Borden, Lizzie’s sister, was away from home. The Borden sisters’ uncle, John Vinnicum Morse, brother of Andrew Borden’s first wife, was visiting at the time, but was also away from the house during the time of the murders.

Earlier in the day, Andrew Borden had gone into town to do his usual rounds at the bank and post office. He returned home at about 10:45 a.m. About a half-hour later, Lizzie Borden found his body. According to Sullivan’s testimony, she was lying down in her room on the third floor of the house shortly after 11:00 a.m. when she heard Lizzie call to her, saying someone had killed her father, whose body was found slumped on a couch in the downstairs sitting room. Andrew Borden’s face was turned to the right hand side, apparently at ease as if he were asleep.

Shortly thereafter, while Lizzie Borden was being tended by neighbors and the family doctor, Sullivan discovered the body of Mrs. Borden upstairs in the guest bedroom. Mr. and Mrs. Borden had both been killed by blows from a hatchet, which in the case of Andrew Borden, not only crushed his skull but cleanly split his left eyeball.

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JULY 28, 1942 - MOSCOW, RUSSIA - Order No. 227 of was issued by Joseph Stalin acting as People’s Commissar of Defence. It is famous for its line “Not a step back!”, that became a slogan of Soviet antifascist resistance

Under the order, no commander had the right to retreat without an order. Anyone who did so was subject to a military tribunal of the corresponding seniority level.

Order No. 227 established that each Front must create 1 to 3 penal battalions of soldiers accused of disciplinary problems, which were sent to the most dangerous sections of the front lines. Each Front had to create penal companies for privates and NCOs. From 1942 to 1945, 427,910 soldiers were assigned to penal battalions.

The order also directed that each Army must create “blocking detachments” which would shoot “cowards” and fleeing panicked troops at the rear. In the first two months following the order, over 1,000 troops were shot by blocking units and blocking units sent over 130,000 troops to penal battalions.

Both measures were cited in the preamble of the order as having been successfully used by the Germans during their winter retreat.

The requirement for Armies to maintain companies of barrier troops was withdrawn after just three months, on October 29 1942. Intended to galvanise the morale of the hard-pressed Soviet Army and emphasise patriotism, it had a generally detrimental effect and was not consistently implemented by commanders who viewed diverting troops to create barrier units as a waste of manpower, so by October 1942 the idea of regular blocking units was quietly dropped. By 20 November, 1944 the blocking units were disbanded officially.

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MAY 28, 1900 - CINCINNATI, OH - In the middle of the night, the grandstand seats of League Park in Cincinnati caught fire. The most likely cause was a smoldering cigar that had fallen into the cracks in the floor.

As the fire alarms sounded, nearby neighbors rushed to the scene, and many climbed into the outfield seats for a good view of the action. Despite the efforts of the fire department, the big grandstand burned to the ground, and the Reds suddenly found themselves without a home field.

The club announced it would extend its upcoming road trip until a temporary diamond in the right field corner of the ballpark could be built. One month after the fire, the new diamond opened, but groundskeeper John Schwab didn’t have enough time to grow grass. The infield was completely bare.

That wasn’t the only unusual sight. The rubble of the old stands had not yet been cleared away, and for some reason they didn’t fence it off. Any ball hit into the ruins was a live ball. The outfielders just had to dig it out.

Fortunatly, no one was injured in the fire, although the Red’s mascot, a St. Bernard dog, did perish in the blaze.

The flames also destroyed all of the Reds uniforms. During the first few road games after the fire, the team wore their opponents road uniforms while waiting for new ones. This wait turned into a fight over who would pay for the new gear. At the time, it was standard practice for the players to pay for their own clothes, so the clubs owners assumed that this would be the case. The players argued that it wasn’t their fault that the park burned down, so they shouldn’t be expected to foot the bill. Finally, when they were supposed to play the New York Giants, the team asked permission to use the Giant’s traveling uniforms, the New Yorkers, in a show of solidarity with the Red’s players, refused. Faced with no uniforms and the possibility have having to forfeit several games, the Red’s owners had no choice but to pony up for new gear.

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MAY 18, 1896 - MOSCOW, RUSSIA - Nicholas II was crowned Tsar of Russia on May 13, 1896. Four days later, a banquet was going to be held for the people at Khodynka Field. In the area of one town square, theaters, 150 buffets for distribution of gifts, and 20 pubs were built for the celebrations. Nearby the celebration square was a field that had a ravine and many gullies.

On the evening of May 17, people who had heard rumours of rich coronation gifts from the tsar (the gifts which everybody was to receive were actually a bread roll, a piece of sausage, gingerbread, and a mug) began to gather in anticipation.

At about 5 o’clock in the morning of the coronation day, several thousand people (some say as many as 500,000) were already gathered on the field. Suddenly a rumour spread among the people that there was not enough beer or presents for everybody. A police force of 1800 men failed to maintain civil order, and in a catastrophic crush and resulting panic to flee the scene, 1,389 people were trampled to death, and roughly 1,300 were otherwise injured.

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MARCH 23, 1801 - SAINT PETERSBURG, RUSSIA Within weeks of the housewarming of the newly built St. Michael’s Palace, one of its bedroom became the scene of a bloody and brutal act of regicide.

Tsar Paul I had made himself quite a list of enemies during his reign.

His attempts to force the nobility to adopt a code of chivalry alienated many of his trusted advisors. The Emperor also discovered outrageous machinations and corruption in the Russian treasury. Although he repealed Catherine’s law which allowed the corporal punishment of the free classes and directed reforms which resulted in greater rights for the peasantry, and better treatment for serfs on agricultural estates, most of his policies were viewed as a great annoyance to the noble class and induced his enemies to work out a plan of action.

A conspiracy was organized—some months before it was executed—by Counts Petr Alekseevich Pahlen, Nikita Petrovich Panin, and the half-Spanish, half-Neapolitan adventurer Admiral Ribas. The death of Ribas delayed the execution.

On the night of the March 23 1801, Paul was murdered in his bedroom in the newly built St Michael’s Castle by a band of dismissed officers headed by General Bennigsen, a Hanoverian in the Russian service, and General Yashvil, a Georgian.

They charged into his bedroom, flushed with drink after supping together, and found Paul hiding behind some drapes in the corner. The conspirators pulled him out, forced him to the table, and tried to compel him to sign his abdication. Paul offered some resistance, and one of the assassins struck him with a sword, after which he was strangled and trampled to death.

He was succeeded by his son, the 23-year-old Alexander I—who was actually in the palace—and to whom General Nicholas Zubov, one of the assassins, announced his accession, accompanied by the admonition, “Time to grow up! Go and rule!”.

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MARCH 19, 1687 - NAVASOTA, TX - French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle sailed for America with the goal of finding the mouth of the Mississippi River. He left France in 1684 with four ships and 300 colonists.

The expedition was plagued by pirates, hostile Indians, and poor navigation. One ship was lost to pirates in the West Indies, a second sank in the inlets of Matagorda Bay, where a third ran aground. They set up Fort Saint Louis of Texas, near Victoria, Texas. La Salle led a group eastward on foot on three occasions to try to locate the Mississippi.

During his final search for the Mississippi River, his remaining 36 followers mutinied, near the site of modern Navasota, Texas. On March 19, 1687, La Salle was slain by Pierre Duhaut during an ambush while talking to Duhaut’s decoy, Jean L’Archevêque, two of four attacking him “six leagues” from the westernmost village of the Hasinai (Tejas) Indians. The colony lasted only until 1688, when Karankawa-speaking Indians massacred the 20 remaining adults and took five children as captives. Tonti sent out search missions in 1689 when he learned of the expedition’s fate, but failed to reach a fort with survivors.

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MARCH 9, 1762 - TOULOUSE, FRANCE - French merchant Jean Calas was sentenced to death on the wheel by the appellate court of Toulouse for the murder of his son Marc-Antoine.

Calas, along with his wife, was a Protestant. France was then a mostly Catholic country; Catholicism was the state religion. While the harsh oppression of Protestantism initiated by King Louis XIV had largely receded, Protestants were, at best, tolerated. Louis, one of the Calas’ sons, converted to Catholicism in 1756. On October 14, 1761, another of the Calas’ sons, Marc-Antoine, was found dead on the ground floor of the family’s home.

Rumors had it that Jean Calas had killed his son because he, too, intended to convert to Catholicism. The family, interrogated, first claimed that Marc-Antoine had been killed by a murderer. Then they declared that they had found Marc-Antoine dead, hanged; since suicide was then considered a heinous crime against oneself, and the dead bodies of suicides were defiled, they had arranged for their son’s suicide to look like a murder.

On March 10, his sentence was carried out and he died tortured on the wheel, while still very firmly claiming his innocence.

Voltaire, contacted about the case, after initial suspicions that Calas was guilty of anti-Catholic fanaticism had subsided, began a campaign to get Calas’ sentence overturned.

Exactly three years after his sentencing, on March 9, 1765, Jean Calas was found not guilty.

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FEBRUARY 23, 1820, LONDON, ENGLAND - The Cato Street Conspiracy was an attempt to murder all the British cabinet ministers and Prime Minister Lord Liverpool in 1820. The name comes from the meeting place near Edgware Road in London.

The conspiritors were angered, among other things, by the Six Acts, which labeled any meeting for radical reform as “an overt act of treasonable conspiracy” and the Peterloo Massacre, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 gathered at a meeting to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. The plan was to assassinate a number of cabinet ministers, overthrow the government and set up a Committee of Public Safety to oversee a radical revolution, similar to the French Revolution.

King George III’s death on January 29, 1820 caused a governmental crisis. In a meeting held February 22, one of the conpiritors, George Edwards, suggested that the group could exploit the political situation and kill all the cabinet ministers. They planned to invade a cabinet dinner at the home of Lord Harrowby, Lord President of the Council armed with pistols and grenades.

Arthur Thistlewood, who was one of the leaders of the plot, thought the act would create a massive uprising against the government. James Ings, a coffee shop keeper and former butcher, later announced that he would have decapitated all the cabinet members and taken two heads to exhibit on the Westminster Bridge. Thistlewood spent the next hours trying to recruit more men for the attack. Twenty-seven men joined the effort.

William Davidson, who had worked for Lord Harrowby, was sent to look for more details about the cabinet dinner. A servant in Lord Harrowby’s house told him that his master was not home at all. When Davidson told this to Thistlewood, he refused to believe it and demanded that the operation commence at once. A small house in Cato Street was rented as the base of operations.

However, George Edwards, who originally suggested the plot, was a spy working for the Home Office. Edwards had presented the idea with the full knowledge of the Home Office, who had also put the advertisement about the supposed dinner in The New Times. When he reported that his would-be-comrades would be ready to follow his suggestion, the Home Office decided to act.

On the night of the supposed dinner, Richard Bimie, Bow Street magistrate, and George Ruthven, another police spy, went to wait at a public house on the other side of the street of the Cato Street building with 12 officers of the Bow Street Runners, which were the English police of the time. Bimie and Ruthven waited for the afternoon because they had been promised reinforcements from the Coldstream Guards.

At 7.30pm, the Bow Street Runners decided to apprehend the conspirators themselves. In the resulting brawl, Thistlewood killed a police officer, Richard Smithers, with a sword. Some conspirators surrendered peacefully, while others resisted forcefully. William Davidson failed to fight his way out. Thistlewood, Robert Adams, John Brunt and John Harrison slipped out the back window but they were arrested a few days later.

Eleven men were later charged for the plot. During the trial, the defence argued that the statement of Edwards, a government spy, was unreliable and he was therefore never called to testify. Police persuaded two of the men, Robert Adams and John Monument, to testify against other conspirators in exchange for dropped charges. Most of the accused were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason on April 28. All sentences were later commuted, at least in respect of this medieval form of execution.

John Brunt, William Davidson, James Ings, Arthur Thistlewood and Richard Tidd were hanged at Newgate Prison on May 1, 1820; the death sentences of Charles Cooper, Richard Bradburn, John Harrison, James Wilson and John Strange were commuted to transportation for life.

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FEBRUARY 11, 2006, CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS - At approximately 5:30 p.m., Harry Whittington, a Bush-Cheney campaign contributor, was accidentally shot by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney during a quail hunting trip, at a ranch in south Texas owned by Katharine Armstrong.

Most of the damage from the shotgun blast was to the right side of his body, including damage to his face, chest, and neck. He was taken to Corpus Christi Memorial Hospital by ambulance. The accident was not announced in the news media until the White House confirmed the incident to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times approximately 12 hours after the incident.

Armstrong stated that Whittington was shot when Cheney was shooting at a covey of birds. She also said that Whittington did not alert Cheney to his location and was simply caught in the middle.
On February 14, hospital officials revealed that some of the lead birdshot lodged in Whittington’s heart caused a minor heart attack.

Doctors did not remove all the pellets from Whittington’s body. They were not certain how many pellets were lodged in Whittington’s body, but estimated there are “less than 150 or 200.”

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