1Necklacing
There is a form of public lynching known as "Necklacing" in which a tire is filled with gas, placed around the victim's neck, and lit on fire. The first victim of necklacing, according to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was a young black woman, Maki Skosana, in 1985.
2. During the Marcos regime of the Philippines, the son of a political journalist was tortured brutally and dropped from a helicopter to his death. Police investigators determined he had died from fraternity hazing and accused fraternity members were sentenced to death.
3. Bamboo torture was a practice that the Japanese used on American soldiers during World War 2. It involved pinning a man down to the ground over bamboo shoots, which would slowly grow up and through the live soldier over several days.
4. Poena cullei is a form of punishment for those found guilty of parricide under Roman Law, in which the offender was sewn into a leather sack, with an assortment of live animals, including a dog, snake, monkey, and a chicken before being thrown into the water and left to drown.
5. Vlad the Impaler once repelled an attempted Ottoman invasion by making a forest of wooden stakes piled high with Ottoman corpses. According to Chalkokondyles, a contemporary Greek historian, there were over 20,000 people in his "Forest of the Dead."
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6Immurement
Many countries used "Immurement" as a form of punishment, wherein the victim was locked in a box and left to starve to death. The last recorded use of this punishment was carried out in 1914 when a Mongolian woman was left in a wooden crate to die of dehydration.
7. Governor John Ratcliffe, whose name was used for the villain in Disney's Pocahontas, was flayed and burned alive by Native Americans after they lured him to their village by promising to trade with him.
8. Italian military officer, Marco Bragadin was gruesomely killed, by the Ottoman Forces, in 1571. He was first dragged around, with sacks of stone, on his back. He was then tied to a chair, and hoisted up a Turkish flagship. He was then tied to a column, and flayed alive. Then his skin was stuffed, and redressed in his military clothes, and was made to ride, on an ox around town. Finally, he was tied naked, to a column in the town square, and flayed again until he died.
9. Sisamnes was a corrupt judge who is mentioned in Herodotus' Histories. He was known to take bribes to influence a verdict. When the king found out about him, he had him flayed alive. The king had the judge's skin placed onto the judge's throne on which Sisamnes’ son succeeded him.
10. In 1323, founders of the Aztec Empire, the Mexica, asked the King of Culhuacan for his daughter, to which the King of Culhuacan agreed. The Mexica then sacrificed her and flayed her skin, and invited the King of Culhuacan to a feast, during which a Mexica priest came out wearing her flayed skin.
11Hanged, Drawn And Quartered
Having one's sexual organs and bowels burnt before one's eyes was part of the "drawing and quartering" punishment meted out to those who spoke out against the King or government in England's past.
12. The act of keelhauling was to haul someone under the keel of a ship as punishment or torture. The sailor was tied to a line looped beneath the vessel, thrown overboard on one side of the ship, and dragged under the ship's keel, either from one side of the ship to the other, or the length of the ship. This resulted in severe lacerations and infection from barnacle growth on the hull, if they didn't drown first. It was lastly documented in 1882 where two Egyptian sailors were punished by keelhauling near the city of Alexandria.
13. Turkish Sultan Mehmed once disemboweled his gardeners one by one to find out who stole and ate one of his prized cucumbers.
14. In 1581, German serial killer Christman Genipperteinga was found guilty and was condemned to death by the breaking wheel. He endured nine days on the wheel before expiring, kept alive in his sufferings with a strong drink every day so that his heart would be strengthened.
15. The Brazen Bull was invented by Perillos for Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas, Sicily, as a new means of executing criminals by cooking them alive in a bronze bull. Perillos was cooked in his own creation but released before death. Phalaris was killed in the Brazen Bull when he was overthrown.
16Blood Eagle
Vikings used a form of torture called the "blood eagle," where they would draw an eagle with outstretched wings on the victim's back, cut out the shape, cut the ribs from the body, and pull the lungs out onto the "wings." It was said to produce a bird-like fluttering as the victim died.
17. After the battle of Carrhae in 53 B.C., the Parthians took the Roman commander, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and allegedly poured molten gold down his throat because of his renowned greed.
18. Mongols were highly superstitious and believed that spilling royal blood would lead to great disaster. They instead found creative ways of executing any royals they captured, including sewing up their orifices, drowning them in molten metal or having horses trample them.
19. Guy Fawkes was hung, gutted, and tortured for his plans to blow up the English parliament. He was caught red-handed after an anonymous tip-off. He was tortured to reveal his co-conspirators after which he was executed and his body parts were paraded around London.
20. Son of Saddam Hussein, Uday Hussein, was named Chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee in 1984. Athletes who disappointed him were subject to torture and imprisonment. His own dad jailed him for six months after he murdered Saddam's favorite chef in a psychotic rage. Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, who witnessed some of Uday's antics, described him as a "psychopath." He was also known to bring kidnapped girls to his home, rape them and then have them torn to shreds by dogs for his and his friend's entertainment.
21Consort Qi's Torture
Consort Qi was a Chinese concubine who bore the Emperor a son whom he seemed to favor over his son from his queen. Enraged by this, the empress proceeded to torture Qi, chopped her limbs off, gouged her eyes out, cut off all of her facial features, forced her to drink a potion that made her mute, threw her into a latrine and then locked her in a pigsty until she died. She called her a “human swine.”
22. Italian serial killer Leonarda Cianciulli chopped up her victims with an axe and turned them into soap and tea cakes.
23. Gilles De Rais was a 15th-century French nobleman who had his servants lure hundreds of poor street children into his castle where he would decapitate them and sodomize the resulting hole (among other things) because he "disdained his victims' sexual organs."
24. In the 13th century, Frederick II of Germany fed two men most excellently at dinner, sent one to bed, and sent the other out to hunt. Hours later, he had them both disemboweled to see who had digested his food better.
25. In 1567, a cook was caught stealing silverware from his employer and was sentenced to be hanged. Instead of this, he agreed to be poisoned to test the effects of bezoars (stones that were thought to cure poisons) and go free if he survived. He died in agony 7 hours after being poisoned.
