26Ewen MacDonald
In 1752, a man named Ewen MacDonald was hanged but he regained consciousness after being taken to the dissection theatre. When the surgeon who was meant to dissect his body discovered the supposedly dead man sitting upright on the operating table, he promptly bludgeoned MacDonald to death with a mallet.
27. When Jesse Tafero was electrocuted in Florida in 1990 for the murder of two police officers, his head burst into flames. After three jolts, he eventually stopped breathing. Officials blamed the use of a synthetic sponge (in place of a natural one) for the botched execution.
28. When the Russian Imperial Romanov Family was executed in 1918, the daughters Tatiana, Anastasia, and Maria survived the initial gunfire because they had over 1.3 kilograms (2.9 pounds) of diamonds sewn into their clothing, which the bullets ricocheted off. They were subsequently killed with bayonets.
29. Mansur al-Hallaj was an early Persian mystic who was condemned for heresy on account of his ecstatic utterances of "I am the Truth," or "I am God.” In fact, he kept repeating "I am the Truth" as they kept cutting his arms, legs, tongue, and finally his head. He was smiling, even as they chopped off his head.
30. The Americans botched the hanging of the Nazi Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel. The trapdoor was too small and he smashed his head going down, and the force didn't break his neck so it took a full 24 minutes for him to suffocate.
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31Mussolini's Execution
The corpses of Mussolini and his mistress were beaten and urinated upon and finally left to hang upside down, for public display, from a rusty beam outside a petrol station.
32. In 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the USA for conspiring to pass atomic secrets to Russia. Ethel Rosenberg's execution however did not go smoothly. After she was given three electric shocks, attendants removed the strapping only to have doctors determine that Ethel's heart was still beating. Two more electric shocks were applied, and eyewitnesses reported that smoke rose from her head.
33. Saint Lawrence was executed on a giant grill for distributing Roman Church’s treasure to the poor people of Rome. While he was being executed he screamed "I'm well done. Turn me over!" From this St. Lawrence derives his patronage of cooks, chefs, and comedians.
34. Ibrahim II was the Emir of Ifriqiya. He gained the reputation of being not only a tyrant, but he was also a homicidal sadist. He took great pleasure in cruelty and killing and often conducted executions personally. Once upon discovering during a dinner that a napkin had been mislaid, he ordered execution of 300 of his palace servants. He executed eight brothers and his own son on a vague suspicion. He had several of his wives executed by strangulation, immurement, dismemberment and other means. He ordered the execution of every one of his daughters upon birth. When he learned that sixteen of his daughters had escaped death and had grown to adulthood, he invited them to a reception, greeted them kindly, and then beheaded all of them.
35. When Peter I of Portugal was still a prince, he fell in love with his wife's maid, Inês de Castro. After his wife died, his father, King Afonso IV, desired him to remarry but not to Inês. Pedro refused; so, the King had Inês killed. Shortly after, King Afonso died and later when Pedro became the king, he conducted a public trial of the men who murdered Ines. After finding them guilty of her murder, King Pedro ripped their hearts out with his own hands, because of what they had done to his own heart.
