Ouch! 45 Most Brutal Executions History Has Witnessed

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.

27. 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.

28. Turkish Sultan Mehmed once disemboweled his gardeners one by one to find out who stole and ate one of his prized cucumbers.

29. 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.

30. 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.

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.

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. 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.

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."

37. 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.

38. 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.

39. 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.

40. 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.

King Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, ordered the execution of Anabaptists who believed in second adult baptism by what he referred to as a 'Third Baptism', i.e., drowning.

42. In 1977, the last execution by guillotine was carried out in Weston Europe. On October 10, 1977, a man named Hamida Djandoubi was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Marseille, France. He was thereby the last person to be executed by beheading anywhere in the Western world.

43. ‘Shoes on the Danube Promenade’ is a trail of 60 iron sculpted shoes that are installed along the banks of the Danube River in Budapest. They were installed in honor of the Jews executed by Arrow Cross militiamen who ordered them to take off their shoes before being shot at the edge of the water during World War 2.

44. Executions at the Tower of London often took more than one swing of the ax, with the doomed man or woman taking blows to the top of the head or back. Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury was beheaded completely only after 11 swings of the axe.

45. After Spartacus was defeated, commander of the Roman forces, Crassus, crucified 6,000 of the surviving rebels and lined the road with them with a crucifixion every 100 feet for over 100 miles.