1Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya
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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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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6Mansur al-Hallaj
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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11Frederick II's Experiment
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.
12. 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."
13. Italian serial killer Leonarda Cianciulli chopped up her victims with an axe and turned them into soap and tea cakes.
14. 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.”
15. 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.
16Execution of Guy Fawkes
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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21Christman Genipperteinga
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.
22. Turkish Sultan Mehmed once disemboweled his gardeners one by one to find out who stole and ate one of his prized cucumbers.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. 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.