Execution by shooting is the most common method of execution in the world, used in over 70 countries. Whilst most of these countries use the firing squad, single person shooting is still found. In Soviet Russia, a single bullet to the back of the head was the most frequently used method of execution for military and non-military alike. This is still the main method of execution in Communist China though the gunshot can be to either the neck or head. In the past, the Chinese government would ask the family of the executed person to pay the price of the bullet. In Taiwan, the prisoner is first injected with a strong anesthetic to render him senseless and then a bullet is fired in to his heart.

Culled from: ListVerse.Com
Generously submitted by: Jason T.

Hmmmm… The Taiwanese method seems like a waste of ammo to me. Or a waste of drugs. I mean, why not just drug them to death and skip the bullet, or shoot them in the heart and skip the drugs? Oh, there I go thinking like a greedy American again…

Police say an 8-year-old Ohio girl died after falling into a hole she dug while playing in a snow bank in front of her family’s home. Emily Kramer was playing alone Sunday afternoon (February 7, 2010) when she fell head first into the hole and could not free herself. The girl’s father had been outside with her earlier and returned to pull her out of the snow and find her unconscious. The girl was taken to Samaritan Regional Health System, where she was pronounced dead. The girl’s waist had blocked her access to air, and she had kicked off one of her boots. She dug the 12-inch to 15-inch-wide hole with a larger shovel, and a small sand shovel was found inside.

Culled from: The Associated Press
Generously submitted by: Aimee

Aimee adds the following: “This kind of snow is very heavy, especially the older compacted snow underneath the fresher. I was out in it on Sunday and my foot got wedged in a hole pretty tightly. I had to use my hands to enlarge the hole so I could get my foot loose.”

Two Russian men died in a sauna after jumping into a plunge pool that had accidentally been heated to boiling point. The two men jumped into the pool to cool down after sweating in a steam room. A third man tried to save the victims but was unable to pull the men out of the boiling water. The two men’s bodies were discovered in the sauna in the city of Kirov in central Russia on February 18, 2010 and “their death was caused by overheating”, the Kirov regional investigative committee confirmed in a statement. The water in the pool was “overheated due to an error by one of the victims,” investigators said. Saunas usually include a cold plunge pool. The men were named by investigators as the director of an old people’s home and the director of a residential home for people with psychiatric problems.

Culled from: Herald Sun

Mercury metal can be diluted with solid materials, by carefully grinding them together in a pestle and mortar, and in this way pharmacists used to prepare grey powder. Detectives found that grey powder made an ideal dusting powder to highlight fingerprints on surfaces and it was brushed liberally on to all areas where fingerprints might be found. The skill was to leave only the faintest film of powder on the surface, which meant brushing most of it into the air from where it could be breathed in. Mercury that entered the body in this way tended to stick in the lungs and be absorbed. Detectives and forensic scientists whose job it was to find or photograph fingerprints began to display the symptoms of chronic mercury poisoning, such as excessive salivation, stomach pains, insomnia, tremors, irritability, and depression, although for a long time these were not linked to the real cause. Indeed it was only in the 1940s that it was realized that the detectives were really suffering from chronic mercury poisoning.

Culled from: The Elements Of Murder

The Indian soldiers of the British 47th Regiment of Native Infantry recognized two different imperatives: those of the caste system that had dominated life in India for many centuries, and those of the British army. In addition, the soldiers had a number of grievances against the British, not the least of which was that the British were offering camp followers more pay than the soldiers themselves.

Matters came to a head on November 1, 1824, when the British commander ordered Indians in the regiment to carry their own supplies for a long march because pack animals were not available. But caste system taboos forbade the soldiers to do so, and when the British colonel arrived at the assembly area, he found only a few soldiers present.

Defying orders, the soldiers had stayed behind, with knapsacks off and their muskets loaded. They chased away the colonel and the officers of the regiment, and later that day, more Indian soldiers joined the mutiny. Meanwhile, the British brought in artillery and reinforcements.

Next morning at dawn, the British opened fire with the cannons. About 100 of the mutineers were killed, and of the many prisoners taken, 12 who were deemed to be the leaders were hanged. The rest were sentenced to 14 years hard labor. The army erased the regiment’s name from the army list, but the Indians’ resentment was not to be dispensed with so easily. In fact, the brief revolt proved to be a harbinger of the bloody Sepoy Mutiny of 1857-58

Culled from: The Pessimist’s Guide To History

Police haven’t determined what drove a man to allegedly attack his bedridden sister-in-law with a medieval-style battle ax and then go on a rampage outside a Las Vegas home, hacking a 4-month-old baby to death and critically wounding the child’s mother. Harold E. Montague, 33, told investigators he remembered nothing about the attack, and police said he didn’t know the woman or the boy he is accused of hacking with the blade of an ax before noon Thursday, February 1, 2010 on a sunny street east of Las Vegas Boulevard. Police were awaiting blood test results determining whether Montague may have been under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Roberts said he admitted smoking marijuana but didn’t say whether he had taken other medications or alcohol. Montague is accused of stabbing his 36-year-old mentally and physically disabled sister-in-law, Monica O’Dazier, more than 20 times with the pointed end of a ceremonial ax before bursting out of his home into the street. Montague swapped one weapon for another one like it before going outside. A neighbor said she couldn’t believe what she was seeing as Montague attacked the baby and the child’s mother. “I told him to stop. He just reared up and looked at me,” said Teresa Garner, a 52-year-old former hotel worker who said she doesn’t remember Montague saying a word before he returned to swinging the menacing-looking weapon like a golf club. Garner called 911 and Montague retreated back inside his rented white cinderblock home across the street. As police arrived, Montague emerged empty-handed, taunting officers with profanity and trying to wrestle a shotgun from the hands of an officer, according to a police report. Police shocked him with a Taser to help subdue him. Garner said she wanted to help the baby in the overturned stroller next to a widening pool of blood near the end of her driveway. She said she also tried to keep the severely wounded and disfigured mother from trying to stand. “I’m surprised she lived,” Garner said of the woman, identified by police as Sandra Lisset Castro, 28. Her whole face was gone. She had a big gaping wound on the top of her head. She kept saying, ‘Help my baby! help my baby!’ Garner said it was obvious the child was already dead. The Clark County coroner reported that 4-month-old Damien Avila-Castro died of multiple head wounds. Police said Castro was taken to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in very critical condition.

Culled from: The Associated Press
Generously submitted by: Aimee

It just goes to show how tenuous life really is. One moment, you’re pushing your baby down the street, and the next minute you’re attacked by a guy with an axe. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time!

The Romans, Carthaginians and Macedonian Greeks occasionally utilised elephants for executions and also made use of war elephants for military purposes (most famously so in the case of Hannibal). Deserters or prisoners of war as well as military criminals were put to death under the foot of an elephant. Several cases are recorded by ancient chroniclers. Perdiccas, who became regent of Macedon on the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, had mutineers from the faction of Meleager thrown to the elephants to be crushed in the city of Babylon. The Roman writer Quintus Curtius Rufus relates the story in his Historiae Alexandri Magni: “Perdiccas saw that they [the mutineers] were paralyzed and at his mercy. He withdrew from the main body some 300 men who had followed Meleager at the time when he burst from the first meeting held after Alexander’s death, and before the eyes of the entire army he threw them to the elephants. All were trampled to death beneath the feet of the beasts…”

Culled from: Wikipedia
Generously submitted by: Ben Z.

Trampled to death by elephants, hmmmm? Kinda reminds me of the current state of U.S. politics. (Buh-dum-buh-dum, cymbal crash!)

The issue of female modesty arose during the first electrocution of a woman at Sing Sing in New York in 1899. Martha Place of Brooklyn strangled her pretty stepdaughter, then attacked her husband with an axe. The National Police Gazette reported that authorities took special precautions during the execution: “The warden beckoned to two women physicians to stand close, and their gowns hid the scene of the buckling of the electrode on the woman’s leg near the knee. When the work was done one of the woman doctors pulled down the skirt so that the electrode and leg were covered.” In less than seven minutes, Mrs. Place was pronounced dead. “The execution had been successful in every way. The first woman to be killed under the law had been put to death humanely.”

Culled from: An Underground Education

Somehow the idea of electrical currents coursing through my body, singeing my skin and causing my blood to boil, doesn’t sound particularly humane… but maybe that’s just me?

In 1991, a 57-year-old Thai woman Yooket Paen was walking in her farm when she accidentally slipped on a cow dung, grabbed a naked live wire and got electrocuted to death. Soon after Paen’s funeral, her 52-year-old-sister Yooket Pan was showing her neighbors how the accident happened when she herself slipped, grabbed the same live wire and also got electrocuted to death!

Culled from: Neatorama
Generously submitted by: Bex

One of the saddest deaths of a scientist was that of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) who suffered with prostrate trouble. At a royal banquet in Prague he dare not leave the table to relieve himself, with the result that his bladder split and he died a few days later. Analysis of a strand of his hair, which had the root intact, showed that the day before he died he was given a mercurial medicine in an effort to safe his life. It is now believed that mercury poisoning may have been the actual cause of death.

Culled from: The Elements Of Murder