Executions in History

Based on the historical clues, guess these people who were executed.
Some of the charges are real, others are satirical. Please don't be offended
Quiz idea: beetboy12
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: October 31, 2019
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First submittedDecember 4, 2014
Times taken14,974
Average score50.0%
Rating4.24
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When
Where
Method
Charges
Who
2006
Baghdad
Hanging
Murder and torture
Saddam Hussein
2001
Indiana
Lethal injection
Oklahoma City bombing
Timothy McVeigh
1994
Illinois
Lethal injection
Serial killing; Clowning without a license
John Wayne Gacy
1967
Bolivia
Summary shooting
Fomenting revolution; Guerilla warfare
Che Guevara
1962
Israel
Hanging
Holocaust crimes; Banal evil
Adolf Eichmann
1953
New York
Electric chair
Passing nuclear secrets to the USSR
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
1945
Northern Italy
Informal firing squad
Aggravated fascism
Benito Mussolini
1918
Yekaterinburg
Informal firing squad
Existing; WWI losses
Nicholas II
1880
Melbourne
Hanging
Bushranging; Killing of police
Ned Kelly
1859
Virginia
Hanging
Harper's Ferry raid
John Brown
1793
Paris
Guillotine
Tyranny; kinging; Causing French blood to flow
Louis XVI
1793
Paris
Guillotine
Orgies; incest; sending money to Austria
Marie Antoinette
1776
New York
Hanging
Spying; Having but one life to give for his country
Nathan Hale
1649
London
Beheading
Treason against Parliament
Charles I
1618
London
Beheading
Plotting against King James; Introducing smoking
Sir Walter Raleigh
1606
London
Hanging, drawing, quartering
Trying to blow up Parliament
Guy Fawkes
1536
London
Beheading
Adultery against the King; Incest
Anne Boleyn
1535
London
Beheading
Papism; Burning heretics; Failure to attend a coronation
Thomas More
1305
London
Hanging, drawing, quartering
Fighting a war for Scottish independence
William Wallace
≈ 33
Jerusalem
Crucifixion
Claiming to be King of the Jews
Jesus
+9
Level 77
Dec 4, 2014
Some of the charges are hilarious
+4
Level 28
Nov 2, 2015
People get killed for even more hilarious reasons than this. Like stealing a can of beer for example.
+1
Level 72
Nov 3, 2015
Right?
+6
Level 77
Jul 8, 2018
Or mentioning the name of the Dalai Lama, attempting to leave Tibet, campaigning peacefully for Tibetan independence or trying to promote the use of the Tibetan language for example. Hilarious? I think not.
+5
Level 84
Oct 30, 2019
You might have missed Roxy's point
+8
Level 71
Oct 30, 2019
My personal favorite is "existing" for Tsar Nicholas II.
+1
Level 68
Apr 15, 2020
Got confused when I saw "existing". And now, you shall be put to death for reading this comment!!!!
+2
Level 76
Oct 30, 2019
"kinging"
+1
Level 93
Dec 4, 2014
I can't believe that I missed Thomas Moore (which is spelled wrong, by the way).
+6
Level 67
Dec 5, 2014
No it's written correctly, the spelling truly is "Thomas More" and not "Moore": http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/utopia/more1/moreutopia.html
+1
Level 84
Dec 5, 2014
The English had a knack for chopping heads for a good century there.
+3
Level 82
Aug 31, 2015
Doesn't stop them from claiming to be enlightened for not doing it anymore.
+20
Level 62
Nov 4, 2015
That's the thing with enlightenment - it implies you've progressed from a previous way of thinking.
+9
Level 70
Mar 31, 2019
We are enlightened for not doing it any more. Do you contest this?
+2
Level 82
Oct 30, 2019
I do
+2
Level 70
Oct 30, 2019
So should we still be executing people by decapitation for incest and being Catholic? Your argument for the death penalty on another quiz seemed to amount to the idea that people who are in prison for life should have access to euthanasia, and that you didn't consider their consent to be particularly important given their crimes. I don't see how this applies to any executions in England on this quiz.
+2
Level 82
Oct 31, 2019
I contest that Brits are presently enlightened, and certainly that they are any more enlightened that Americans or the Japanese, or that their present state of enlightenment is due to objection to the death penalty - which has more to do with a silly and irrational emotion-based belief in the sanctity and value of human life in all circumstances than it has to do with any moral superiority.

No, I was not arguing that you should decapitate Catholics. Though that isn't necessarily the worst idea.

+1
Level 70
Oct 31, 2019
I don't think Brits are on the whole significantly more enlightened than Americans or Japanese. But I do think Brits are enlightened in this particular area compared to Brits of the time when they were executing people, whether for genuinely immoral crimes or not. There has never been any country I know of that has had the death penalty for the reasons you propose for it. The executions in England on this quiz were about the assertion of authority by the ruling classes and retribution. And to some extent criminal punishment remains motivated by retribution, though politicians tend to disguise it as deterrant, but there are reasons why the death penalty can be considered worse than other punishments.
+2
Level 82
Oct 31, 2019
maybe. Would be easier to agree if people who stopped doing something a short time ago, and not that long before that were mounting heads on pikes next to London bridge, were not acting so holier-than-thou when they talk about the subject.

I see you remember the previous conversation and that I don't believe in retributive justice but I still see that this is how most justice systems around the world work whether they incorporate the death penalty or not.

+2
Level 70
Nov 2, 2019
I understand where you are coming from, but given that the last execution in England was in 1964 and there haven't been any heads put on spikes by London Bridge since 1820 at the most recent (I wasn't able to find anything specifically relating to London Bridge but that was when the last execution by hanging, drawing and quartering occurred) It isn't really hypocritical for people to consider the UK more moral than countries that still have the death penalty if they consider the death penalty to be immoral. Because the people voting for the governments that carried out those actions, as well as every person in the governments themselves, were different. You might also be interested to know that until recently polls about the death penalty in the UK have consistently shown that most people want it reintroduced. This seems very surprising to me as all political parties except for a few extreme-right ones are opposed to the death penalty in the UK, and politicians frequently point to it
+2
Level 70
Nov 2, 2019
as something that they think unites the UK as a (somewhat) socially liberal country. It is difficult to think of any country other than the USA they could be comparing to, as there are much better ways of demonstrating that we are better than Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, etc.
+4
Level 82
Nov 23, 2016
It's just listed more often here, otherwise beheading was costumary for nobility all over Europe.

The English stopped it in 1747, while the French continued with guillotine until abolishment of death penalty in 1980 ... (1977 was actually the last beheading in western world)

+1
Level 62
Nov 21, 2019
They should bring back the guillotine. It’s efficient and sends a powerful message to someone who wants to commit a crime against you
+6
Level 59
Oct 31, 2015
If Saddam was alive, ISIS wouldn't be.
+18
Level 28
Nov 2, 2015
Neither would the Kurds
+4
Level 82
Oct 30, 2019
there goes that silver lining
+1
Level 66
Oct 31, 2015
The Rosenbergs, now celebrated in NYC with their own personal day, Sept. 28. Sometimes you just can't make this stuff up.
+7
Level 67
Oct 30, 2019
I believe that was only for Ethel Rosenberg, not Julius, and it was based on a council's conclusion that she was innocent, and was wrongly included in the charges in order to use her as leverage against her husband. NYC chose to acknowledge that she was wrongly executed by an overzealous government. You make it sound as if all of New York takes the day off to celebrate Ethel Rosenberg. That's not what the day was about at all.
+1
Level 61
Oct 30, 2019
It was just a one time thing as well. No one in NYC celebrates Ethel Rosenberg day every 9/28.
+1
Level 55
Oct 31, 2015
I actually never knew America had a martyr of the Revolution, and apparently only 22% of other people knew that also. I knew Ben Franklin said "We must all hang together or we will certainly hang separately" but I never knew that anybody actually did get hanged.
+3
Level 75
Nov 1, 2015
Many Americans were hanged during that war and did their own share of hanging British soldiers, but many more Americans died of neglect as prisoners.
+2
Level 89
Jul 5, 2019
Even more Americans died of exposure and starvation right outside the large houses American generals commandeered as single occupancy mansions.
+3
Level ∞
Oct 30, 2019
@someone2018. Many of your comments have been reported and often for good reason. If you are going to make extraordinary claims, at least post evidence. You're on thin ice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_war_in_the_American_Revolutionary_War#Prison_ships

+1
Level 89
Oct 31, 2019
Valley Forge. The generals commandeered blah blah just as I said. The soldiers lived in dirt floor twig huts and froze and starved to death all winter. Go to Pennsylvania and look at it. The United States government itself will take you on a tour of the place. It's right near the gianormous King-of-Prussia mall. He took precedence around there too evidently.

If people are so offended by history that they want to just leave the comment that American rebels died in only British camps and not under their own generals' warm winter windows, they better call the Doc and his DeLorean. Reporting me

like a clueless 5th grade hall monitor isn't going to alter time that's already gone by.

+2
Level ∞
Oct 31, 2019
2,000 died in Valley Forge whereas 8,500 died as British POWs. But how did those 2,000 die in Valley Forge? It wasn't starvation. It was typhus, smallpox, and dysentery.
+2
Level ∞
Oct 31, 2019
By the way, of the 20,000 Americans captured in the Revolutionary War 8,500 died. More Americans died as prisoners than died on the battlefield. With those odds I think I'd be a little more inclined to make a bayonet charge instead of surrendering. Although the true scope of the criminal mistreatment of prisoners was probably not well known during the war.
+2
Level 61
Oct 30, 2019
When I was a kid it seemed that everybody knew who Nathan Hale was but that is probably because I grew up in NYC where he was executed.
+1
Level 35
Oct 31, 2019
I could not remember his name... I kept thinking it was (first name) Henry or a Paul (last name)... I was definitely disappointed in that one.
+1
Level 53
Nov 2, 2015
Maybe accept Romanov for Nicholas II since he was Nicholas Romanov. I got it right, but I almost gave up after typing in Romanov and it didn't work.
+1
Level 84
Oct 30, 2019
Seconded. Although I couldn't come up with the family names of Louis XVI or Charles II and wonder if they'd work too.
+2
Level 59
Oct 30, 2019
Bourbon and Stuart ("one's brandy and the other's scotch")
+1
Level 84
Oct 31, 2019
Thanks!
+1
Level 55
Oct 31, 2019
I tried Stuart and almost gave up. I couldn't remember the first name for a minute.
+1
Level 67
Nov 4, 2015
Can Romanov be accepted, please?
+2
Level 75
Feb 1, 2017
Are the supposed to be in chronological order? Because the 1305 one is well out
+1
Level 72
May 7, 2017
Good quiz. I've never heard of John Brown or Nathan Hale, Google here I come.

You could add Ceaușescu.

+1
Level 89
Jul 5, 2019
I always remember their names by a Dennis Miller news joke on SNL about the whereabouts of the bodies being unknown and that they had been ground up in the impoverished country for dog food, Puppy Ceaușescu.
+3
Level 63
Jul 18, 2017
Better watch out before sending money to Austria.
+2
Level 84
Aug 22, 2017
"Clowning without a license"......ROFL!!!!!!!!!
+1
Level 70
Dec 16, 2017
What? Execution because of existing??
+2
Level 28
Oct 30, 2019
His entire family existed as well. So they died with him. Kids were killed last after seeing their parents die.
+3
Level 82
Jan 27, 2018
Id suggest the John Wayne Gacy clue is in poor taste.
+3
Level 78
Mar 7, 2018
I agree. I never heard of this guy so I googled him. Although the clown reference is an obvious hint, to suggest, even in jest, that his execution was due to not having a license to be a clown when the real reasons are so horrific is indeed in bad taste. Come on Quizmaster - you are better than that.
+11
Level ∞
Mar 7, 2018
No I am not better than that. We can either close our eyes to the evil in the world or laugh at it. Don't let things beyond your control have power over you.
+2
Level 61
May 19, 2018
there is nothing wrong with the reference. leave the snowflakes to melt.
+1
Level 67
Oct 30, 2019
Illinois does have pretty harsh punishments for clowning without a license though.
+7
Level 82
Oct 30, 2019
The biggest problem I see with the clue is that it could give some a fleeting false hope that the law had finally caught up with the Insane Clown Posse.
+7
Level 45
Oct 30, 2019
Remember...if you're ever confronted by a gang of killer clowns, go for the juggler first.
+2
Level 84
Oct 30, 2019
Homey, don't play that
+1
Level 82
Oct 30, 2019
Nikolai and Romanov don't work for Tsar Nicky.
+2
Level 83
Oct 30, 2019
Why are they in chronological order, except for Wallace?
+1
Level 70
Oct 31, 2019
Simply an oversight? Quizmaster?
+1
Level ∞
Oct 31, 2019
Fixed
+1
Level 61
Oct 30, 2019
Morbidly funny theme for a quiz. Great!

You should allow for alternative spellings of the Russian tsar: Nikolai, Nikolaus, Nikolaj, Nicolai, etc.

+1
Level ∞
Oct 31, 2019
Added some more spellings.
+1
Level 41
Oct 31, 2019
For some reason I thought Mussolini was hanged. 🤷‍♀️
+3
Level 74
Oct 31, 2019
I think he was; upside down in a Milan square after being shot, to be ridiculed / humiliated even further
+1
Level 57
Mar 13, 2023
OK so the real answer to the serial killing clown one is just a gap in my knowledge, but in the absence of a correct answer I wasn't going to *not* try "Pennywise" just in case...