[Kitsa]

I've been reading a really interesting book on public executions (I collect fucked-up history books). Among other things, it says...

- in the Tyburn days in England, there would be a command for people to remove their hats as the condemned approached the scaffold. It wasn't out of respect for the dying criminal, but rather so everyone could get a good view.

- It used to be customary to allow condemned prisoners to have a drink at every pub on the way to the execution site, and that's where the expression "one for the road" is supposed to have come from....

- And during the period in Germany where beheadings with a short, rounded sword were common, one punishment was to lead the prisoner to believe they were going to die and then reprieve them at the last minute. By that, I mean they were allowed to prepare for death, got trussed-up, went to the execution site, knelt down, were blindfolded, and waited. The executioner would start swinging the sword over his head to build up speed. The prisoner would be kneeling there, hearing the sword swing. Then the executioner would either lop off the head or swing the sword harmlessly over top of the head. The prisoner didn't know he'd been reprieved until he'd already gone through the torture of hearing the executioner power up and everything.

Now that's pretty fucked-up. And this was way before Hitler.