| 4 BC | Palestine, Roman Empire | King Herod the Great of Judaea massacres Pharisees who have attempted to pull down the Roman eagle from the temple in Jerusalem and may also have instituted the biblical ‘massacre of the innocents’. Shortly before Herod's death in March, his eldest son, Antipas, is executed. |
| 30 | Palestine, Roman Empire | This is the most probable year of the death of the Jewish religious teacher Jesus Christ. On the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nisan, almost certainly in this year, Christ eats the Passover meal with his disciples in Jerusalem, Judea, where he is betrayed by Judas Iscariot and taken to the house of Caiaphas, the High Priest. The next day he is taken before the Roman procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, and is crucified for sedition, at Golgotha. |
| 31 | Roman Empire | Sejanus, commander of the Roman Praetorian Guard, is brought before the Senate, accused of plotting to overthrow the emperor Tiberius, and is executed. |
| 196 | Roman Empire, Gaul | The Roman governor in Britain, Clodius Albinus, is named a public enemy following the discovery of treasonable correspondence. He declares himself emperor, leaves Britain with all the troops he can muster, and sets up court at Lugdunum (modern Lyon) in Gaul. Outside the city he meets the army of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, but is defeated and is to commit suicide. The city of Lugdunum is looted and partially destroyed. |
| 1134 | Denmark | King Niels of Denmark is murdered at Schleswig by supporters of the popular duke Knud Lavard, who was murdered in 1131; he is succeeded by Erik II Emune. |
| 29 December 1170 | England | St Thomas à Becket, chancellor of England 1155–62, archbishop of Canterbury 1162–70, is murdered in his cathedral by four knights acting on an angry outburst by King Henry II of England, expressing his wish to be rid of ‘this turbulent priest’ (52). His tomb becomes one of the most important of all medieval pilgrimage sites. |
| 9 September 1182 | Byzantine Empire | Andronicus I Comnenus, nephew of the former emperor John II Comnenus, usurps the throne of the Byzantine Empire, murdering the current emperor Alexius II, his mother, and her advisers. |
| 23 August 1305 | Scotland, England | The Scottish nationalist William Wallace, leader of the first resistance movement to free Scotland from English rule, is executed in London, England, as a traitor against King Edward I of England, after having been betrayed and captured in Glasgow, Scotland (c. 35). He is tried in Westminster Hall, London, and promptly hung, drawn, and quartered. His head is displayed on London Bridge in London. |
| April–October 1504 | Holy Roman Empire, Bavaria, Palatinate, Germany | The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I pronounces the Imperial Ban on Rupert, son of the Elector Palatine, claimant through his wife to the duchy of Bavaria-Landshut. Though the late Duke George of Bavaria-Landshut approved this claim in his will and Rupert has already seized the duchy, Maximilian supports the claim through imperial law of dukes Albert and Wolfgang of Bavaria-Munich. The Landshut War begins. |
| 1535–1545 | Holy Roman Empire, Spanish Netherlands | After the failure of the revolution in Münster and the risings elsewhere, about 30,000 Anabaptists are executed in the Netherlands alone; the remainder follow the new pacifist Dutch prophet Menno Simons and cease to be a political force. |
| 6 July 1535 | England | Thomas More, English humanist and statesman, Lord Chancellor of England 1529–32, is beheaded in London, England, for treasonably refusing to take the oath of loyalty required by King Henry VIII (58). |
| 19 May 1536 | England | When Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII of England, is beheaded, having been found guilty of adultery and incest, Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, declares her marriage invalid. Her brother Lord Rochford and other alleged lovers are also executed. |
| 13 February 1542 | England | King Henry VIII of England has Catherine Howard, his fifth wife, beheaded in the Tower of London for adultery. |
| 12 February 1554 | England | Following the dangerous Wyatt's Rebellion against Queen Mary I of England, Lady Jane Grey, titular queen of England for nine days (1553), her father (Henry, duke of Suffolk), her husband (Lord Guildford Dudley), and 46 commoners are beheaded in London, England (16). |
| 8 February 1587 | England | When Mary Queen of Scots is executed at Fotheringhay Castle, near Northampton, England, Queen Elizabeth I of England, who has washed her hands of Mary after signing her death warrant on 1 February, feigns anger with her over-hasty officials, fining William Davidson, a secretary of state, for sending the warrant to Fotheringhay. The Lord Treasurer, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, remains in disgrace until July. |
| 27 January 1606 | England | The English conspirator Guy Fawkes, a veteran of the Spanish Habsburg Army of Flanders, and his accomplices in the Catholic Gunpowder Plot to blow up King James I and Parliament, are executed for treason in London, England (Guy Fawkes, c. 36). |
| 30 January 1649 | Great Britain, Ireland | Following the beheading of King Charles I of Great Britain and Ireland for being a ‘tyrant, traitor, murderer, and enemy of the people’ in the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall, London, England, the prince of Wales, in exile in The Hague, United Netherlands, takes the title Charles II. |
| 6 February 1651 | France | Cardinal Jules Mazarin is dismissed and a few days later flees from Paris, France, after a fortnight-long siege of the Palais-Royal by the mob, motivated by the demands of the Parlement for his dismissal and the release of Louis II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, and other Fronde leaders. Condé is subsequently released. |
| 20 August 1672 | United Netherlands | Having been held responsible for Dutch failures in the war against France and having resigned as Grand Pensionary earlier in the month, Johan de Witt, political leader of the United Netherlands (1653–72), who led his country during the First and Second Anglo-Dutch Wars, and his brother Cornelius are assassinated by a large mob at The Hague in the United Netherlands (47). |
| 1691 | North America | A ducking stool is used in New York City to punish scolds by plunging them into water. It is not used often there although it is a common punishment in the Southern United States. |
| May–October 1692 | North America | A witch-hunt takes place in Salem, Massachusetts. Amongst mounting public hysteria, the civil magistrates, encouraged by the clergy, set up a special court to try the 150 accused. 19 convicted witches are hanged and others are imprisoned. The scare begins to die down in September, the special court is dissolved in October, and the remaining prisoners released. Later, the Massachusetts's General Court annuls the convictions. |
| 1865 | UK, Australia | The authorities in Britain's Australian colonies refuse to accept further shipments of transported British criminals. As a result, longer, harsher sentences are introduced in Britain. |
| 1888 | UK | Five female prostitutes are murdered in the Whitechapel area of London, England, by an unidentified assailant known popularly as ‘Jack the Ripper’. |
| 22 December 1894 | France, French Guiana | Major Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French army officer, is convicted of treason by a court martial, and is imprisoned on Devil's Island, French Guiana. |
| 1897 | UK | The Irish wit and playwright Oscar Wilde is released from Reading Gaol, after serving a two-year sentence for sodomy. |
| 1932 | USA | The infamous couple Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow commit a series of robberies and kill fifteen people throughout the South and Midwest USA. |
| 1933 | Germany | The Germans open Ravensbrück, the first concentration camp for women. |
| 20 November 1945 | Germany | The trials of 24 leading Nazis opens before the Allied International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany. The Tribunal rules that an individual's obedience to orders is an insufficient defence for crimes committed against humanity. The trials continue until 31 August 1946. |
| 15 October 1946 | Germany | The former leading Nazi and head of the Luftwaffe (German air force) Hermann Goering, awaiting execution for war crimes, commits suicide in Nuremberg Prison, Germany, by taking poison. |
| 12 November 1948 | Japan | The main Japanese war crimes trial ends in Tokyo. The former prime minister during World War II, Hideki Tojo, and six others are sentenced to death; 16 receive life imprisonment; and two are given lesser sentences. |
| 13 July 1955 | UK | Ruth Ellis is hanged in Britain for murdering her lover; she is the last woman to be hanged in Britain. |
| 1 May 1960 | USSR, USA | Soviet military forces shoot down a US high-altitude U-2 spy aircraft over the Ural Mountains, USSR. On 19 August, the pilot Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years of imprisonment for espionage. |
| 1961 | Israel | Adolf Eichmann is tried in Israel and found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people during the Holocaust of World War II. He is to be executed on 31 May 1962. |
| 8 August 1962 | South Africa | The leader of the South African organization Umkonto we Sizwe (‘ Spear of the Nation’), Nelson Mandela, is arrested when returning to Johannesburg, South Africa, from Natal. He is tried in November, and convicted of inciting workers to strike and of leaving the country without valid documents. He is sentenced to five years in prison. |
| 24 November 1963 | USA | US nightclub owner Jack Ruby murders Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of US president John F Kennedy two days previously, as police move Oswald from the city jail in Dallas, Texas. This adds fuel to speculations that Oswald acted as part of a much larger conspiracy. Millions of Americans watch the murder live on national television. |
| 11 June 1964 | South Africa | At the end of the ‘Rivonia trial’ in South Africa (begun 10 October 1963), Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life imprisonment, while eight other defendants receive lesser sentences, and one is discharged. |
| 3 June 1968 | USA | Valerie Solanis, a part-time actor, shoots and wounds US artist Andy Warhol. |
| 31 March 1971 | USA, South Vietnam | The US lieutenant William Calley is sentenced to life imprisonment for the My Lai massacre of 109 civilians in South Vietnam by US troops in March 1968. On 20 August 1971 Lieutenant Calley's prison term is reduced to 20 years. |
| 1987 | UK | In Britain, the first suspect to be convicted by evidence derived from genetic fingerprinting is convicted of two murders. |
| 24 January 1995 | USA | The trial opens of the US former football star O J Simpson for the murder of his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman (on 12 June 1994); Simpson is acquitted on 3 October after claims of racial bias in the investigating police force. |
| 29 April 1996 | Netherlands, Yugoslavia | A United Nations (UN) war crimes tribunal opens in The Hague, the Netherlands, to investigate allegations of crimes against humanity committed during the Yugoslavian civil war. |
| 24 April 1998 | Rwanda | The largest public execution in recent history takes place in a football field in Kigali, Rwanda, when 22 people are shot for their part in the massacre of 500,000 Hutus in 1994. |
| 8 June 1999 | UK | British politician Jonathan Aitken becomes the first former MP this century to be sent to prison, for perjury and perverting the course of justice. He is sentenced to 18 months in an open prison in West Sussex. |
| 11 January 2000 | UK, Chile | British home secretary Jack Straw announces that the British government will not extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to stand trial in Spain for crimes against humanity, because a medical team ruled that he showed signs of senility and was medically unfit to do so. |
| 7 May 2001 | | Ronnie Biggs, the UK's most famous fugitive who took part in the 1963 ‘Great Train Robbery’ and subsequently escaped from prison to exile in Brazil, returns home in ill health to arrest in England at the expense of UK tabloid newspaper The Sun. |
| 2 August 2001 | Netherlands | The United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands, sentences Radislav Krstic, the Bosnian Serb general who oversaw the 1995 massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica, to a record 46 years in prison for genocide. |
| 1 July 2002 | | The International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent tribunal to try cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, comes into existence. Based in The Hague in the Netherlands, its powers are not retrospective. Despite ratification of the treaty establishing the court by over 70 countries, the USA refuses to recognize its jurisdiction without protection from prosecution for its personnel serving in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions. |
| 11 March 2003 | | The International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent tribunal to provide justice in cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, is formally inaugurated in The Hague, Netherlands, as 18 judges are sworn in. The USA continues to reject the court's jurisdiction. |
| 9 July 2003 | UK | In the UK two rail companies and six of their executives are charged with manslaughter under the Health and Safety Act following a long police investigation into a train derailment near Hatfield in Hertfordshire, England, in October 2000 in which four people died. |
