Summit Gist

KILLING ME SLOWLY: 7 OF THE LONGEST EXECUTIONS IN HISTORY Today, if you are unlucky enough to be sentenced to death, in many parts of the world you would have the small consolation that it would be (most of the time) swift – firing squad, electrocution, hanging, or lethal injection. For much of history, though, many people suffered protracted, agonising, drawn-out deaths. Some of these killings took hours, others days, and some even weeks. Here we look at seven of history’s most interminable terminations, with examples of extended executions, and stories of savagely spun-out slayings. Hang 'em High: 7 of history's most famous executioners 1. Brickin’ It - Immurement From the Vestal Virgins of Ancient Rome to 19th-century Persia (where criminals were known to have been bricked up alive into city walls  head downwards ) the ‘walling in’ of the condemned has a long history. The Vestal Virgins, immured in an underground chamber when breaking their vows, were given a small amount o...

The remains of a fallen Austro-Hungarian soldier in the Alps, discovered from a melting glacier in 2012.  Today 107 years ago, on December 13, 1916, the "White Friday" avalanche took place near the Mount Marmolada in the Dolomite mountains, killing some 10,000 Austro-Hungarian and Italian soldiers in the second worst avalanche-related disaster in history. During the First World War, a front opened up in the.Dolomite mountains between Italy and Austria-Hungary, fighting for control over each mountain peak. The cold, rocky and vertical terrain exposed the Italian and Austrian soldiers to difficult living conditions and severe dangers, such as high altitudes, snowstorms, strong winds, freezing temperatures, rock- and snow avalanches. Mount Marmolada was the highest mountain of the Dolomites, which the Austrians held the control of by late 1916. The Austrians had built wooden barracks on the Gran Poz Summit of Mount Marmolada, in which Austrians Mountain Troops werehoused. The ba...

Shortly before being executed for the murder of Deputy John Murphy, Dennis Dilda was granted the opportunity to pose for a photograph with his wife and two children. Shortly before being executed for the murder of Deputy John Murphy, Dennis Dilda was granted the opportunity to pose for a photograph with his wife and two children. His final words before the execution were, "Goodbye, boys!" The Hanging of Dennis Dilda In September 1885, Dilda got a job helping to manage William Hamilton Williscraft’s farm. The farmhouse came along with the job and Dilda and his wife and children moved in. Williscraft went to live elsewhere but kept one room in the farmhouse for himself. The room was always securely locked and inside was a locked trunk. Dilda was supposed to have worked alongside the farm’s general caretaker, “General Grant” Jenkins. By December, however, Jenkins had disappeared, and Williscraft noticed the lock had been pried off the door of his reserved room, the trunk had bee...

"Female prisoners who are virgins must be rap£d before execution, to prevent them from entering heaven." In Iran, they rap£d female prisoners they believed to be virgins before they killed them so that they would not be allowed into "Heaven' as part of their punishment. In Iran, Girls "Married" Before Being Executed  "In the lslamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband." "I regret that, even though the marriages were legal" he said. "Because" he went on, "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills...

A Pakistani soldier examines whether a man is circumcised or not during Bangladesh's War of independence, 1971 A Pakistani soldier during Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971 checks to see if this  man is circumcised. (Hindus were usually not circumcised). That must have been so embarrassing! In 1971, West East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh) fought to seek independence from East West Pakistan (present-day Pakistan). The war lasted nine months and saw the exodus of 10 million refugees, the displacement of 30 million, and the deaths of 3 million. As with many wars and conflicts, rape was widespread with estimates of between 200,000 and 400,000 women being raped. Bengali speaking Muslims were by far the greatest casualties, but Hindus were also targeted by the Pakistani forces, and as such, soldiers would routinely check whether men were circumcised to determine whether they were Muslim or not. At checkpoints where soldiers would force the men to prove whether they were cir...

Frozen Soviet Soldier: Body of frozen Soviet soldier propped up by Finnish fighters to intimidate Soviet troops, 1939 The Finnish were no fans of the invading Soviet troops from Russia. They decided to use this frozen Soviet soldier's body as a scare tactic to demoralize the approaching Soviet troops. It was not a war between Russians and Finns, officers of hte Russian All-military union took a part in that war on the side of Finns, it was a war of a free nation against communist tyranny. The commander of the Finnish military resigned in protest aftr the government rejected 2:1 territorial concessions being offered by the USSR before the war because he knew what it'd lead to The Finns before it all broke loose-"They are so many, and our country is so small, where will we find room to bry them all?" The Russians after the war - "We've won just about enough ground to bury our dead." Finnish defenders sometimes, though very rarely, took fallen frozen Russia...

Soviet soldiers openly sexually harass German woman in Leipzig After the fall of 0f the city, a Russian general said that there will be a million Russian babies born in Berlin next year. the Germans murdered a lot of us and then starved our families to death, so we marched on Germany by months, sleeping in the frozen mud, eating just crackers and drinking foul water, only revenge on our minds... and then we reach this German town. And it was surreal, the place was never touched by war, there was gardens and flower pots in the windows".. Soviet Soldier Stalin, on the topic of Russian soldiers being accused of 2 million raped in Berlin, supposedly said, "What's wrong with a man having fun with a woman?" Germany supposedly killed 20 to 30 million Soviets This whole "What about" propaganda line is getting tired. There's already a word for it. It's called "hypocrisy," and Europeans are guilty of it "In his analysis of the motives behind th...