June 17

Invented in France, the guillotine was an attempt to make executions quicker and more efficient than other methods of execution. The French were quite fond of it for a long time and the executions were done in public so that people could watch. On the 17th in 1939, Eugene Weidman, a rather brutal thief and murderer achieved a sort of notoriety when he became the last person to be publicly executed by the guillotine in France. Showing remarkable sensitivity, the crowds were repelled by the sight and made a bit of a fuss about it all. Responding to the outrage, the French government changed the program a bit and decided that the guillotine would no longer be used when executing people in public. The French didn’t abandon the guillotine until September 10, 1977 when Hamida Djandoubi became the last person dispatched by France to his reward with the cry of ‘Off with his head