July 17

Forget Haditha. Forget My Lai. Forget Jones Town and Heaven’s Gate. On the 17th in 1791 in France, at the Champs de Mars, essentially a very large park in Paris, On the order of Jean-Sylvain Baily, the mayor of Paris, Royalists slaughtered an estimated 1200-1500 civilians who had assembled to petition for the removal of King Louis XVI.

Ironically, or, if you prefer, appropriately, the Champs de Mars is named after Mars, the Roman god of war.