April 25

The French Revolution at the end of the 18th century gave the world a lot of things, chief among them, the plot of a lavish, over-done Broadway play. In a significant technological leap in penal reform however, it also gave us the guillotine. On the 25th in 1789, highwayman Nicholas J. Pelletier became the first person to be executed using a guillotine.
The last public execution by guillotine was of Eugène Weidmann, on June 17, 1939. The last guillotining of anyone in France was that of Hamida Djandoubi, on September 10, 1977.