Executed! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Nero

Born in Tarsus in Cilicia (now in south-central Turkey) around the year 5 A.D., Paul the Apostle is not only the main subject of the 'Acts of the Apostles' but he is also credited with writing more than half of the New Testament (14 out of 27 books).
Although the exact manner of Paul's death is not certain, it does seem that he was executed at "The Fontane Abbey" (or the Abbey of Saints Vincent and Anastasius to give it its full title) in Rome around 63-67 A.D. Some reports say he was beheaded but others suggest that he suffered a more painful execution by upside-down crucifixion. (An 1887 painting by Spanish artist Enrique Simonet, "The Beheading of Saint Paul", depicts one version of the event.)
One thing does seem certain -- Nero was the Emperor at the time of Paul's execution since he reigned at the 5th Emperor of the Roman Empire from 54 A.D. until his suicide in June 68 A.D.
Of the alternatives, Claudius preceded Nero, his adopted son. He was poisoned in 54 A.D. Gaiba seized power when Nero died in 68 A.D. but was then himself murdered just seven months later. Trajan was not born until 53 A.D. and became Emperor in 98 A.D.

Answer: Mary I

One of the leaders of the English Reformation during the reign of King Henry VIII, Cranmer helped build the case for the annulment of the King's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. He continued his reforms when the young Edward VI became King, but found himself on the wrong side of the religious argument when the Catholic Queen Mary I succeeded her brother in 1553. Less than a year after Mary became Queen, Thomas Cranmer found himself for the chop, literally. Convicted of treason and condemned to death in November 1553, he spent a further seventeen months imprisoned awaiting trial on heresy charges.

Although Cranmer recanted his previously expressed support for the principle of Royal Supremacy and other anti-Catholic doctrines, Mary was determined to make an example of him and he was burnt at the stake in March 1556. Less than three years later "Bloody Mary" herself died of influenza and was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I.

Answer: Robert Catesby

The four men given as options are the four original plotters, along with Fawkes. Their leader was Robert Catesby, born around 1572 in Warwickshire.
When the Protestant James I became King of England in 1603, Catesby began recruiting Catholic sympathizers to his cause. The plan was to assassinate the King by blowing up Parliament with gunpowder. The date set was November 5, 1605, but the authorities were alerted to the plot by an anonymous letter. Fawkes was caught guarding the gunpowder during a search of Parliament. The other conspirators fled but were caught in Staffordshire and Catesby was shot and killed during the skirmish.
After more than a week of torture, Fawkes's surviving co-conspirators were rounded up and all eight were found guilty of high treason. Fawkes and three others were taken to Westminster for execution on January 31, 1606. The other three were hanged and quartered first, but when Fawkes's turn came he managed to fall and break his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the latter part of his execution.

Answer: 1649

Born on November 19, 1600 at Dunfermline Palace in Scotland, he was the second son of King James VI of Scotland and King James I of England and Ireland. His elder brother died in 1612 leaving him as heir apparent and he became King Charles I in March 1625 on the death of his father. His wife, Henrietta Maria of France, was a princess from the Bourbon family and a Roman Catholic.
From the outset, Charles' belief in the divine right of monarchs led to regular quarrels with Parliament, who also considered his views 'too Catholic'. The result was the English Civil War, which started in 1642. Fought between the forces of the Parliamentarians (the Roundheads) and the Monarchists (the Cavaliers), the outcome was the trial and execution of Charles I and the exile of his son, who would eventually return as King Charles II. The long-lasting principle established by the war, though, was that an English monarch could not govern without the consent of Parliament, although this would not be legally established until 1688-89.
The trial of Charles I on charges of 'high treason and other crimes' began in January 1649. His defense to the charges was that no court held jurisdiction over the monarch. Charles was found guilty not only of treason but on more than 300,000 murders (everyone who died during the Civil War) on the now widely-accepted principle of 'command responsibility'. Just 10 days after the trial began, on January 30, 1649, Charles I was taken to The Palace of Whitehall and beheaded outside the Banqueting House.
The day after the execution, the head was sewed back onto the body, which was embalmed and placed in a coffin. Permission for Charles I to be buried in Westminster Abbey was denied and his remains were, instead, interred in Saint George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.

Answer: Austria

Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, born at Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria in 1755, was the 15th and penultimate child of Emperor Francis I and Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa. Born an Archduchess of Austria, she married the French Dauphin, the future King Louis XVI in 1770, and became Queen on France on his accession to the throne following the death of his grandfather (Louis XV) in May 1774. Louis was executed in January 1793 and she was then known as the "Widow Capet".

After much debate about what was to be done with her (prisoner exchanged, exiled to America, etc) Maria was brought to trial on numerous charges (most, if not all, false) in October 1793. Two days after the trial began, she was declared guilty, driven through Paris in an open cart, and beheaded in the Place de la Révolution (now called the Place de la Concorde).

Her body was thrown into an unmarked grave but it was exhumed in 1815 (as was that of Louis XVI), and the pair were both re-buried alongside other former French monarchs in the Basilica of St Denis.

Answer: Sodomy

Same-sex marriage became legal in Britain in 2014, and yet less than 180 years earlier homosexuality was still a capital offense here. Perhaps even more surprising is that it is still possible to be executed for sodomy in some countries even in the 21st century.
Smith and Pratt were undone by a prying landlord, who became suspicious of the regular pairs of men who visited his tenant. One day in August 1835 he first went to an adjacent building where he could see in through the window, and then returned to the building and looked through the keyhole. Seeing Smith and Pratt having homosexual sex he called the police and the two men were arrested. They were duly tried and sentenced to death under the 1828 "Offenses against the Person Act".
During September and October that year, 17 people were sentenced to death for various offenses, including murder. All but Pratt and Smith had their sentences commuted by Royal Prerogative. The two were hanged at Newgate Prison in London in November 1835.

Answer: American Civil War

Heinrich Hartmann Wirz was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1823. Emigrating to the U.S. in 1849, Wirz had established a successful medical practice in Kentucky by the time the American Civil War started in 1861. Enlisting with the Fourth Battalion of Louisiana Volunteers in 1861, Wirz joined the Confederate States Army and was injured in battle a year later.
Promoted to captain but having suffered the loss of an arm, Wirz was given command of the Fort Sumter military prison near Andersonville GA when it opened in 1864. After a year in that position, and shortly before the war ended, Wirz was even promoted to major. In the 14 months that Wirz was in charge at Fort Sumter, some 45,000 prisoners went through the camp and around 13,000 of those died from the harsh conditions.
At the end of the war, Wirz was arrested, taken to Washington DC and charged with "conspiring to impair the lives of Union prisoners of war" and for "'Murder, in violation of the laws and customs of war". The second charge related to the 13 prisoners who were executed personally by Wirz -- some he had shot, others he had kicked to death, some he had beaten with his pistol.
After a two-month trial, Wirz was found guilty of the conspiracy charge and of 11 murders and sentenced to death. He was hanged at the Old Capitol Prison, which was on the site where the U.S. Supreme Court now stands. Two other Confederates were also executed for war crimes committed during the American Civil War, but the Wirz trial was both the most famous trial of its day and the most controversial.

Answer: Sing Sing Correctional Facility NY

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were both born in New York City, Julius in 1918 and Ethel in 1915. Julius joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1940 and worked as an engineer/inspector until he was dismissed in 1945 when his former membership of the Communist Party was discovered. Although the U.S. and the USSR were allies during World War II, the Americans did not share information about the Manhattan Project to develop the nuclear bomb, although the Soviets knew about it and made numerous attempts to infiltrate the project. The Americans, of course, developed their weapon by 1945 and effectively ended the war by using it to twice bomb Japan. What surprised the Americans was how quickly the Soviets developed similar capabilities -- they staged their first nuclear tests in 1949.
In 1950, the Americans discovered their leak -- a theoretical physicist working on the project named Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee. Fuchs confessed to passing key documents to the Soviets for more than ten years and enabled the Americans to identify the whole network involved. Julius Rosenberg was shown to be the man who recruited the rest of the network with the assistance of his wife, Ethel.
The trial of the Rosenbergs began in early March 1951 and concluded before the end of the month with a guilty verdict. They were sentenced a week later. Because the Federal government did not have an electric chair at that time, the couple were transferred to New York State's Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining NY. Also in those days, there was no 20 years waiting on 'death row' -- the Rosenbergs were executed at Sing Sing on June 19, 1953, little more than three months after their trial had begun.

Answer: Liberia

Born in 1951 in Tuzon, a small town in the southeastern corner of Liberia, Samuel Kanyon Doe joined the Liberian army at the age of 16. Thirteen years later, in April 1980, Doe led a military coup, during which President William R. Tolbert Jr. was killed in his mansion. Ten days later, thirteen members of Tolbert's Cabinet were publicly executed. Mass execution of members of the former government followed. Thus ended 133 years of rule in Liberia by the Americo-Liberian elite.
Doe became 'Head of State' in the new Liberia and promised to reinstate the constitution within five years. True to his word, Doe established a multi-party republic that was adopted in a 1984 referendum. Doe was duly elected as the country's President in October 1985, although quite how 'free and fair' the election process was is open to question.
By 1989, though, the country was once again mired in civil war. Forces led by Charles Taylor (who would ultimately become the country's next President in 1997) crossed from Ivory Coast into Liberia. Within six months, the rebels controlled most of the country. In September 1990 captured Doe in the capital, Monrovia. Following his execution, his mutilated, naked body was paraded through the streets.

Answer: Martin Borman

Held between November 20, 1945 and October 1, 1946, the Nuremberg Trials saw the prosecution of 23 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich. After almost a year of hearings, twelve of those charged were sentenced to death. Ten of those, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Alfred Jodl, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Fritz Sauckel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Julius Streicher, were hanged two weeks after the hearings finished, on October 16, 1946. One of the two exceptions was Hermann Göring, who committed suicide using a potassium cyanide capsule the night before the executions.

The other was Martin Borman who, although found guilty and sentenced to death by the tribunal, had been tried 'in absentia'. Unknown to the Allies at the time, he had been killed trying to escape from Berlin during the last days of the war in 1945.

His remains were discovered and identified in 1972, and dated to 1945.