History Daily: The First Execution of the Sal...

In 1723, a teenage Benjamin Franklin arrived in Philadelphia ready to reinvent himself. He was a penniless apprentice printer with a hunger for knowledge and a burning ambition. Over the next 50 years, he would fashion himself into the most celebrated American of his time.Frankli ...  Show more

In the spring of 1775, Benjamin Franklin left London for America after years of fruitless attempts to ease tensions with the British government. By the time he arrived home in Philadelphia, American and British soldiers had fired the first shots of the Revolutionary War, and Fran ...  Show more

It was the summer of 1692, and a woman named Bridget Bishop was the first woman to face the hangman’s rope while neighbors and old friends looked on and cheered - but this execution would certainly not be the last in the town of Salem, Masschussets, and over the next few months, ...  Show more

June 10, 1692. Bridget Bishop is loaded into a two-wheeled cart and brought from her Salem jail cell to a pasture on a hill, where a rope is hanging from freshly-installed gallows. A crowd forms around her: law officers to read the death warrant, ministers to offer last rites, an ...  Show more

On this day in 1692, five residents of Salem, Massachusetts—including a clergyman—were hanged to death for the crime of witchcraft. They wouldn’t be the last. Guest hosted by Wenndy MacKenzie from the Parcast original podcast, Unsolved Murders. Learn more about your ad choices. V ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the outbreak of witch trials in Massachusetts in 1692-3, centred on Salem, which led to the execution of twenty people, with more dying in prison before or after trial. Some were men, including Giles Corey who died after being pressed with heavy ro ...  Show more