History, Events And Facts

Hanging Hanging as a means of capital punishment was mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, but became a common method of execution by the Middle Ages. In the US, it remained the primary means until the 1890s - and still today the practice is mostly unchanged where it is legal in countries including Japan and Singapore. Prisoners sentenced to be hanged are often weighed before the execution and rehearsals performed to work out how much 'drop' will be needed to kill them quickly. Too much rope can lead to decapitation after the condemned person falls through the air, and too little can result in strangulation lasting as long as 45 minutes. The most recent recorded example of this was the execution of Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, one of three half-brothers of Saddam Hussein. He was hanged on January 15, 2007 for crimes against humanity (along with Hussein) - but was decapitated by the rope due to a mistaken calculation about his weight and the length of the drop. Before an execution...