In 1692 the English-born farmer Giles Corey, aged 80, became the only person to be pressed to death (with stones) by order of an American court. He refused to submit to trial by jury at the Salem witch trials, for which the key evidence was a spectral vision by Ann Putnam, aged 12. As a result of enduring up to three days of “peine forte et dure”, his property was inherited by his two sons-in-law instead of the state; in 1888 the world’s first modern-day beauty contest, the Concours de Beauté, was held in Belgium and won by 18-year-old Bertha Soucaret from Guadeloupe.
After some ugly scenes, she was forced to flee the venue; in 1945 William Joyce, known as Lord Haw-Haw, was sentenced to.
