I was checking out my blog today and on the sidebar is A Day In History. I love history so I like to read what it has for the day. Today's was the start of the Salem Witch Trial in the late 1600's.
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before local magistrates, and county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in Essex, Suffolk and Middlesex Counties of colonial Massachusetts, in 1692 and 1693. The hearings in 1692 were conducted in Salem Village, Ipswich, Andover and Salem Town, Massachusetts. The trials in 1692 were all held in Salem Town by the Court of Oyer and Terminer, with the Superior Court of Judicature hearing cases in 1693 in the individual county court seats: Salem Town, Ipswich, Boston, and Charlestown. Between February 1692 and May 1693, over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused who were not formally pursued by the authorities. The two courts convicted 29 people of the capital felony of witchcraft, 19 of whom (fourteen women, five men) were hanged. One other man, having refused to enter a plea, died under judicial torture to extract one from him, and at least five more of the accused died in prison. While not the first or only witch-hunt in New England or Europe, the sensational story of these particular individuals has secured its place in the cultural imagination of the United States of America.
One of Christianity's finer moments?
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