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A Definitive List of Some of History’s Most Awful People and Events

Khalid Elhassan April 12, 2021 37 min

Jean-Bedel Bokassa in 1970 with Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Romanian Communism Online Photo Collection

The capture of Guy Fawkes. English Heritage

26. Collapse of a Terrible Plot

Guy Fawkes and his accomplices rented a cellar that extended beneath the House of Lords in Westminster Palace. There, Parliament was scheduled to hold its opening session on November 5^th, 1605. The plotters crammed the cellar with 36 barrels of gunpowder rigged up to explode, concealed beneath piles of coals and sticks. The plot was uncovered, however, because of an anonymous letter sent to an English peer, warning him to stay away from Parliament’s opening session. During a search on November 4^th, Fawkes was discovered in the cellar guarding the gunpowder barrels.

A seventeenth-century illustration of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. Wikimedia

Captured, Fawkes was tortured on the rack until he revealed the names of his co-conspirators. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to a traitor’s terrible death by drawing, hanging, and quartering. However, as he was being taken up the gallows, he escaped the gruesome execution at the last moment by leaping off the ladder to his death below of a broken neck. His corpse was still quartered, and its parts were displayed across the realm. He is commemorated in Britain every November 5^th, Guy Fawkes Day, with fireworks and the burning of his effigy, while masked children go about begging “a penny for the Guy”.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.