The Last Time France Used This Execution Method was the Same Year Star Wars Came Out

The guillotine was a device used for carrying out capital punishment by beheading. It was used in France during the French Revolution and remained the country’s official method of execution until the death penalty was abolished in 1981. The last known use of the guillotine was on September 10, 1977, when Tunisian agricultural worker Hamida Djanoubi was executed in La Marsa, Tunisia. Star Wars Episode IV, A New Hope was released on May 5, 1977.

The guillotine was invented by Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a member of the National Assembly and a proponent of the humanitarian treatment of criminals. Prior to the guillotine, execution methods were often brutal and included methods such as hanging, beheading with a sword, and drawing and quartering. Guillotin believed that a more humane method of execution was needed and proposed the use of a machine that would behead the condemned person in a single, swift blow.

The guillotine was first used on April 25, 1792, when Nicolas Jacques Pelletier became the first person to be executed by the machine. Over the next 89 years, the guillotine was used to execute thousands of people, including many famous figures such as Marie Antoinette, Maximilien Robespierre, and Louis XVI.

Although the guillotine was originally intended to be a more humane method of execution, it was often used as a tool of repression by the French government. Many people were executed without fair trials, and the guillotine became a symbol of the violence and terror of the French Revolution.

Today, the guillotine is remembered as a gruesome and inhumane method of capital punishment.