-
A French physician first suggested that all criminals should be executed by a “machine that beheads painlessly."
-
The first guillotining took place on April 25, 1792, when Nicolas Jacques Pelletie was guillotined at Place de Grève on the Right Bank.
-
Louis XVI had his own head chopped off on January 21,
-
He added a lock/blocking device at the lunette and a new release mechanism for the blade. All guillotines built after 1870 were made according to Leon Berger's construction
-
Doctor Guillotin together with German engineer and harpsichord maker Tobias Schmidt, built the prototype for an ideal guillotine machine. Schmidt suggested using a diagonal blade instead of a round blade.
-
the last execution by guillotine took place in Marseilles, France, when the murderer Hamida Djandoubi was beheaded