On this day in ancient Babylonia, an annual festival of prayers and feasts took place in honor of Gula, the goddess of birth.

On this date in the year 1692, Giles Corey ( a Massachusetts man charged with the crime of Witchcraft) was pressed to death by large stones in Salem for refusing to acknowledge the Court's right to try him. His recorded quote was:

I will not plead
If I deny, I am condemned already,
In courts where ghosts appear as witnesses
And swear men's lives away.
If I confess,
Then I confess a lie,
to buy a life, Which is not life,
but only death in life.