On This Day in Weird, May 4...
1886: A bomb kills seven police officers at Chicago's
Haymarket Square, during a radical demonstration, whereupon police respond with
gunfire, killing four protesters and wounding dozens more. Prosecutors frame
eight prominent anarchists for the bombing, resulting in seven death sentences
and one sentence of life imprisonment. Four of the condemned are later hanged,
while a fifth commits suicide to escape the gallows. Governor John Peter
Altgeld pardons the surviving defendants in 1893, while criticizing the circus
atmosphere of their trial. The perpetrator(s) of the deadly bombing remain
unidentified today.
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