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Water Cure (torture)
Water cure is a form of torture in which the victim is forced to drink large quantities of water in a short time, resulting in gastric distension, water intoxication, and possibly death. Often the victim has the mouth forced or wedged open, the nose closed with pincers and a funnel or strip of cloth forced down the throat. The victim has to drink all the water (or other liquids such as bile or urine) poured into the funnel to avoid drowning. The stomach fills until near bursting, swelling up in the process and is sometimes beaten until the victim vomits and the torture begins again. While this use of water as a form of torture is documented back to at least the 15th century, the first use of the phrase ''water cure'' in this sense is indirectly dated to around 1898, by U.S. soldiers in the Spanish–American War, after the phrase had been introduced to America in the mid-19th century in the therapeutic sense, which was in widespread use. Indeed, while the torture sense of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Water Cure
Water cure may refer to: * Water cure (therapy), a course of medical treatment by hydrotherapy * Water cure (torture), a form of torture in which a person is forced to drink large quantities of water * ''The Water Cure'', a 1916 film starring Oliver Hardy {{disambig es:Cura de agua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia. The company seized control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world. The EIC had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three Presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time. The operations of the company had a profound effect on the global balance of trade, almost single-handedly reversing the trend of eastward drain of Western bullion, seen since Roman times. Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies", the company rose to account for half of the world's trade duri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schwedentrunk
The ''Schwedentrunk'' (, ''Swedish drink'') is a method of torture and execution in which the victim is forced to swallow large amounts of foul liquid, such as excrement. The name was invented by German victims of Swedish troops during the Thirty Years' War. This method of torture was administered by other international troops, mercenaries, and marauders, and especially by civilians following the Swedish baggage train, who received no pay. It was used to force peasants or town citizens to hand over hidden money, food, animals, etc., or to extort sex from women. The memory of the ''Schwedentrunk'' was immortalized in one of the first widely read German books, the satirical ''Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus'' published by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen in 1668. Mechanism Its English translation is: Use of the ''Schwedentrunk'' is recorded in the histories of towns throughout Southern Germany. Though specific circumstances differed, in every case a restrained and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Émile Gaboriau
Émile Gaboriau (9 November 183228 September 1873) was a French writer, novelist, journalist, and a pioneer of detective fiction. Early life Gaboriau was born in the small town of Saujon, Charente-Maritime. He was the son of Charles Gabriel Gaboriau, a public official and his mother was Marguerite Stéphanie Gaboriau. Gaboriau became a secretary to Paul Féval, and after publishing some novels and miscellaneous writings, found his real gift in ''L'Affaire Lerouge'' (1866). Literary life ''L'Affaire Lerouge'', which was Gaboriau's first detective novel, introduced an amateur detective. It also introduced a young police officer named Monsieur Lecoq, who was the hero in three of Gaboriau's later detective novels. The character of Lecoq was based on a real-life thief turned police officer, Eugène François Vidocq (1775–1857), whose own memoirs, ''Les Vrais Mémoires de Vidocq'', mixed fiction and fact. It may also have been influenced by the villainous Monsieur Lecoq, one of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas (, ; ; born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (), 24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870), also known as Alexandre Dumas père (where '' '' is French for 'father', to distinguish him from his son Alexandre Dumas fils), was a French writer. His works have been translated into many languages and he is one of the most widely read French authors. Many of his historical novels of adventure were originally published as serials, including '' The Count of Monte Cristo'', ''The Three Musketeers'', ''Twenty Years After'' and '' The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later''. His novels have been adapted since the early twentieth century into nearly 200 films. Prolific in several genres, Dumas began his career by writing plays, which were successfully produced from the first. He also wrote numerous magazine articles and travel books; his published works totalled 100,000 pages. In the 1840s, Dumas founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris. His father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction. Doyle was a prolific writer; other than Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, " J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the ''Mary Celeste''. Name Doyle is often referred to as "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" or "Conan Doyle", implying that "Conan" is part of a compound surname rather than a middle name. His baptism entry in the register of St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, gives "Arth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madame De Brinvilliers
Marie-Madeleine d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers (22 July 1630 – 16 July 1676) was a French aristocrat who was accused and convicted of murdering her father and two of her brothers in order to inherit their estates. After her death, there was speculation that she poisoned upwards of 30 sick people in hospitals to test out her poisons, but these rumors were never confirmed. Her alleged crimes were discovered after the death of her lover and co-conspirator, Captain Godin de Sainte-Croix, who saved letters detailing dealings of poisonings between the two. After being arrested, she was tortured, forced to confess, and finally executed. Her trial and death spawned the onset of the Affair of the Poisons, a major scandal during the reign of Louis XIV accusing aristocrats of practicing witchcraft and poisoning people. Components of her life have been adapted into various different mediums including: short stories, poems, and songs to name a few. Early life The Marquise was bor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Breaking Wheel
The breaking wheel or execution wheel, also known as the Wheel of Catherine or simply the Wheel, was a torture method used for public execution primarily in Europe from antiquity through the Middle Ages into the early modern period by breaking the bones of a criminal or bludgeoning them to death. The practice was abolished in Bavaria in 1813 and in the Electorate of Hesse in 1836: the last known execution by the "Wheel" took place in Prussia in 1841. In the Holy Roman Empire it was a "mirror punishment" for highwaymen and street thieves, and was set out in the ''Sachsenspiegel'' for murder, and arson that resulted in fatalities. Punishment Those convicted as murderers, rapists, traitors and/or robbers to be executed by the wheel, sometimes termed to be "wheeled" or "broken on the wheel", would be taken to a public stage scaffold site and tied to the floor. The execution wheel was typically a large wooden spoked wheel, the same as was used on wooden transport carts and c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Calas
Jean Calas (1698 – 10 March 1762) was a merchant living in Toulouse, France, who was tried, tortured and executed for the murder of his son, despite his protestations of innocence. Calas was a Protestant in an officially Catholic society. Doubts about his guilt were raised by opponents of the Catholic Church and he was exonerated in 1764. In France, he became a symbolic victim of religious intolerance, along with François-Jean de la Barre and Pierre-Paul Sirven. Background Calas, along with his wife, was a Protestant. France was then a Catholic country; Catholicism was the state religion, with no legal right for individuals to practice different faiths. While the harsh oppression of Protestantism initiated by King Louis XIV had largely receded, Protestants were, at best, tolerated. Louis, one of Calas' sons, converted to Catholicism in 1756. Death of Marc-Antoine Calas left, The arrest of Calas. On 13–14 October 1761, another of the Calas sons, Marc-Antoine, was found ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
François Villon
François Villon (Modern French: , ; – after 1463) is the best known French poet of the Late Middle Ages. He was involved in criminal behavior and had multiple encounters with law enforcement authorities. Villon wrote about some of these experiences in his poems. Biography Birth Villon was born in Paris in 1431. One source gives the date as .Charpier 1958, "1er avril 1431 (vieux style) ou 19 avril 1432 (nouveau style) : naissance à Paris, de ''François de Montcorbier'', alias ''des Loges'', qui deviendra François Villon pril 1, 1431 (old style) or April 19, 1432 (new style): birth in Paris of ''François de Montcorbier'', alias ''des Loges'', who would become François Villon Early life Villon's real name may have been François de Montcorbier or François des Loges: both of these names appear in official documents drawn up in Villon's lifetime. In his own work, however, Villon is the only name the poet used, and he mentions it frequently in his work. His t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Litre
The litre (international spelling) or liter (American English spelling) (SI symbols L and l, other symbol used: ℓ) is a metric unit of volume. It is equal to 1 cubic decimetre (dm3), 1000 cubic centimetres (cm3) or 0.001 cubic metre (m3). A cubic decimetre (or litre) occupies a volume of (see figure) and is thus equal to one-thousandth of a cubic metre. The original French metric system used the litre as a base unit. The word ''litre'' is derived from an older French unit, the '' litron'', whose name came from Byzantine Greek—where it was a unit of weight, not volume—via Late Medieval Latin, and which equalled approximately 0.831 litres. The litre was also used in several subsequent versions of the metric system and is accepted for use with the SI,Bureau International des Poids et M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pint
The pint (, ; symbol pt, sometimes abbreviated as ''p'') is a unit of volume or capacity in both the imperial unit, imperial and United States customary units, United States customary measurement systems. In both of those systems it is traditionally one eighth of a gallon. The British imperial pint is about 20% larger than the American pint because Comparison of the imperial and US customary measurement systems, the two systems are defined differently. Almost all other countries have standardized on the metric system, so although some of them still also have traditional units called pints (such as for beverages), the volume varies by regional custom. The imperial pint (≈) is used in the United Kingdom and Ireland and to a limited extent in Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth nations. In the United States, two kinds of pint are used: a liquid pint (≈) and a less-common dry pint (≈). Other Dominion , former British colonies, such as Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Z ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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