Miscellany
A doctoral student in economics at Harvard University in 2004 compared the rise and fall of temperatures to the likelihood of witch trials in Europe, discovering that they often formed an inverse relationship. The average temperature between roughly 1520 and 1770 was two degrees lower than previous centuries, leading to crop failure and economic instability. The majority of trials and executions for witchcraft occurred during the period, known as the “little ice age.”
Miscellany
The second of the 282 laws in the Code of Hammurabi, dating from the eighteenth century bc, states, “If a man charge a man with sorcery, and cannot prove it, he who is charged with sorcery shall go to the river; into the river he shall throw himself, and if the river overcome him, his accuser shall take to himself his house. If the river show that man to be innocent, and he come forth unharmed, he who charged him with sorcery shall be put to death.”
Miscellany
For publishing an editorial critical of John Adams’ Federalist administration in 1798, Vermont congressman Matthew Lyon became the first U.S. citizen tried under the Sedition Act. He was fined $1,000 and sentenced to four months in federal jail. He ran his reelection campaign from prison, winning by a two-to-one margin. He resumed his post upon release.
