Did You Know?
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Our very first of many "Did You Know?" trivia posts! These are daily recurring posts to test your inner historian. Questions, facts, video clips, photographs. You name it, it'll make it's way here eventually. Just don't leave here without LEARNING something!
Did you know who's "bright" idea it was to use electrocution as a form of execution? It was a dentist of all things, by the name of Dr. Albert Southwick. After witnessing an old drunkard zapped from touching an electrical terminal in Buffalo, New York, he suggested electrocution as being a "painless" means of capital punishment as opposed to hanging. The man commissioned to design the very first electric chair was Auburn New York Prison's very own electrician by the name of Edwin R. Davis. The first execution to be carried out via the electric chair happened in August of 1890 in the very same prison.
However, it couldn't have been very painless for the prisoner...
Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-execution-by-electric-chair
