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The Last Execution by Guillotine Was the Same Year Star Wars Came Out
France carried out its last guillotine execution on September 10, 1977. Star Wars premiered on May 25, 1977. While audiences were watching futuristic space battles, a medieval execution device was still in official use.
Why It’s Fascinating
It is a jarring collision of timelines that shows how unevenly human progress moves. The same species that was sending probes to Mars was still using an 18th-century beheading machine for capital punishment in one of the world's most advanced democracies.
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