When you think of the most infamous execution device, the phrase “top 10 bizarre” probably jumps to mind. The guillotine, a steel‑blade contraption that became the hallmark of the French Revolution, has a legacy that stretches far beyond the blood‑stained streets of Paris. Below, we explore ten unsettling, oddball details that highlight just how strange this death machine truly was.
Top 10 Bizarre Highlights
10 Creation Of The Guillotine
Legend has it that Joseph Ignace Guillotin was born on the streets of Saintes after his mother went into labor while hearing the tormented screams of a man being torn apart on a breaking wheel. Whether or not that tale holds any truth, French historian Daniel Arasse noted that the circumstances of Guillotin’s birth seemed to foreshadow his later notoriety.
Guillotin, a physician who campaigned against capital punishment, devoted his professional life to designing a more humane execution method. In 1791 his lobbying persuaded the National Assembly to adopt his invention as the exclusive means of carrying out death sentences.
Finding a carpenter to build the massive device proved surprisingly difficult; many craftsmen refused, fearing the stigma of being linked to a tool of death. Finally, a German harpsichord maker named Tobias Schmidt agreed to construct it on the condition that his name remain unassociated with the contraption.
Contrary to popular myth, Guillotin never met his end beneath his own blade. He lived to the age of 75, passing away in 1814. Embarrassed that his surname had become synonymous with decapitation, his relatives petitioned the government to rename the device. When officials declined, the family simply changed their own name. The guillotine’s final French execution occurred in 1977, when a convicted murderer met his fate.
9 Lack Of Gore
Nicolas‑Jacques Pelletier, sentenced for robbery and murder, became the inaugural victim of the guillotine. On the morning of 25 April 1792, he was marched to a plaza outside the Hôtel de Ville, where a buzzing crowd awaited the spectacle.
As soon as Pelletier stepped onto the blood‑red platform, the weighted blade descended, sending his head tumbling into the wicker basket below. Workers quickly shoveled sawdust onto the blood‑splattered boards, bringing the grisly display to a swift close.
Spectators, however, found the execution “too clinical and anticlimactic” and complained that it lacked the visceral drama they expected. Disgruntled, they began chanting, “Give me back my wooden gallows!” Despite the outcry, demand for the device surged, prompting rapid production to supply towns across France. Executioner Charles‑Henri Sanson reportedly beheaded 300 men and women in just three days, and could dispatch 12 victims in a mere 13 minutes.
8 Experimentation
Devices resembling the guillotine pre‑date the French Revolution, but the fine‑tuning of the infamous mechanism took place amid the turmoil of 18th‑century Paris.
To avoid public embarrassment, the French government conducted a series of tests on various subjects. Initial trials involved live sheep and calves, followed by human cadavers in 1792. Unsatisfied, officials selected three additional corpses—robust men who had died from accidents or sudden illness rather than frailty—to gauge the blade’s precision.
While the primary goal was to confirm the machine’s accuracy, these experiments also fed into medical curiosity about organ function. Physicians used a subtractive method: by removing or damaging specific organs, they could infer each organ’s role. The dramatic removal of the head, for instance, underscored the brain’s central importance—a concept now taken for granted but revolutionary in the 1700s.
7 Vietnam
In 1955, the newly formed Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN) emerged. After a questionable election the following year, Ngo Dinh Diem ascended to the presidency.
Fearing that North Vietnam’s communist forces sought to overthrow the South, Diem enacted Law 10/59, which permitted the indefinite detention of anyone suspected of communist sympathies without formal charges.
To spread terror, Diem ordered the military to travel with a mobile guillotine, taking it village‑by‑village to hunt down alleged Viet Cong supporters.
During the ensuing years, hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese were beheaded. In a gruesome display reminiscent of medieval cruelty, the heads—and sometimes intestines—of the accused were mounted on stakes throughout the countryside.
6 A Profitable Nazi Venture
The guillotine experienced a dark resurgence under the Nazi regime, where Adolf Hitler personally ordered a sizable production of the machines. Executioners earned a comfortable salary of 3,000 Reichsmarks per year—a considerable sum for the era.
In addition, they received a bonus of 65 Reichsmarks for each decapitation, allowing them to live well‑off amid the regime’s terror. Notably, Johann Reichhart, one of Germany’s most prominent executioners, accumulated enough wealth from 3,000 beheadings to purchase a villa in an upscale Munich suburb.
The Nazis even monetized the death machine by charging families for the execution. Relatives were billed 1.50 Reichsmarks per day of imprisonment and an extra 300 Reichsmarks for the actual beheading. Over roughly nine years, the guillotine claimed 16,500 lives, including the 17‑year‑old Helmuth Hubener, executed for distributing anti‑war leaflets.
5 The Seconds That Follow Decapitation
When the blade drops, does the victim’s mind still register anything as the head falls into the basket? Researchers have tested this question on animals ranging from rats to chickens, yet the answer remains elusive.
Historical accounts claim that figures such as King Charles I, Anne Boleyn, and the criminal Henri Languille appeared to communicate with their executioners after being beheaded, suggesting a fleeting moment of awareness.
Scientists describe this phenomenon as “the wave of death,” a burst of residual activity in the brain tissue after the heart stops. Although death is defined by the cessation of cardiac and cerebral function, a 2002 study in the Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine reported that brain cells can remain active for weeks post‑mortem—though not in a way that indicates consciousness.
4 The Guillotine In North America
Located roughly 1,450 km (900 mi) northeast of New York, the island of St. Pierre became the site of the first—and last—guillotine execution on North American soil. The case began in 1889 when Auguste Neel, in a drunken rage, murdered a fellow fisherman.
To carry out the sentence, officials had to transport a guillotine from nearby Guadeloupe, as the device was not available locally.
Although the instrument was never employed again in North America, some lawmakers have advocated for its return. In the 1990s, Georgia State Representative Doug Teper argued that a guillotine would simplify organ donation from the executed.
Georgia’s capital‑punishment history includes over 500 hangings from 1735 to 1924, later replaced by the electric chair. In 1938, officials set a record by electrocuting six men within 81 minutes. Recent legislative efforts have sought to allow death sentences without unanimous juries and to lower the eligible age to 16.
3 The Family Trade
Executioners—known in French as bourreaux—were shunned by society, often denied service by local tradespeople. To avoid the stigma, they lived outside city walls with their families.
Because of their low social standing, marrying outside the profession was difficult, leading many executioners to be legally permitted to wed cousins.
One of the most renowned was Charles‑Henri Sanson, who entered the family trade at fifteen. He prized the method’s “simplicity and absence of noise” and became something of a celebrity among Parisians, celebrated for his flamboyant attire and genteel demeanor—even earning favor at the royal court.
Sanson’s most iconic act was the execution of King Louis XVI in 1793. Later that year, his son Henri beheaded Marie Antoinette, while another son, Gabriel, met a tragic end when he slipped on the blood‑slick scaffold and fell to his death.
2 Eugene Weidmann
In 1937, Paris was on high alert after a spate of murders, including the killing of American socialite Jean de Koven. Eugene Weidmann was eventually convicted for the gruesome spree.
On 17 June 1939, he was led to the courtyard of Prison Saint‑Pierre, where a guillotine and a raucous crowd awaited. The audience’s rowdy behavior delayed the execution well past twilight.
After the blade fell, spectators rushed to dab up Weidmann’s blood with handkerchiefs as a macabre souvenir. Newspapers denounced the chaos, describing it as “disgusting, clamoring, [and] jostling.”
The graphic images and film of the event convinced authorities that public executions incited baser human instincts and encouraged disorder rather than deterring crime. Consequently, French President Albert Lebrun banned all future public executions, making Weidmann the last person publicly guillotined in France.
1 Suicide
Even after the guillotine fell out of official use, desperate individuals have fashioned their own versions to end their suffering. In 2003, Boyd Taylor of England spent weeks building a bedroom‑sized guillotine that was set to activate at 3:30 am while he slept. His decapitated body was discovered by his father, who mistook the sound for a falling chimney.
Four years later, a Michigan man constructed a similar device in a wooded area behind a local business; groundskeepers uncovered his remains after detecting a foul odor.
Perhaps the most bizarre case involved David Moore in 2006. He assembled a guillotine from metal piping and a saw blade, but the contraption malfunctioned, injuring him gravely. Moore managed to crawl to his bedroom, where police later found his corpse. Investigators also discovered ten Molotov cocktails wired throughout his home, all of which failed to detonate.
These tragic, self‑inflicted guillotine deaths underscore the macabre fascination the device still holds, even in the modern era.