Mental Floss: Instant Knowledge (44 page)

ZERO

(as in the number of witches burnt to a crisp)

USEFUL FOR:
bonfire banter, Halloween parties, and road-trip chatter en route to Massachusetts

KEYWORDS:
witches, Joan of Arc, or Salem, Massachussetts

THE FACT:
No matter what impression you’ve gotten from your high school reading
The
Crucible
or bad late night PBS, the truth is there were zero (as in no) witches burned at the stake in New England.

While most people think the witches of Salem were skewered en masse, the truth is that no witches were ever burned during the infamous witch hysteria of 1692. However, this doesn’t mean that they didn’t have it really, really bad. Of the 150 people accused of witchcraft, only 20 were sentenced to death: 19 of them were hanged; the remaining “witch” was crushed to death by stones. Oh, and six of them were men.

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Credits

Cover design and illustration by Leander Reeves/www.kittycave.net

Copyright

MENTAL_FLOSS PRESENTS: INSTANT KNOWLEDGE.
C
OPYRIGHT
© 2005 by Mental Floss LLC.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

ePub edition October 2005 ISBN 9780061747663

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