January 8th 1697 Edinburgh student Thomas Aikenhead was executed in Edinburgh
January 8th 1697 Edinburgh student Thomas Aikenhead was executed in Edinburgh. This is a cracking, if sad tale, and shows you how religious beliefs can be a blight on our history. So who was oor Thomas, a villain?, a murderer?, a smuggler?, or some enemy of the state? No Thomas’s crime was blasphemy who took the lord’s name in vain…….this would be comic if it wasn’t for the tragic fact that he was executed, unlike the man in Life of Brian, who uttered the words Jehova, Thomas complained that he wished he was warming himself in hell rather than that chilly night walking past the recently built Tron Kirk on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. On a chilly evening in Edinburg, Scotland in 1696, twenty-year-old Thomas Aikenhead was walking with three other medical students when he remarked that at that moment he would prefer to be in Hell, where at least he would be warm. A few months later he would be on trial, with his life at stake.... Read story At that time blasphemy was a crime in Gre...