Dark Stories: On This Day In True Crime History - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1794: The Fall of Robespierre: The Architect of the Terror Meets the Guillotine

Maximilien Robespierre, the lawyer turned revolutionary who came to embody the ruthless machinery of the French Revolution, was executed by guillotine in Paris on 28 July 1794. As the dominant force on the Committee of Public Safety, he had overseen the Reign of Terror, a period in which thousands were sent to the blade in the name of republican virtue. His own arrest, the day before, had come swiftly after the National Convention turned against him.

The man who had signed so many death warrants met the same end he had prescribed for others. Wounded during his arrest, reportedly from a gunshot to the jaw, he was carried to the scaffold in agony. His execution marked the end of the Terror and the beginning of the Thermidorian Reaction, a conservative turn that dismantled much of what he had built.

Arrest of Robespierre during revolutionary unrest

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Europe Execution France Political Crime Revolution

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1835: The Infernal Machine: Fieschi’s 25-Barrel Assassination Attempt on King Louis Philippe I

On 28 July 1835, Giuseppe Marco Fieschi fired a homemade 25-barrel volley gun, dubbed the ‘infernal machine’, from a third-floor window at 50 Boulevard du Temple in Paris, directly into the convoy of King Louis Philippe I of France. The weapon unleashed around 400 projectiles in a single volley; the king escaped with only a graze to the forehead, but 18 people were killed and 22 more wounded, at least four of whom had limbs amputated.

The gun’s design proved its own undoing: French artillery officers later concluded that if Fieschi had understood ballistics well enough to angle the barrels so they diverged and crossed, he could have killed up to 200 additional people and destroyed the king entirely. Instead, the parallel configuration limited the carnage. Fieschi himself was badly wounded when several barrels burst; he fled but was tracked by a trail of blood and captured shortly after.

Illustration of an assassination attempt on a king

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Assassination Europe France Paris Political Crime Trial

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1996: The Ivan Milat Verdict: Seven Murders, Life Without Parole

Ivan Robert Marko Milat, known as the Backpacker Murderer, was found guilty on 27 July 1996 of seven counts of murder, the worst serial killing case in Australian history. His victims, mostly young backpackers travelling the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne between 1989 and 1992, were lured under the pretence of a lift before being taken into the Belanglo State Forest in New South Wales and murdered.

Milat was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole and spent 25 years appealing his sentence. Police remained confident he was responsible for more killings than those proven at trial. He died in custody on 27 October 2019.

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Australia Belanglo State Forest Hunter Valley Melbourne Murder NSW Serial Killer Sydney Trial

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1890: Van Gogh Falls to a Self-Inflicted Wound in a French Wheat Field

On 27 July 1890, Vincent van Gogh walked into the wheat fields near Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. The wound was not immediately fatal; he staggered back to his lodgings at the Auberge Ravoux, where a doctor attended to him.

Van Gogh died two days later, on 29 July 1890, aged 37, with his brother Theo at his side. He had produced more than 2,000 works in a decade of furious creativity, yet sold only one painting during his lifetime.

Vincent van Gogh - Stairway at Auvers

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Europe France Suicide Tragedy

1794: The Fall of Robespierre: The Architect of the Terror Meets the Guillotine

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1835: The Infernal Machine: Fieschi’s 25-Barrel Assassination Attempt on King Louis Philippe I

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1996: The Ivan Milat Verdict: Seven Murders, Life Without Parole

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1890: Van Gogh Falls to a Self-Inflicted Wound in a French Wheat Field

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