Crazy, Wild Things: Lucid Dreams, Executions and World-Shaping Events Through History

Did you know?

It’s possible for two lucid dreamers to communicate mid-dream. Inter-brain neural synchronisation has been observed between people who are both asleep.

On this day in history, January 30

1647 The Scots agree to sell the exiled King Charles I, to England’s parliament for £400.

1649 King Charles I of England is beheaded. On his execution he insisted on wearing an extra shirt because he did not want shivers of cold to be misinterpreted as those of fear.

1661 Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, is ritually executed two years after his death – and on the 12th anniversary of the execution of Charles I. Cromwell and two others are dug up at Westminster Abbey and ‘executed’. Hanged in chains before being beheaded, the bodies, or what was left of them, were thrown into common graves, and their heads placed on spikes above Westminster Hall. During a storm in 1685, Cromwell’s head fell from the spike to the ground. It has been through numerous hands, in private and museum collections before being buried at Cambridge University.

1883 The Ashes Test series comes about when the England team is presented with the ashes of a bail after playing Australia in Sydney.

1943 Adolf Hitler promotes Friedrich Paulus, head of the 6th Army trapped in Stalingrad, to field marshal because no German of that rank has ever surrendered.

1945 The Wilhelm Gustloff, full of German refugees, is torpedoed in the Baltic by a Soviet submarine, killing 9 500 people.

1948 World-famous pacifist and Indian independence leader Gandhi is assassinated.

1981 Twenty-four people die in Operation Beanbag – an attack by the South African army on the ANC and PAC in Maputo.

1982 Richard Skrenta writes the first PC virus code, which is 400 lines long.

1984 Stander gang member Patrick McCall is killed by police in Houghton, Johannesburg.

2020 The World Health Organization declares Covid-19 a global Public Health Emergency.

2024 Former ace-cricketer and Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan, already in jail on corruption charges, is given another 10 years for leaking state secrets – just for good measure.

2025 Former US Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey receives an 11-year prison sentence for his conviction of bribery while in office.

DAILY NEWS