22 MAY
LORD MANSFIELD – THROWING SLAVES OVERBOARD CANNOT BE MURDER.
[ 22 May 1783 ]
On this day in 1783, Lord Mansfied, the Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, issued his verdict on the case of 132 men, women and children thrown overboard from a British owned slave ship, the Zong, on 29 November 1871. It was one of many brutal crimes committed against the millions of slaves who were victims of Britain’s transatlantic slave trade.
THE BRITISH PREEMPT A MUTINY AT PESHAWAR WITH MASS EXECUTIONS

The Illustrated London News, 3 October 1857. p333 and p. 336.
[ 22 May 1857 ]
On this day in 1857, British soldiers rounded up Indian troops at Peshawar who were refusing to follow orders and suspected of planning to join the growing insurgency against British rule. According to one report, ‘150 were killed on the spot and 9 tried by drumhead court martial and instantly shot,’ while ‘others were driven into the hills and killed by the hillmen, a price of ten rupees being placed on their heads.’1
ASTON VILLA HONOUR THE NAZIS WITH TWO NAZI SALUTES
On Sunday 22 May 1938, at a football match in Stuttgart, in front of sixty thousand spectators, Aston Villa gave a Nazi salute both at the start and at the end of the match, while the German team didn’t even bother to do the same. The Daily Mirror, under the headline “Villa Give Nazi Salute After Win But Germans Don’t Reply,” refrained from any criticism of this accidental excess of deference to the Nazi regime. 2
FOOTNOTES
- ‘The Mutiny at Peshawar,’ The Globe, 4 August 1857, p. 1 and “The Mutiny at Peshawar, The Dublin Mercantile Advertiser, 7 August 1857, p. 4.
- ‘Villa Give Nazi Salute After Win But Germans Don’t Reply’, the Daily Mirror, 23 May 1938, p. 31.
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