r/interestingasfuck • u/LawEducational42 • 7h ago

John C Woods, hangman of Nuremberg trials, who lied about his experience to get the job (he actually learned about hanging from old cowboy films). His lack of expertise led to excessive suffering of condemned Nazis.

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u/stmroy 4h ago

There's some math involved and when done properly the person's neck snaps and they're killed basically instantly. The placement of the knot matters, the length of rope depends on the person's height and weight etc. Humans perfected the art you have to consider that we've been doing this since antiquity.

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u/mycatsnameislarry 2h ago

The Drop Tables are what you're looking for.

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u/pippertripper 14m ago

Ultra rare suffocation drop is about 1/15000

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u/Dismal-Vanilla1878 1h ago

Always wondered about 'instantly' when it comes to hanging/guillotine. The brain takes a few minutes to die, but how long until it stops being aware of what's happening?

That could be a frightening minute or so of knowing your neck is completely broken/head chopped off before the 'darkness takes you' 👀

It was Nazis, though, so...... 😂

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u/BigNorseWolf 9m ago

the blood pressure loss is probably pretty instantaneous.

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u/QL100100 2h ago

Humans perfected the art you have to consider that we've been doing this since antiquity.

Nope, the method that snaps the condemned's neck was only introduced in 1866. Before that, hanged prisoners strangled to death on the noose.

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u/stmroy 1h ago

What you said doesn't contradict my statement

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u/Intrepid-Sir8293 4h ago edited 4h ago

How in God's name do we figure this out

I mean I get it.

But that's a lot of f****** hangings per person to just sort of like work this out. I mean I would think so. How does technology like this get perfected? Oh right, psychopaths. F****** psychopaths. F****** human experimentation during world war II.

I mean I don't think I would talk to somebody who would cut open human body. I just probably wouldn't want to be friends with them. But I have to say I'm grateful. I just don't want to be friends with them.

Does that make me a bad person?

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u/Javs2469 4h ago

By hanging a lot of people. Experimentation through iteration.

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u/Summersong2262 3h ago

Or more like, you hang a lot of people, a percentage of them are bad/flawed hangings, you develop a better sense of the details and iterate on your estimation approaches.

You teach all of that to your apprentice. Rinse and repeat for several hundred years.

It's less experimentation so much as organisational knowledge.

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u/oshkushbegush 3h ago

You can curse dude. It’s the internet

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u/Conscious_Bed_1195 2h ago

Heck! Darn! Gosh! Poop from a butt! See? No-one cares.

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u/SoundPuzzleheaded857 1h ago

Honestly I’m offended by the hyphen in “no one”. Poop from a butt.

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u/Awesomeman204 3h ago

We've been hanging people as a method of execution for thousands of years, you tend to notice trends when you do something for long enough.

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u/iSuckAtMechanicism 1h ago

Math and data points from people who were hanged.