Research offers so many diversions from the main thread one is following. Yesterday it was Blériot flying the Channel. This morning produced this distracting oddity, from the Wikipedia entry for Northampton, MA (link below):

In 1805 a crowd of 15,000 gathered in Northampton to watch the executions of two Irishmen convicted of murder: Dominic Daley, 34, and James Halligan, 27. The crowd, composed largely of New England Protestants of English ancestry, lit bonfires and expressed virulently anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiments. The trial evidence against Daley and Halligan was sparse, circumstantial, contrived, and perjurious.[18] The men were hanged on June 5, 1806, on Pancake Plain. Their bodies were denied a burial; they were destroyed in the local slaughterhouse. This trial “later came to be seen as epitomizing the anti-Irish sentiment that was widespread in New England in the early 19th century.”[19] Daley and Halligan were exonerated of all crimes by governor Michael Dukakis in 1984. Today a simple stone landmark stands marking the site of Daley and Halligan’s executions.

Not long after, the Transcendentalists took the place over. Go figure.

via Northampton, Massachusetts – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.