{"id":126862,"date":"2026-02-08T15:09:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T15:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/126862\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T15:09:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T15:09:29","slug":"on-this-day-feb-8-mary-queen-of-scots-beheaded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/126862\/","title":{"rendered":"On This Day, Feb. 8: Mary Queen of Scots beheaded"},"content":{"rendered":"

1 of 5 | The painting “Historical Scene with Mary Queen of Scots and a Kneeling Nobleman” from 1877 shows the last moments of Mary Queen of Scots before she was beheaded February 8, 1587, after being charged with conspiring to kill England’s Queen Elizabeth I. Image by August Jernberg\/Library of Congress<\/p>\n

Feb. 8 (UPI) — On this date in history:<\/p>\n

In 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded, charged with conspiring to kill England’s Queen Elizabeth I.\n<\/p>\n

In 1692, a doctor in Massachusetts Bay Colony said two village girls were possibly bewitched, a charge that set off the Salem witch trials.<\/p>\n

In 1693, the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., was granted a charter by Britain’s King William III.<\/p>\n

In 1915, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, a landmark in the history of cinema and the first American full-length motion picture, opened in Los Angeles and was immediately a smash hit though many found its treatment of race offensive.<\/p>\n

In 1933, two British Royal Air Force pilots landed at Walvis Bay, 800 miles north of Cape Town, South Africa, setting a non-stop flight record<\/a> after traveling 5,175 miles from England.<\/p>\n

In 1960, groundbreaking got underway for the first plaques installed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which honored Olive Borden, Ronald Colman, Louise Fazenda, Preston Foster, Burt Lancaster, Edward Sedgwick, Ernest Torrence and Joanne Woodward.<\/p>\n

In 1974, three U.S. Skylab<\/a> astronauts ended an 84-day orbital flight.\n<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFile Photo courtesy of NASA\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

In 1983, a group of gunmen stole one the world’s most valuable racehorses<\/a>, Shergar, from a stud farm in Ireland. The kidnappers demanded a $3.1 million ransom, but negotiations proved fruitless and the horse was never seen again.<\/p>\n

In 1993, at least 132 people were killed<\/a> when a Russian-made Tupolev jetliner flying for Iran Air Tours collided with a Sukhoi military aircraft near Tehran.<\/p>\n

In 2002, the Olympic Winter Games opened in Salt Lake City<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2007, Anna Nicole Smith, a 39-year-old actor, model and tabloid fixture, was found dead in a Hollywood, Fla., hotel<\/a>. Her death was attributed to accidental sedative overdose.<\/p>\n

In 2014, snowboarding slopestyle made its debut<\/a> at the Olympic Games with American Sage Kotsenburg claiming the first gold medal in the event in Sochi, Russia.<\/p>\n

In 2022, Austrian Matthias Mayer made history, becoming the first man to win alpine skiing gold in three Olympics after taking first place<\/a> in the men’s super-G event in Beijing.\n<\/p>\n

In 2024, Pakistani voters went to the polls<\/a>, giving jailed Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party, or PTI, an unexpected plurality of legislative seats.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFile Photo by Bilawal Arbab\/EPA-EFE\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1 of 5 | The painting “Historical Scene with Mary Queen of Scots and a Kneeling Nobleman” from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123,27],"class_list":["post-126862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}