Inanimate becomes Animate to Cause Death

During the history of this world, humans have devised hundreds of ways to kill a man. Some techniques have been merciful towards the condemned, while others (especially in early times) have been downright cruel. Crucifixion, Stoning, Crushing, Burning, Hanging, Gassing, Drawing & Quartering, Electrocution. All these methods and more have been employed to bring about death.
Indeed when one considers that only one method is really needed throughout the world, then having such a plentiful choice of grisly devices is proof (if proof were needed) of how just how dark mankind's mind can be.


Infamous: The Gallows and the Chair

Most of these lethal contraptions will be largely unknown by most people. Who really, apart from the ghouls among us, has ever heard of the Brazen Bull? A hollow iron bull into which prisoners were locked and slowly roasted over an open fire. Or the Cave of Roses, where the condemned were sealed inside a cave filled with highly poisonous snakes?
But which deadly designs delivered the quickest death? And which are the most recognisable? Surely the Crucifix has to be the best known if only for the fact that a model of it swings around the throats of millions of Christians (and rockstars) every day.
For me personally, I believe the Gallows and the Electric Chair are top of the bill in terms of infamy and quickest to despatch the inmate to eternity. Britain's most famous hangman Albert Pierrepoint had the prisoner hanged in under 30 seconds, and most of those seconds were going from cell to scaffold. Death at the end of the rope would have been instant and painless.
As for America's legendary Electric Chair, as soon as 2,000 volts are jolted into the condemned, expiration would follow pretty quickly should the execution go smoothly, and be as pain free as the hangman's rope.
The ancient civilizations like Greece and Rome had their share of well known devices of destruction but nothing comes close in recent history as these two icons of execution.