A citizen of New Haven, Connecticut, during the Puritan era, George Spencer was the victim of one of the most bizarre incidents of fundamentalist madness in American history. As Bill Bryson recounts in Made in America:
"When a one-eyed pig was born in the town, the magistrates cast around for an explanation and lighted on the hapless Spencer, who also had but one eye. Questioned as the possibility of bestiality, the frightened Spencer confessed, but then recanted. Under Connecticut law to convict Spencer of bestiality requited the testimony of two witnesses. So keen were the magistrates to hang him that they admitted the pig as one witness and his retracted confession as another."
I'm not quite sure what to make of the incident. Is it funny or tragic? And would there be any ignorant fundamentalist governments prepared to do that sort of thing today?