Freethought Almanac

Lighting a candle in toxic air.

January 8: Thomas Aikenhead Executed for Blasphemy (1697)

It was on this date, January 8, 1697, that Edinburgh University student Thomas Aikenhead was hanged for blasphemy in Scotland. Thomas was born in March 1676 and baptized on the 28th. His upbringing is obscure, except that he was the son of an educated father and that he was an orphaned by age 10. Nevertheless, in 1693, he found himself studying at Edinburgh University, as a 17-year-old medical student. The University library may have been his undoing, because it is clear that Thomas read books by Descartes, Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes and other freethinkers…

To read more, go to THIS LINK.

Originally published January 2003 by Ronald Bruce Meyer.

Ronald Bruce Meyer

Our Fearless Leader.


Daily Almanac

November 1: Larry Flynt

Larry Flynt (1942) It was on this date, November 1, 1942, that magazine publisher Larry Claxton Flynt was born in Salyersville, Kentucky. The publisher of around twenty sex magazines, Larry Flynt is known equally well for the most famous of them, the ground-breaking Hustler, and for his brushes with obscenity law. Flynt grew up poor […]



Daily Almanac

Coming soon!

Follow me on twitter

@ 2020 Free Thought Almanac