Today’s Splintered Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The invention of the wheel may have been a boon, bringing immeasurable benefits to mankind generally, but thousands of people must have cursed its very existence as, while bound to a wheel, they were subjected to some of the most fiendish tortures ever devised. There were many adaptations over the centuries, but this particular method of execution is believed to have originated during the reign of the Roman Commodus, who died in AD 192. In his day the victim was secured on a wide wooden bench, and an iron-flanged wheel was then laid on his body. The executioner, wielding a heavy hammer, then pounded the wheel, starting at the victim’s ankles and working slowly upwards, smashing the bones to splinters, the impact of each blow on the wheel also causing dreadful injuries to other parts of the victim’s body.
Culled from: The Book Of Execution