In early August 1881, Lemuel W. Smith, 30, got drunk and made the bad decision to grab two metal strips on the generator that powered the lights of Buffalo, N.Y., known at the time as the “Electric ...

You’ve probably heard about Thomas Edison’s infamous 1903 film where he electrocuted an elephant. It’s just as horrifying as you’d imagine. But fewer people know that this wasn’t actually Edison’s ...

On August 6, 135 years will have passed since the first execution by electric chair in the United States. The method was first used in 1890 to execute William Kemmler, who was convicted of murder.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Death row inmates in Tennessee can die one of two ways: lethal injection or the electric chair. "You're choosing two really rough options, and I guess you wanna choose the one ...

If Tennessee electrocutes Edmund Zagorski on Thursday, it will be in an electric chair built by a self-taught execution expert who is no longer welcome in the prison system and who worries that his ...

More than a century ago, William Kemmler, a vegetable seller, became the first person to be executed by an electric chair, marking a grim milestone in the evolution of capital punishment. On August 6, ...