Aaron Mahnke

On the surface, it seemed like a progressive move.

But you know what they say.

In ancient Greek, the word pneuma means breath, but it also refers to the spirit.

The word spirit itself comes from Latin spiritus, literally meaning breath.

In short, for thousands of years, we have believed that breathing is intricately linked to the human soul.

Which begs the question, what happens when that sacred breath of life is poisoned?

As far as we know, the first instance of state execution via lethal gas took place way back in the late 1700s, and surprise, surprise, it is not a pleasant story.

In a nutshell, a group of enslaved people in what's now the Dominican Republic had rebelled against their captors, retaliating, French officials packed black prisoners into the hold of a ship and then sealed the exits.

And then, they lit a stockpile of sulfur aflame.

The sulfur burned through the night, releasing toxic gas all the while.

By dawn, the prisoners were dead.

Of course, these days when we think of gas chambers, we tend to think of the Holocaust.

And it's true that the modern incarnation of the gas chamber was indeed a product of the 20th century, despite its early start.

But it wasn't the Nazis who developed it.

No, who we really have to thank for execution by gas is none other than the good ol' U.S.

of A. That's right, during World War I, the U.S.

Army did a bunch of research on chemical warfare, and a direct byproduct of that research was the gas chamber.

In 1921, Nevada became the first U.S.

state to adopt it as a form of capital punishment.

And in 1924, the first execution took place.