The Salem Witch Trials happened in 1692. That's when a bunch of dumb girls started accusing so many innocent people of being witches. You should research more on this topic. Or read The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

It inspired 'The Crucible'.

There is no such thing as witches and spells so just on that fact alone they couldn't have been witches. Extensive research as been done on the people and the events in Salem and the data shows that the people accused were on the fringes of the society for that time/place. Several of the women were widows or single for one reason or another and were considered "odd" or strange. People who were mentally or physically ill in the 1700's were often thought of as witches. The fact that the entire event was started by 12-13 year old girls is also a factor when considering what happened.

The people of Salem had no explanation for what ailed the afflicted and were afraid of it. Blaming witches and attempting to get rid of those witches was one of the only things they could do. Also, at the time, religion played a part in the law and government, so it would be simple to try them for witchcraft, that was actually a felony.

The victims of the trials were hanged. However, Giles Corey was pressed to death under stones when he refused to enter a plea during his trial.

The Salem witch trials gave a reason for the use of spectral evidence in trial to be banned in court, something that hadn't happened before.

They usually hung, burnt, drowned, or cut them to death.

EDIT:

At Salem, they only hung the convicted witches. Burning was a Continental European punishment. Drowning was part of the water test and if you drowned you were innocent. And "cut" I can only explain as beheading. The only person accused of witchcraft to be beheaded was Anne Bolynn, and that was because she was convicted of treason.

Halucinations linked to a mold that grows on wheat caused many Europeans who were Christian zealots to see devils and scary bible things. In their myopic world the only way that they could explain their haluciantions was to say that it was something demonic. The Europeans were done with their witch trials when it hit America. They had learned from them, but America had to experience it for herself. Again religious zealots who don't think highly of women, expecially old single women, made sport out of burning them alive and giving them impossible trials that no one could survive. Under torture a person would be forced to name another "witch", if that person gave a name, then the next person would be tortured and killed. The American witch trials were sparked from the over active imagination of a few adolecent girls. They continued because religious men and councel men gained power by governing over who was going to live and who was going to die and how. This probably provided great entertainment just as the blood sports of the Roman age had. It was also a great way to have someone whom offended you or that you were jealous of killed. The trials document how brutal and ruthless humans can be even to their next door neighbors of whom they depended on for survival in early America. sad, sick and true.

The scare began when girls and young women in Salem village began to have epilspsy-like "fits." We don't know why those fist began. Back in the day, the girls were bewitched. Now, we think they were physically or mentallly ill or maybe were poisoned.

Mass hysteria caused by an over zealous religious faith all fueled by superstition, panic, and rumor. Tituba, A West Indian indentured servant recently imported to a household in Salem, had been telling stories and folklore about demons and spells to several young girls who, in turn, spread the stories through the neighborhood. Such stories of witches and demons and spells to ward them off or attract them had always been in circulation, but under the influence of an "authority" like Tituba, they took root in the minds of some very impressionable adolescent girls and spread.

I'm pretty it sure was the Puritains.

Because back then they thought that witches were really bad people so the people who they thought were witches actually weren't it was just a disease that people were getting from eating really moldy bread.

Yes Washington st. The inmate can pick this as their means of execution

If you wanted to get away from acussations, you just had to leave Essex County. There was really nowhere to hide in Salem.

You have to understand the terminology of the era. The common belief was that the devil was summoned and would then proceed to possess the practcioners. The affliction would refer to such an event. The accusation would be the courts ruling regarding the alleged afflicted.

there were at the centre of it, it was a relgious court that pressed Giles Corey to his death, and them who were involved in partially exasibathing the hysteria

EDIT:

The Puritans were the only religious group in Essex County. Everyone who was invovled believed in the Puritan teachings.

They interpreted them as a religious punishment and as way for people to get rid of others, the people accused as witches were often accused because of some religious thing they did or because someone didn't like them and if they got enough people to testify against the accused then the accused would die.

The Administration of Justice Act of 1774 was one of the acts passed that protected British troops by allowing their trial to be moved to a new venue. It was passed to give troops a fair trail.

Smt. Rattan Bai Jain was the first woman convict hanged in the republic of India. She was hanged in New Delhi on 03.01.1955 for the murder of three girls by poisoning.

The religious zealots. <----- This answer is not true. The real truth is that in 1688, Samuel Parris was invited to preach at the church in Salem, Massachusettes, and to bring his family, his wife, Elizabeth, his six-year-old daughter Betty, niece Abagail Williams, and his Indian slave Tituba. The village girls were caught fortune-telling with Tituba, and to save themselves, blamed older women and men of being in league with the devil, and forcing them to do witchcraft. The accusers were all young girls. 25 people died between June 10th and October 1st, 1692.

Betty Parris was the first to be afflicted and made the fewest accusations. It is clear to modern historians that even if the girls were lying, Betty had a legitimate illness that possibly gave the others the idea for their act.

By picking and choosing facts about the Trials, Miller could make it work for a close to obvious allusion to McCarthyism, yet it was different enough that no one could accuse him of being against a government policy or of being against said policy because he was a communist.