Lies caused deaths?

Question

many important or famous people's lives ended when a rumor or a lie as spread against them. these people would end up shot or something worse. what im asking is a couple of people who died because of a rumor or a lie. dont need to know th reason i just need to know who and where.

thank you

Answer 1

A good example of this is the Salem witch trials, which were a series of hearings before local magistrates followed by county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex Counties of colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused who were not formally pursued by the authorities. The two courts convicted twenty-nine people of the capital felony of witchcraft. Nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five men, were hanged, based solely on rumors and lies. One man, refusing to enter a plea, was ordered to be crushed to death under heavy stones. At least five more of the accused died in prison.

Despite being generally known as the "Salem" witch trials, the preliminary hearings in 1692 were conducted in a variety of towns across the province: Salem Village, Ipswich, Andover, as well as Salem Town, Massachusetts. The best-known trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town. All twenty-six who went to trial before this court were convicted. The four sessions of the Superior Court of Judicature in 1693, held in Salem Town, but also in Ipswich, Boston, and Charlestown, produced only three convictions in the thirty-one witchcraft trials it conducted.