Hans Hut, a 16th-century traveling book salesman of southern Germany, became an ardent member of the peasant religious movement called Anabaptism. The Anabaptists had split from Martin Luther's Protestantism and become involved in a number of countryside battles and coups against city governments. Though not a violent or military man himself, Hut was a writer and vociferous preacher of end times, claiming Christ would return in 1528 to destroy all but 144,000 elect.
Arrested with dozens of other Anabaptists who had met in Augsburg in 1527, Hut was severely tortured between August and today - December 6 - when he was asphyxiated in an accidental fire at the prison. The next day, authorities sentenced him to death and burned his remains.
