Mary Dyer was the first woman in American history to be hanged. In 1685, she defied a law in the Massachusetts Bay Colony which made it illegal to be a Quaker.  She was arrested and banished from the colony with the threat of a death sentence if she returned.

But she came back.

Like a bad penny.

Three times.

The third time she came back it was with two Quaker men – and they were hanged for being Quakers. Dyer was banished again and when she returned a fourth time, her death sentence was carried out. At the last moment, she was given a chance to save her own life. But she had to abandon her Quaker beliefs.  When she absolutely, positively, refused she was hanged on Boston Commons on June 1, 1660.  More than a century later, the founding fathers made sure that nothing like the hanging of Dyer would happen again. [See my books at www.authormasterminds.com.]