On this day in history: Capital punishment abolished in Tuscany, 1786

In 1765, Peter Leopold Joseph Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard succeeded his father, Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, as Grand Duke of Tuscany. For five years of his reign a group of counsellors selected by his mother administered the Grand Duchy. Finally, in 1770 he visited Vienna and secured full control over Tuscany.

Peter Leopold set about reforming the Grand Duchy. Although he was unsuccessful in his attempt to secularise his state, he did remove many of the restrictions on commerce and personal freedom that the Medici had instituted and his father had left in place. He also started the process of drawing up a political constitution.

His enlightened attitudes extended to the punishment of criminals. After reading Cesare Beccaria's 1764 treatise on penal reform, Dei delitti e delle pene ("On Crimes and Punishments"), he started blocking the application of the death penalty, with no executions taking place after 1769. On 30th November 1786, he promulgated a reform that banned torture, abolished the death penalty and ordered the destruction of all instruments of capital punishment, making the Grand Duchy of Tuscany the first modern state to permanently abolish the death penalty.

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On this day in history: Most points scored by one player in NFL game, 1929

Born in Willow River, Minnesota, in 1903, Ernie Nevers developed his sporting prowess while at high school. He gained notoriety playing American football for Stanford University, being named as the Player of the Game in their 1925 Rose Bowl victory against the University of Notre Dame. The following year he made his professional sporting début as a pitcher for the St. Louis Browns baseball team, before also signing for the Duluth Eskimos AFL side as fullback.

In 1929 Nevers signed for he Chicago Cardinals NFL side, as player-coach. On 28th November, the Cardinals had a visit from their local rivals, the Chicago Bears, for the Thanksgiving Day fixture. The crowd of approximately eight-thousand watched as Nevers scored all forty points for the Cardinals in their 40-6 victory. He made six touchdowns and kicked four extra points to establish a record that still stands.

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On this day in history: Première of Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra, 1896

Richard Strauss was born in June 1864 in Munich, where his father, Franz, was the principal horn player at the Court Opera. Richard received a musical education from his father and started writing music at the age of six; yet, when he entered the city's university he chose to study philosophy and art history, rather than music. He spent a year at Munich University before moving to Berlin where he briefly studied music before securing a post as an assistant conductor in Meiningen, becoming principle conductor in 1885.

It was around that time that Strauss began composing tone poems, including Don Juan, op.20 (1889) and Tod und Verklärung ("Death and Transfiguration"), Op. 24 (1888-9). In 1894 he started sketching ideas for a tone poem inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel Also sprach Zarathustra ("Thus Spoke Zarathustra"), finishing the piece on 24th August 1896. It lasts around thirty minutes, comprising an introduction - now best known as the theme to Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey - and eight other sections named after chapters in Nietzsche's book.

On November 27th 1896, Richard Strauss conducted the première of Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 in Frankfurt. The piece proved popular, soon entering the classical repertoire. Nevertheless, some criticised Strauss' attempt at composing philosophical music, but he responded saying that he was setting philosophy to music, rather that his symphonic poem was an homage to Nietzsche's genius and an expression of the impact that the book had upon him.

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