13th Century to 18th Century: Criminals are hit with rotten vegetables and horse feces while locked into a pillory, a form of corporal punishment that later evolved into the whipping post. After being sentenced to this for seditious libel in 1703 for publishing the satirical pamphlet “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters,” Daniel Defoe is instead showered with roses by the crowd in a show of support. Delaware would become the last U.S. state to abolish the whipping post in 1972.