My History teacher once told us this story. A tile or a similar object had fallen from a building and killed a man. The tile was tried for murder, found guilty and destroyed.
I have looked everywhere for evidence of this event really happening, but I can't find anything. Did my teacher make this story up?
I don't know about a tile, but there is a legend connected to an Ancient Greek ceremony called the Buphonia, in which a knife is ultimately tried and drowned for murder. Why? The Buphonia involved sacrificing a working ox to Zeus, hitting it with an axe, and killing it with (you guessed it) a knife. But it was illegal to kill working oxen, so the sacrifice was considered a murder and a trial was held to determine who was at fault. This passage from Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities describes what happened:
A judicial assembly was held in the Prytaneum, to which all were summoned who had been partakers in the above transaction. Each lays the blame upon the other. The water-bearers [who bring water used to sharpen the knife]throw the guilt upon the sharpener of the axe and knife; the sharpener of the knife casts it upon the person delivering it to the feller of the beast; the feller of the beast upon the actual slaughterer, while this last ascribes the whole guilt to the knife itself. The knife, unable to speak, is found guilty and thrown into the sea.
So the buck got passed around and the knife ended up getting shafted, all in the name of Zeus. Similar to the story you heard, in that an inanimate object is accused of murder, found guilty, and destroyed, but in this one it's a knife and the victim is an ox.
P.S. Terry Deary's book Groovy Greeks is what reminded me of the story in the first place, and has an illustration to accompany the account, which I really like :)
Sources:
Deary, Terry. Groovy Greeks. Toronto: Scholastic Canada, 2007.
