One of the first special effects was The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1895). Inventor and moviemaker Thomas Edison substituted a dummy for the actress. In a short sequence, Mary knelt down and put her head on the block as the executioner raised a large axe. When the axe came down, Mary's head apparently rolled off the chopping block. Actually it was the dummy's head. When the audiences saw the sence, they gasped in horror. Since then, filmmakers have used tricks like this to make people see things that didn't happen in real life.