title: Capital punishment

text: In the Helvetic Republic, the death penalty for children and youth under the age of 16 was abolished in 1799 yet the country was already dissolved in 1803 whereas the law could remain in force if it was not replaced on cantonal level. In the canton of Bern, all juveniles were exempted from the death penalty at least in 1866. In Fribourg, capital punishment was generally, including for juveniles, abolished by 1849. In Ticino, it was abolished for youth and young adults under the age of 20 in 1816. In Zurich, the exclusion from the death penalty was extended for juveniles and young adults up to 19 years of age by 1835. In 1942, the death penalty was almost deleted in criminal law, as well for juveniles, but since 1928 persisted in military law during wartime for youth above 14 years. If no earlier change was made in the given subject, by 1979 juveniles could no longer be subject to the death penalty in military law during wartime.


title: Capital punishment

text: Between 2005 and May 2008, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen were reported to have executed child offenders, the largest number occurring in Iran.


title: Capital punishment

text: During Hassan Rouhani's tenure as president of Iran from 2013 until 2021, at least 3,602 death sentences have been carried out. This includes the executions of 34 juvenile offenders.


title: Capital punishment

text: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids capital punishment for juveniles under article 37(a), has been signed by all countries and subsequently ratified by all signatories with the exception of the United States (despite the US Supreme Court decisions abolishing the practice). The UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights maintains that the death penalty for juveniles has become contrary to a jus cogens of customary international law. A majority of countries are also party to the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (whose Article 6.5 also states that "Sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age...").


title: Capital punishment

text: Iran, despite its ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, was the world's largest executioner of juvenile offenders, for which it has been the subject of broad international condemnation; the country's record is the focus of the Stop Child Executions Campaign. But on 10 February 2012, Iran's parliament changed controversial laws relating to the execution of juveniles. In the new legislation the age of 18 (solar year) would be applied to accused of both genders and juvenile offenders must be sentenced pursuant to a separate law specifically dealing with juveniles. Based on the Islamic law which now seems to have been revised, girls at the age of 9 and boys at 15 of lunar year (11 days shorter than a solar year) are deemed fully responsible for their crimes. Iran accounted for two-thirds of the global total of such executions, and currently has approximately 140 people considered as juveniles awaiting execution for crimes committed (up from 71 in 2007). The past executions of Mahmoud Asgari, Ayaz Marhoni and Makwan Moloudzadeh became the focus of Iran's child capital punishment policy and the judicial system that hands down such sentences.


title: Capital punishment

text: Saudi Arabia also executes criminals who were minors at the time of the offence. In 2013, Saudi Arabia was the center of an international controversy after it executed Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan domestic worker, who was believed to have been 17 years old at the time of the crime. Saudi Arabia banned execution for minors, except for terrorism cases, in April 2020.


title: Capital punishment

text: Japan has not executed juvenile criminals after August 1997, when they executed Norio Nagayama, a spree killer who had been convicted of shooting four people dead in the late 1960s. Nagayama's case created the eponymously named "Nagayama" "standards", which take into account factors such as the number of victims, brutality and social impact of the crimes. The standards have been used in determining whether to apply the death sentence in murder cases. Teruhiko Seki, convicted of murdering four family members including a 4-year-old daughter and raping a 15-year-old daughter of a family in 1992, became the second inmate to be hanged for a crime committed as a minor in the first such execution in 20 years after Nagayama on 19 December 2017. Takayuki Otsuki, who was convicted of raping and strangling a 23-year-old woman and subsequently strangling her 11-month-old daughter to death on 14 April 1999, when he was 18, is another inmate sentenced to death, and his request for retrial has been rejected by the Supreme Court of Japan.


title: Capital punishment

text: There is evidence that child executions are taking place in the parts of Somalia controlled by the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). In October 2008, a girl, Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow was buried up to her neck at a football stadium, then stoned to death in front of more than 1,000 people. Somalia's established Transitional Federal Government announced in November 2009 (reiterated in 2013) that it plans to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This move was lauded by UNICEF as a welcome attempt to secure children's rights in the country.


title: Capital punishment

text: A public execution is a form of capital punishment which "members of the general public may voluntarily attend". This definition excludes the presence of a small number of witnesses randomly selected to assure executive accountability. While today the great majority of the world considers public executions to be distasteful and most countries have outlawed the practice, throughout much of history executions were performed publicly as a means for the state to demonstrate "its power before those who fell under its jurisdiction be they criminals, enemies, or political opponents". Additionally, it afforded the public a chance to witness "what was considered a great spectacle".


title: Capital punishment

text: Social historians note that beginning in the 20th century in the U.S. and western Europe, death in general became increasingly shielded from public view, occurring more and more behind the closed doors of the hospital. Executions were likewise moved behind the walls of the penitentiary. The last formal public executions occurred in 1868 in Britain, in 1936 in the U.S. and in 1939 in France.


title: Capital punishment

text: According to Amnesty International, in 2012, "public executions were known to have been carried out in Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia". There have been reports of public executions carried out by state and non-state actors in Hamas-controlled Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Executions which can be classified as public were also carried out in the U.S. states of Florida and Utah .


title: Capital punishment

text: Crimes against humanity such as genocide are usually punishable by death in countries retaining capital punishment. Death sentences for such crimes were handed down and carried out during the Nuremberg Trials in 1946 and the Tokyo Trials in 1948, but the current International Criminal Court does not use capital punishment. The maximum penalty available to the International Criminal Court is life imprisonment.


title: Capital punishment

text: Intentional homicide is punishable by death in most countries retaining capital punishment, but generally provided it involves an aggravating factor required by statute or judicial precedents. Some countries like Singapore and Malaysia made the death penalty mandatory for murder, though Singapore later changed its laws since 2013 to reserve the mandatory death sentence for intentional murder while providing an alternative sentence of life imprisonment with/without caning for murder with no intention to cause death, which allowed some convicted murderers on death row in Singapore (including Kho Jabing) to apply for the reduction of their death sentences after the courts in Singapore confirmed that they committed murder without the intention to kill and thus eligible for re-sentencing under the new death penalty laws in Singapore. In 2019 Malaysia considered abolishing the death penalty, but instead abolished mandatory death sentences; any death sentence is now passed at the judge's discretion. In June 2022, Malaysian law minister Wan Junaidi pledged to abolish capital punishment and replace it with other punishments at the discretion of the court.


title: Capital punishment

text: In 2018, at least 35 countries retained the death penalty for drug trafficking, drug dealing, drug possession and related offences. People are regularly sentenced to death and executed for drug-related offences in China, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Vietnam. Other countries may retain the death penalty for symbolic purposes.


title: Capital punishment

text: The death penalty is mandated for drug trafficking in Singapore and Malaysia, though since 2013, Singapore ruled that those who were certified to have diminished responsibility (e.g. Major depressive disorder) or acting as drug couriers and had assisted the authorities in tackling drug-related activities, will be sentenced to life imprisonment instead of death, with the offender liable to at least 15 strokes of the cane if he was not sentenced to death and was simultaneously sentenced to caning as well. Notable drug couriers include Yong Vui Kong, whose death sentence was replaced with a life sentence and 15 strokes of the cane in November 2013. A famous example of drug-related execution pertains to members of the Bali Nine.


title: Capital punishment

text: Death penalty opponents regard the death penalty as inhumane and criticize it for its irreversibility. They argue also that capital punishment lacks deterrent effect, or has a brutalization effect, discriminates against minorities and the poor, and that it encourages a "culture of violence". There are many organizations worldwide, such as Amnesty International, and country-specific, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), that have abolition of the death penalty as its main purpose.


title: Capital punishment

text: Advocates of the death penalty argue that it deters crime, is a good tool for police and prosecutors in plea bargaining, makes sure that convicted criminals do not offend again, and that it ensures justice for crimes such as homicide, where other penalties will not inflict the desired retribution demanded by the crime itself. Capital punishment for non-lethal crimes is usually considerably more controversial, and abolished in many of the countries that retain it.


title: Capital punishment

text: Supporters of the death penalty argued that death penalty is morally justified when applied in murder especially with aggravating elements such as for murder of police officers, child murder, torture murder, multiple homicide and mass killing such as terrorism, massacre and genocide. This argument is strongly defended by New York Law School's Professor Robert Blecker, who says that the punishment must be painful in proportion to the crime. Eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant defended a more extreme position, according to which every murderer deserves to die on the grounds that loss of life is incomparable to any penalty that allows them to remain alive, including life imprisonment.


title: Capital punishment

text: Some abolitionists argue that retribution is simply revenge and cannot be condoned. Others while accepting retribution as an element of criminal justice nonetheless argue that life without parole is a sufficient substitute. It is also argued that the punishing of a killing with another death is a relatively unusual punishment for a violent act, because in general violent crimes are not punished by subjecting the perpetrator to a similar act (e.g. rapists are, typically, not punished by corporal punishment, although it may be inflicted in Singapore, for example).


title: Capital punishment

text: Abolitionists believe capital punishment is the worst violation of human rights, because the right to life is the most important, and capital punishment violates it without necessity and inflicts to the condemned a psychological torture. Human rights activists oppose the death penalty, calling it "cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment". Amnesty International considers it to be "the ultimate irreversible denial of Human Rights". Albert Camus wrote in a 1956 book called "Reflections on the Guillotine, Resistance, Rebellion & Death":


title: Capital punishment

text: In the classic doctrine of natural rights as expounded by for instance Locke and Blackstone, on the other hand, it is an important idea that the right to life can be forfeited, as most other rights can be given due process is observed, such as the right to property and the right to freedom, including provisionally, in anticipation of an actual verdict. As John Stuart Mill explained in a speech given in Parliament against an amendment to abolish capital punishment for murder in 1868:


title: Capital punishment

text: In one of the most recent cases relating to the death penalty in Singapore, activists like Jolovan Wham, Kirsten Han and Kokila Annamalai and even the international groups like the United Nations and European Union argued for Malaysian drug trafficker Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, who has been on death row at Singapore's Changi Prison since 2010, should not be executed due to an alleged intellectual disability, as they argued that Nagaenthran has low IQ of 69 and a psychiatrist has assessed him to be mentally impaired to an extent that he should not be held liable to his crime and execution. They also cited international law where a country should be prohibiting the execution of mentally and intellectually impaired people in order to push for Singapore to commute Nagaenthran's death penalty to life imprisonment based on protection of human rights. However, the Singapore government and both Singapore's High Court and Court of Appeal maintained their firm stance that despite his certified low IQ, it is confirmed that Nagaenthran is not mentally or intellectually disabled based on the joint opinion of three government psychiatrists as he is able to fully understand the magnitude of his actions and has no problem in his daily functioning of life. Despite the international outcry, Nagaenthran was executed on 27 April 2022.


title: Capital punishment

text: Trends in most of the world have long been to move to private and less painful executions. France developed the guillotine for this reason in the final years of the 18th century, while Britain banned hanging, drawing, and quartering in the early 19th century. Hanging by turning the victim off a ladder or by kicking a stool or a bucket, which causes death by strangulation, was replaced by long drop "hanging" where the subject is dropped a longer distance to dislocate the neck and sever the spinal cord. Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar, Shah of Persia (1896–1907) introduced throat-cutting and blowing from a gun (close-range cannon fire) as quick and relatively painless alternatives to more torturous methods of executions used at that time. In the United States, electrocution and gas inhalation were introduced as more humane alternatives to hanging, but have been almost entirely superseded by lethal injection. A small number of countries, for example Iran and Saudi Arabia, still employ slow hanging methods, decapitation, and stoning.


title: Capital punishment

text: A study of executions carried out in the United States between 1977 and 2001 indicated that at least 34 of the 749 executions, or 4.5%, involved "unanticipated problems or delays that caused, at least arguably, unnecessary agony for the prisoner or that reflect gross incompetence of the executioner". The rate of these "botched executions" remained steady over the period of the study. A separate study published in "The Lancet" in 2005 found that in 43% of cases of lethal injection, the blood level of hypnotics was insufficient to guarantee unconsciousness. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 ("Baze v. Rees") and again in 2015 ("Glossip v. Gross") that lethal injection does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In "Bucklew v. Precythe", the majority verdict – written by Judge Neil Gorsuch – further affirmed this principle, stating that while the ban on cruel and unusual punishment affirmatively bans penalties that "deliberately inflict" pain and degradation, it does in no sense limit the possible infliction of pain in the execution of a capital verdict.


title: Capital punishment

text: It is frequently argued that capital punishment leads to miscarriage of justice through the wrongful execution of innocent persons. Many people have been proclaimed innocent victims of the death penalty.


title: Capital punishment

text: Some have claimed that as many as 39 executions have been carried out in the face of compelling evidence of innocence or serious doubt about guilt in the US from 1992 through 2004. Newly available DNA evidence prevented the pending execution of more than 15 death row inmates during the same period in the US, but DNA evidence is only available in a fraction of capital cases. , 159 prisoners on death row have been exonerated by DNA or other evidence, which is seen as an indication that innocent prisoners have almost certainly been executed. The National Coalition to


title: Capital punishment

text: Abolish the Death Penalty claims that between 1976 and 2015, 1,414 prisoners in the United States have been executed while 156 sentenced to death have had their death sentences vacated. It is impossible to assess how many have been wrongly executed, since courts do not generally investigate the innocence of a dead defendant, and defense attorneys tend to concentrate their efforts on clients whose lives can still be saved; however, there is strong evidence of innocence in many cases.


title: Capital punishment

text: Improper procedure may also result in unfair executions. For example, Amnesty International argues that in Singapore "the Misuse of Drugs Act contains a series of presumptions which shift the burden of proof from the prosecution to the accused. This conflicts with the universally guaranteed right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty". Singapore's Misuse of Drugs Act presumes one is guilty of possession of drugs if, as examples, one is found to be present or escaping from a location "proved or presumed to be used for the purpose of smoking or administering a controlled drug", if one is in possession of a key to a premises where drugs are present, if one is in the company of another person found to be in possession of illegal drugs, or if one tests positive after being given a mandatory urine drug screening. Urine drug screenings can be given at the discretion of police, without requiring a search warrant. The onus is on the accused in all of the above situations to prove that they were not in possession of or consumed illegal drugs.


title: Capital punishment

text: Some prisoners have volunteered or attempted to expedite capital punishment, often by waiving all appeals. Prisoners have made requests or committed further crimes in prison as well. In the United States, execution volunteers constitute approximately 11% of prisoners on death row. Volunteers often bypass legal procedures which are designed to designate the death penalty for the "worst of the worst" offenders. Opponents of execution volunteering cited the prevalence of mental illness among volunteers comparing it to suicide. Execution volunteers have received considerably less attention and effort at legal reform than those who were exonerated after execution.


title: Capital punishment

text: Opponents of the death penalty argue that this punishment is being used more often against perpetrators from racial and ethnic minorities and from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, than against those criminals who come from a privileged background; and that the background of the victim also influences the outcome. Researchers have shown that white Americans are more likely to support the death penalty when told that it is mostly applied to black Americans, and that more stereotypically black-looking or darkskinned defendants are more likely to be sentenced to death if the case involves a white victim. However, a study published in 2018 failed to replicate the findings of earlier studies that had concluded that white Americans are more likely to support the death penalty if informed that it is largely applied to black Americans; according to the authors, their findings "may result from changes since 2001 in the effects of racial stimuli on white attitudes about the death penalty or their willingness to express those attitudes in a survey context."


title: Capital punishment

text: In Alabama in 2019, a death row inmate named Domineque Ray was denied his imam in the room during his execution, instead only offered a Christian chaplain. After filing a complaint, a federal court of appeals ruled 5–4 against Ray's request. The majority cited the "last-minute" nature of the request, and the dissent stated that the treatment went against the core principle of denominational neutrality.


title: Capital punishment

text: In July 2019, two Shiite men, Ali Hakim al-Arab, 25, and Ahmad al-Malali, 24, were executed in Bahrain, despite the protests from the United Nations and rights group. Amnesty International stated that the executions were being carried out on confessions of "terrorism crimes" that were obtained through torture.


title: Capital punishment

text: On 30 March 2022, despite the appeals by the United Nations and rights activists, 68-year-old Malay Singaporean Abdul Kahar Othman was hanged at Singapore's Changi Prison for illegally trafficking diamorphine, which marked the first execution in Singapore since 2019 as a result of an informal moratorium caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier, there were appeals made to advocate for Abdul Kahar's death penalty be commuted to life imprisonment on humanitarian grounds, as Abdul Kahar came from a poor family and has struggled with drug addiction. He was also revealed to have been spending most of his life going in and out of prison, including a ten-year sentence of preventive detention from 1995 to 2005, and has not been given much time for rehabilitation, which made the activists and groups arguing that Abdul Kahar should be given a chance for rehabilitation instead of subjecting him to execution. Both the European Union (EU) and Amnesty International criticised Singapore for finalizing and carrying out Abdul Kahar's execution, and about 400 Singaporeans protested against the government's use of the death penalty merely days after Abdul Kahar's death sentence was authorised. Still, over 80% of the public supported the use of the death penalty in Singapore.


title: Capital punishment

text: The United Nations introduced a resolution during the General Assembly's 62nd sessions in 2007 calling for a universal ban. The approval of a draft resolution by the Assembly's third committee, which deals with human rights issues, voted 99 to 52, with 33 abstentions, in favour of the resolution on 15 November 2007 and was put to a vote in the Assembly on 18 December.


title: Capital punishment

text: Again in 2008, a large majority of states from all regions adopted, on 20 November in the UN General Assembly (Third Committee), a second resolution calling for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty; 105 countries voted in favour of the draft resolution, 48 voted against and 31 abstained.


title: Capital punishment

text: A range of amendments proposed by a small minority of pro-death penalty countries were overwhelmingly defeated. It had in 2007 passed a non-binding resolution (by 104 to 54, with 29 abstentions) by asking its member states for "a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty".


title: Capital punishment

text: A number of regional conventions prohibit the death penalty, most notably, the Sixth Protocol (abolition in time of peace) and the 13th Protocol (abolition in all circumstances) to the European Convention on Human Rights. The same is also stated under the Second Protocol in the American Convention on Human Rights, which, however, has not been ratified by all countries in the Americas, most notably Canada and the United States. Most relevant operative international treaties do not require its prohibition for cases of serious crime, most notably, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This instead has, in common with several other treaties, an optional protocol prohibiting capital punishment and promoting its wider abolition.


title: Capital punishment

text: Several international organizations have made the abolition of the death penalty (during the time of peace) a requirement of membership, most notably the EU and the Council of Europe. The EU and the Council of Europe are willing to accept a moratorium as an interim measure. Thus, while Russia is a member of the Council of Europe, and the death penalty remains codified in its law, it has not made use of it since becoming a member of the council – Russia has not executed anyone since 1996. With the exception of Russia (abolitionist in practice) and Belarus (retentionist), all European countries are classified as abolitionist.


title: Capital punishment

text: Latvia abolished "de jure" the death penalty for war crimes in 2012, becoming the last EU member to do so.


title: Capital punishment

text: The Protocol no.13 calls for the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances (including for war crimes). The majority of European countries have signed and ratified it. Some European countries have not done this, but all of them except Belarus have now abolished the death penalty in all circumstances ("de jure", and Russia "de facto"). Poland is the most recent country to ratify the protocol, on 28 August 2013.


title: Capital punishment

text: Protocol no.6 which prohibits the death penalty during peacetime has been ratified by all members of the European Council, except Russia (which has signed, but not ratified).


title: Capital punishment

text: There are also other international abolitionist instruments, such as the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has 90 parties; and the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty (for the Americas; ratified by 13 states).


title: Capital punishment

text: In Turkey, over 500 people were sentenced to death after the 1980 Turkish coup d'état. About 50 of them were executed, the last one 25 October 1984. Then there was a "de facto" moratorium on the death penalty in Turkey. As a move towards EU membership, Turkey made some legal changes. The death penalty was removed from peacetime law by the National Assembly in August 2002, and in May 2004 Turkey amended its constitution to remove capital punishment in all circumstances. It ratified Protocol no. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights in February 2006. As a result, Europe is a continent free of the death penalty in practice, all states but Russia, which has entered a moratorium, having ratified the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, with the sole exception of Belarus, which is not a member of the Council of Europe. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has been lobbying for Council of Europe observer states who practise the death penalty, the U.S. and Japan, to abolish it or lose their observer status. In addition to banning capital punishment for EU member states, the EU has also banned detainee transfers in cases where the receiving party may seek the death penalty.


title: Capital punishment

text: Sub-Saharan African countries that have recently abolished the death penalty include Burundi, which abolished the death penalty for all crimes in 2009, and Gabon which did the same in 2010. On 5 July 2012, Benin became part of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which prohibits the use of the death penalty.


title: Capital punishment

text: The newly created South Sudan is among the 111 UN member states that supported the resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly that called for the removal of the death penalty, therefore affirming its opposition to the practice. South Sudan, however, has not yet abolished the death penalty and stated that it must first amend its Constitution, and until that happens it will continue to use the death penalty.


title: Capital punishment

text: Among non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are noted for their opposition to capital punishment. A number of such NGOs, as well as trade unions, local councils, and bar associations, formed a World Coalition Against the Death Penalty in 2002.


title: Capital punishment

text: An open letter led by Danish Member of the European Parliament, Karen Melchior was sent to the European Commission ahead of the 26 January 2021 meeting of the Bahraini Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani with the members of the European Union for the signing of a Cooperation Agreement. A total of 16 MEPs undersigned the letter expressing their grave concern towards the extended abuse of human rights in Bahrain following the arbitrary arrest and detention of activists and critics of the government. The attendees of the meeting were requested to demand from their Bahraini counterparts to take into consideration the concerns raised by the MEPs, particularly for the release of Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja and Sheikh Mohammed Habib Al-Muqdad, the two European-Bahraini dual citizens on death row.


title: Capital punishment

text: The world's major faiths have differing views depending on the religion, denomination, sect and/or the individual adherent. As an example, the world's largest Christian denomination, Catholicism, has traditionally supported capital punishment as a necessary evil, but in modern times opposes capital punishment in all cases.


title: Capital punishment

text: Pope Saint John Paul II made a public address in St. Louis, Missouri in 1999 reminding the members of the Catholic Church to be unconditionally pro-life and uphold the dignity of all persons, even if in the eyes of the government they forfeited those rights by their own conduct. Early theologians of the Church, such as Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, seem to uphold the use of capital punishment only to the extent that it is not used in malice or frustration, but in the interest of dissuading imitators of the evil conducted to warrant punishment originally. As time goes on, the authority of the church has continued to develop, with only slight variation, a more universal rule that suggests the rare use of capital punishment, specifically the death penalty, is so rare as to be generally non-viable. The grounds for this trend lie most often in the existing trend of capital punishment propagating revenge more than true justice.


title: Dave Franco

text: David John Franco (born June 12, 1985) is an American actor. He began his career with small roles in films such as "Superbad" (2007) and "Charlie St. Cloud" (2010). Following a starring role in the ninth season of the comedy series "Scrubs", Franco had his film breakthrough as a supporting role in the buddy comedy film "21 Jump Street" (2012).


title: Dave Franco

text: Franco has also starred in "Fright Night" (2011), "Now You See Me" (2013) and its sequel "Now You See Me 2" (2016), "Neighbors" (2014), "Nerve" (2016), "The Disaster Artist" (2017), and "Day Shift" (2022). In 2020, he made his directorial debut with "The Rental", which starred his wife Alison Brie.


title: Dave Franco

text: Franco was born in Palo Alto, California, to Betsy Lou (née Verne), a poet, children's book author, and editor, and Douglas Eugene Franco (1948–2011), who ran a nonprofit agency and a business; the two met as students at Stanford University. Franco's father was of Portuguese (from Madeira) and Swedish descent. Franco's mother is Jewish (of Russian Jewish descent); her parents had changed the surname from "Verovitz" to "Verne". Dave has stated that he is "proud" to be Jewish. Franco's paternal grandmother, Marjorie (Peterson) Franco, is a published author of young adult books. Franco's maternal grandmother, Mitzie (Levine) Verne, owned the Verne Art Gallery, a prominent art gallery in Cleveland, and was an active member in the National Council of Jewish Women. Franco grew up in California with his two older brothers, James and Tom.


title: Dave Franco

text: He studied at the University of Southern California, and originally envisioned himself as a high school teacher teaching creative writing, until his brother James Franco's manager guided him to a theater class when he was a sophomore, where he started learning acting skills.


title: Dave Franco

text: In 2006, Franco made his acting debut on The CW drama television series "7th Heaven". He appeared in television shows such as "Do Not Disturb" and "Young Justice". Franco has also had noticeable roles in films such as "Superbad", "Charlie St. Cloud", "21 Jump Street", "Warm Bodies", "The Shortcut" and "Now You See Me". In May 2008, he was cast in The CW teen drama television series "Privileged". The series centered on a live-in tutor for two spoiled heiresses in Palm Beach. Franco was cast in an initial major recurring role. The series premiered on September 9, 2008, to 3.1 million viewers. Ratings continued to slip each week, with the series sixth episode reaching 1.837 million viewers. The CW did not renew the series for a second season due to low ratings.


title: Dave Franco

text: In August 2009, "Variety" announced Franco was cast in a regular role for the ninth season of the ABC sitcom series "Scrubs". Franco portrayed the role of medical student Cole Aaronson, whose family paid a large sum of money to Sacred Heart Hospital so that he would receive an internship. Franco went on to appear in all thirteen episodes of the ninth season and received praise from critics for his performance; however, the ninth was the final season of the series.


title: Dave Franco

text: MTV Networks' NextMovie.com named him one of its "Breakout Stars to Watch For" in 2011. In August 2011, Franco starred in the 3D horror comedy film "Fright Night" alongside Colin Farrell and Toni Collette. The film is a remake of the 1985 film of the same name and follows a teenage boy who finds out his neighbor is a vampire. Franco played the role of popular high school student Mark. The film received positive reviews from critics and went on to make over $41 million worldwide.


title: Dave Franco

text: In April 2012, "Shalom Life" ranked him and his brother James at number 2 on its list of "the 50 most talented, intelligent, funny, and gorgeous Jewish men in the world". In March 2012, Franco starred in the Columbia Pictures action comedy film "21 Jump Street" as Eric, a high school student and the lead drug dealer. The film was based on the 1987 television series of the same name.


title: Dave Franco

text: In 2013, he co-starred in the zombie romance film "Warm Bodies", as Perry Kelvin. The film, an adaptation of the best-selling novel "Warm Bodies", followed a romance between a zombie and a human during a zombie apocalypse. The same year, Franco appeared in the ensemble crime thriller film "Now You See Me". To promote the film, he was interviewed on the "Bob Rivers Show", based in Seattle. Rivers persuaded Franco to show the card-throwing abilities he had learned and Franco expertly sliced half a banana into a further half with his hotel card.


title: Dave Franco

text: Franco's 2014 roles included the Seth Rogen comedy "Neighbors" and a cameo appearance in "22 Jump Street". In 2015, he co-starred with Vince Vaughn and Tom Wilkinson in the comedy "Unfinished Business".


title: Dave Franco

text: In 2016, he reprised his roles in the sequels "", as Pete, and "Now You See Me 2", as Jack Wilder. The following year, Franco appeared in the well-received comedy "The Little Hours", and the acclaimed biographical comedy-drama, "The Disaster Artist", which was directed by his brother, James. In the latter film, he portrays Greg Sestero, a young actor who befriends the eccentric Tommy Wiseau, and ultimately stars in Wiseau's film, "The Room".


title: Dave Franco

text: In 2018, Franco starred in the addiction drama "6 Balloons" opposite Abbi Jacobson, for Netflix. Franco then had a small role in "If Beale Street Could Talk", directed by Barry Jenkins. In 2019, Franco starred in "Zeroville", directed by his brother, James, which was originally shot in 2014, portraying the role of actor Montgomery Clift. He next starred in the action-thriller "6 Underground", directed by Michael Bay.


title: Dave Franco

text: In 2020, Franco made his directorial debut on the horror-thriller "The Rental", from a screenplay he wrote alongside Joe Swanberg, which stars Alison Brie, Dan Stevens, Jeremy Allen White, and Sheila Vand. It was released on July 24, 2020.


title: Dave Franco

text: Franco started dating actress Alison Brie in 2012. In August 2015, the couple became engaged. On March 13, 2017, representatives for the couple confirmed that they had married in a private ceremony. In an interview with Larry King in 2017, Brie revealed she did not want to have children.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Kimila Ann Basinger ( ; born December 8, 1953) is an American actress and former fashion model. She has garnered acclaim for her work in film and television, for which she has received various accolades including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Following a brief but successful career modeling in New York, Basinger moved to Los Angeles where she began acting on television in 1976. She appeared in several made-for-TV films, including a remake of "From Here to Eternity" (1979), before making her feature debut in the drama "Hard Country" (1981). Hailed as a sex symbol of the 1980s and 1990s, Basinger came to prominence for her performance of Bond girl Domino Petachi in "Never Say Never Again" (1983). She went on to receive a Golden Globe nomination for her work in "The Natural" (1984), starred in the erotic drama "9½ Weeks" (1986), and played Vicki Vale in Tim Burton's "Batman" (1989), which remains the highest-grossing film of her career. For her femme fatale portrayal in "L.A. Confidential" (1997), Basinger won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other films include "No Mercy" (1986), "Blind Date" (1987), "My Stepmother Is an Alien" (1988), "Cool World" (1992), "The Real McCoy" (1993), "I Dreamed of Africa" (2000), "8 Mile" (2002), "The Door in the Floor" (2004), "Cellular" (2004), "The Sentinel" (2006), "The Burning Plain" (2009), "Grudge Match" (2013), and "Fifty Shades Darker" (2017).


title: Kim Basinger

text: Divorced from makeup artist Ron Snyder and actor Alec Baldwin, Basinger cohabits with her longtime hairdresser, Mitch Stone. She had a high-profile relationship between marriages with the late musician Prince, with whom she recorded an album, "Hollywood Affair", and is the mother of social media influencer Ireland Baldwin from her marriage to Alec.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger was born in Athens, Georgia, on December 8, 1953. Her mother, Ann Lee (née Cordell; 1925–2017), was a model, actress and swimmer who appeared in several Esther Williams films. Her father, Donald Wade Basinger (1923–2016), was a big band musician and loan manager; as a U.S. Army soldier, he landed in Normandy on D-Day. The middle of five children, she has two older brothers, Skip (b. 1950) and Mick (b. 1951), and two younger sisters, Barbara (b. 1956) and Ashley (b. 1959). Basinger's ancestry includes English, German, Swedish, and Ulster Scots. She was raised a Methodist. Basinger has described herself as extremely shy, which had a major effect on her during her childhood and young adulthood. She has said that her shyness was so extreme that she would faint if asked to speak in class.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger studied ballet from about age three to her mid-teens. By her mid-teens, she grew in confidence and successfully auditioned for the school cheerleading team. At 17, she entered America's Junior Miss Scholarship Pageant, won at the city level and was crowned Athens Junior Miss. While she didn't win at the state level, her beauty was profiled in the national program. She had competed at the state level for the Breck Scholarship and was featured in an ad for Breck in a joint portrait with her mother.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger was offered a modeling contract with the Ford Modeling Agency, but turned it down in favor of singing and acting, and enrolled at the University of Georgia. She soon reconsidered and went to New York to become a Ford model. Despite earning US$1,000 a day, Basinger never enjoyed modeling, saying: "It was very hard to go from one booking to another and always have to deal with the way I looked. I couldn't stand it. I felt myself choking." Basinger has said that even as a model, when others relished looking in the mirror before appearing, she abhorred it and would avoid mirrors out of insecurity. Not long after her Ford deal, Basinger appeared on the cover of magazines. She appeared in hundreds of advertisements throughout the early 1970s, most notably as the Breck Shampoo girl. She alternated between modeling and attending acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse, as well as performing in Greenwich Village clubs as a singer.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger is an alumna of the William Esper Studio for the performing arts in Manhattan, New York City.


title: Kim Basinger

text: In 1976, after five years as a cover girl, Basinger quit modeling and moved to Los Angeles to act. She made guest appearances on a few television shows such as "McMillan & Wife" and "Charlie's Angels", turning down a regular role in the latter series that eventually went to Cheryl Ladd. Her first starring role was a made-for-TV movie, "" (1978), in which she played a small town girl who goes to Hollywood to become an actress and winds up becoming a famous centerfold for a men's magazine. In 1979, she co-starred with Natalie Wood, William Devane and Steve Railsback in the miniseries remake of "From Here to Eternity", reprising her role as prostitute Lorene Rogers in a 13-episode spinoff that aired in 1980. In 1981, Basinger posed for a famous nude pictorial for "Playboy", and made her feature debut in the critically well-received but little-seen rural drama "Hard Country", which she followed with the Charlton Heston-directed outdoorsy adventure "Mother Lode" (1982).


title: Kim Basinger

text: Her 1981 "Playboy" shoot was not published until 1983, when Basinger used it to promote her breakthrough role as the Bond girl Domino Petachi in "Never Say Never Again" (1983), where she starred opposite Sean Connery. In his review of the film, Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" said Basinger "looks like a voluptuous sibling of Liv Ullmann and has a certain something." Worldwide, "Never Say Never Again" grossed US$160 million. Basinger said her subsequent "Playboy" appearance led to further opportunities, such as the role of the romantic interest of a baseball team star in Barry Levinson's "The Natural" (1984), alongside Robert Redford, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Blake Edwards cast her twice in his films; as a beautiful woman married to a Texas millionaire in "The Man Who Loved Women" (1983), and as an apparently shy woman who goes on a date with a workaholic man in "Blind Date" (1987). Robert Altman cast Basinger in the role of a woman hiding from her former lover at an old motel in "Fool for Love" (1985). In 1986, Basinger starred as a New York City art gallery employee who has a brief yet intense affair with a mysterious Wall Street broker, opposite Mickey Rourke, in Adrian Lyne's controversial erotic romantic drama "9½ Weeks". Though the film failed at the North American box office, it performed very well in Europe, especially France, and acquired a large American fanbase on home video and cable. Roger Ebert praised the film, comparing it to "Last Tango in Paris", and said Basinger helped "develop an erotic tension [...] that is convincing, complicated and sensual."


title: Kim Basinger

text: Academy Award-winning writer-director Robert Benton also cast her in the title role of a slightly pregnant woman in trouble for "Nadine" (1987). While most of the films Basinger starred in during this period were released to varying degrees of success, they helped to establish her as an actress. With over US$400 million in box office totals, the highest-grossing film of her career thus far is Tim Burton's 1989 film "Batman", in which Basinger took on role of photojournalist Vicki Vale, opposite Michael Keaton (Batman) and Jack Nicholson (Joker). "The Hollywood Reporter", in its original review, remarked that "the uniqueness and very soul of the film [...] is achieved through the beautifully defined and probing performances of Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne and Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale".


title: Kim Basinger

text: Following the success of "Batman", Basinger played a glamorous singer, alongside Alec Baldwin, in the comedy "The Marrying Man" (1991), and starred with Richard Gere, as a woman romantically involved with her sister's psychiatrist, in the neo-noir "Final Analysis" (1992). Both films were released to moderate box office returns. In 1992, Basinger was also a guest vocalist on a re-recorded version of Was (Not Was)'s "Shake Your Head", which featured Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, and reached the UK Top 5, and starred in what marked her only voice-acting project to date, the film "Cool World", directed by Ralph Bakshi, as a cartoon bombshell who longs to become a real human woman.


title: Kim Basinger

text: In 1993, Basinger took on the roles of a woman recently released from prison in the crime film "The Real McCoy", and that of a woman named Honey Hornée in the comedy "Wayne's World 2". In 1994, she reunited professionally with Baldwin for the thriller "The Getaway", in which she portrayed the wife of a former con, and with director Robert Altman for the comedy "Prêt-à-Porter", playing a breathlessly dim-witted cable reporter. Amid financial issues, Basinger went into hiatus from the screen by the mid-1990s.


title: Kim Basinger

text: She made a comeback as the high-class hooker in Curtis Hanson's neo-noir "L.A. Confidential" (1997), alongside Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe. She initially turned down the film twice, feeling an insecurity at returning to the screen and enjoying motherhood. "The Washington Post" felt that Basinger "exudes a sort of chaste sultriness", in what Roger Ebert described as "one of the best films of the year". The role earned her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, and was also nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She holds the distinction of being the only actress who has both posed nude in "Playboy" and won an Academy Award. In a 2000 interview with Charlie Rose, Basinger said that "L.A. Confidential" and her next film, "I Dreamed of Africa" (2000), were the most pleasurable of her career.


title: Kim Basinger

text: In "I Dreamed of Africa", Basinger portrayed writer and environmentalist Kuki Gallmann, with Vincent Pérez, whom she called the "most incredible actor she had ever worked with". The film was described as a "passion project" for her, and she told "UrbanCinefile" that she "cried for hours" when she had to leave Kenya, where filming took place. Budgeted at US$50 million, "I Dreamed of Africa" got a 10 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and only managed to pull in US$14 million at the worldwide box office.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Curtis Hanson cast her again, this time as the alcoholic mother of an aspiring rapper, in "8 Mile" (2002), opposite Eminem and Brittany Murphy. The film appeared on many top ten lists of the year, and in his review, Roger Ebert asserted: "There has been criticism of Kim Basinger, who is said to be too attractive and even glamorous to play [Eminem]'s mother, but [...] Her performance finds the right note somewhere between love and exasperation; it cannot be easy to live with this sullen malcontent, whose face lights up only when he sees his baby sister". "8 Mile" was a commercial success, grossing US242.9 million worldwide.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger starred as the wife of a children's book author, with Jeff Bridges and Jon Foster, in "The Door in the Floor" (2004), a drama with heavy sexual themes adapted from the novel "A Widow for One Year" by John Irving. The film found a limited audience in theaters, but in his review, Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone", felt that "Basinger's haunted beauty burns in the memory" and called it "her finest work".


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger next appeared in two crime thrillers—"Cellular" (2004) and "The Sentinel" (2006). In "Cellular", opposite Chris Evans and Jason Statham, she played a wealthy high school biology teacher taken hostage in her home. "Entertainment Weekly" considered that "Basinger makes a vividly frightened yet resourceful woman in peril", and the film was a moderate commercial success. In "The Sentinel", Basinger portrayed the First Lady of the United States, opposite Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland and Eva Longoria. Despite mixed reviews, the film made US$78.1 million globally. In 2006, Basinger also starred in the Lifetime film "The Mermaid Chair", as a married woman who falls in love with a Benedictine monk and experiences a self-awakening.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger then played a mother having extramarital affairs in director Guillermo Arriaga's feature film debut "The Burning Plain" (2008), a drama narrated in a hyperlink format, opposite Charlize Theron and Jennifer Lawrence. While the film found a limited release in theaters, "The Telegraph", in its review, wrote: "Arriaga pulls together the strands of his narrative with great expertise [and] his job is made easier by great performances from three actresses: Theron and Basinger, who both look like racing certs for next year's awards season, and Jennifer Lawrence as Basinger's teenage daughter".


title: Kim Basinger

text: In 2008, Basinger produced and starred in the independent thriller "While She Was Out", as a suburban housewife who is forced to fend for herself when she becomes stranded in a desolate forest with four murderous thugs. Despite a very limited release in theaters, "L.A. Weekly" described that film as a "surprisingly enjoyable female revenge tale" and called Basinger's performance "first-rate". Her next film, "The Informers" (2009), which was written by Bret Easton Ellis, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. In it, Basinger starred as the chronically depressed wife of a jaded film executive (played by Billy Bob Thornton).


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger played the mother of a young man who made a promise to his deceased brother, with Zac Efron, in the supernatural drama "Charlie St. Cloud" (2010), based on the 2004 best-selling novel "The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud" by Ben Sherwood.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger returned to Africa in her next film, the 2012 Nigerian drama "Black November", about a Niger Delta community's struggle to save their environment, which was being destroyed by excessive oil drilling. As part of an ensemble cast (which included her "9½ Weeks" co-star Mickey Rourke), she played the role of a kidnapped reporter. While the film had a significant impact upon its release, "The Hollywood Reporter" noted: "Don't be fooled by the names of Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger on the marquee. Despite the tantalizing prospect of a reunion of the stars of a certain '80s-era hit erotic drama, their minor presence is largely extraneous to the proceedings of [this] overwrought and preachy thriller".


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger played the role of wife in two 2013 films — the independent drama "Third Person", with Liam Neeson and Olivia Wilde, and the sports comedy "Grudge Match", with Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone. Critic Odie Henderson, describing Basinger in his review for the latter film, remarked that she "looks stunning at 60 and provides the film's sole voice of reason". She subsequently took on the role of mother in the independent drama "4 Minute Mile" (2014) as well as the part of a woman who, after a miscarriage, sets out on a dangerous quest to obtain a child in the likewise independent production "The 11th Hour" (also 2014), which was released for VOD. "IndieWire" felt that Basinger "does what she can with ["The 11th Hour"] material, but that's not much". In 2016, she had a brief role, as a crooked high-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice, in the crime comedy "The Nice Guys", alongside Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger played Elena Lincoln, the business partner and former lover of Christian Grey, in the film adaptation of "Fifty Shades Darker" (2017), the sequel to "Fifty Shades of Grey". Dakota Johnson, her co-star, described her as "one of the great people to work with". Despite negative reviews, the film made US$381.4 million globally. Basinger reprised the role in the 2018 sequel, "Fifty Shades Freed".


title: Kim Basinger

text: In January 2022, Basinger collaborated with Peter Bogdanovich to create "", a first of its kind short film made available on the Ethereum blockchain as a non-fungible token.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Before she was famous, Basinger dated model Tim Saunders, photographer Dale Robinette and football player Joe Namath.


title: Kim Basinger

text: On October 12, 1980, she married makeup artist Ron Snyder-Britton, whom she met on the film "Hard Country". Basinger developed agoraphobia that same year, following a panic attack in a health-food store, and was housebound for six months. Snyder quit his job during the marriage and changed his surname to Britton after Basinger requested he choose "something with a B" so she could keep the same initials when using her married name. The pair divorced just before Christmas 1989, after which Basinger paid him $9,000 monthly alimony for eight years. Britton wrote a memoir titled "Longer Than Forever", published in 1998, about their time together and about her affair with Richard Gere, with whom she starred in "No Mercy" (1986) and "Final Analysis" (1992).


title: Kim Basinger

text: While her first divorce was in the works, Basinger had romantic relationships with hairdresser/producer Jon Peters as well as singer Prince, who did the album for "Batman" and also produced her unreleased 1989 album "Hollywood Affair". She was then involved briefly with fitness trainer Phil Walsh and fashion designer Alexio Gandara.


title: Kim Basinger

text: In 1990, Basinger met her second husband, Alec Baldwin, when they played lovers in "The Marrying Man". They married on August 19, 1993, and starred in the 1994 remake of "The Getaway". They also played themselves in a 1998 episode of "The Simpsons", in which Basinger corrected Homer Simpson on the pronunciation of her last name and polished her Oscar statuette. Basinger and Baldwin have a daughter, Ireland Eliesse Baldwin (born October 23, 1995). They separated at the end of 2000 and divorced on September 3, 2002. In his 2008 book, "A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce", Baldwin chronicled the contentious seven-year custody battle with Basinger over their daughter following their separation, contending that she spent more than $1.5 million in her efforts to deny him parental access.


title: Kim Basinger

text: After the divorce from Baldwin, Basinger was reported to be romantically linked with "8 Mile" (2002) co-star Eminem, which the rapper repeatedly denied. She would not have another public attachment until 2014, when she began dating Mitch Stone. Like Snyder and Peters before him, Stone met Basinger while doing her hair on a movie set. The couple wear matching gold bands and have since moved in together.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Some family members recommended Basinger buy the bulk of the privately owned land in the small town of Braselton, Georgia, some 1,691 acres in 1989, for $20 million, to establish it as a tourist attraction with movie studios and a film festival. However, she encountered financial difficulties and started to sell parts of it off in 1995. The town is now owned by developer Wayne Mason. In a 1998 interview with Barbara Walters, Basinger stated that "nothing good came out of it," because a rift resulted within her family.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger's financial difficulties were exacerbated when she pulled out of the controversial film "Boxing Helena" (1993), resulting in the studio's winning an $8.9 million judgment against her. Basinger filed for bankruptcy and appealed the jury's decision to a higher court, which ruled in her favor. She and the studio settled for $3.8 million instead.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger's parents were legally married from 1948 to 2016, though they separated in 1980 and had little or no contact for the last 36 years of her father's life. Contrary to erroneous reports, they never divorced.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Starting in the mid-1990s, Basinger was estranged from her mother, Ann, and all except one of her four siblings. Her father Don and youngest sister Ashley were the only family members invited to her second wedding in 1993, and the only family members she thanked in her acceptance speech at the Academy Awards in 1998. Basinger was still estranged from her mother as of 2002. However, they appeared to have reconciled by 2015, when Ann told "RadarOnline" in an exclusive interview that Kim would be coming home to Georgia for Christmas.


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger is a vegetarian and an animal rights supporter. She has posed for anti-fur advertisements by PETA, and also filmed a public service announcement on downed farm animals for Farm Sanctuary. She was involved in the gestation of a bill offering protection to diseased and crippled farm animals, which Governor of California Pete Wilson signed. Basinger was interviewed by "Samaritan" magazine in August 2018 to raise awareness about the inhumane dog meat trade that remains rife in parts of Asia.


title: Kim Basinger

text: After transitioning from modeling to acting in the late 1970s, Basinger has had over fifty credits in film and television productions, as of 2018. She garnered a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "The Natural" (1984), and as part of the cast of "Prêt-à-Porter" (1994), she received an ensemble award from the National Board of Review. She won the Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress in "L.A. Confidential" (1997).


title: Kim Basinger

text: Basinger received a nomination for the Best Actress Award from the Boston Society of Film Critics, for her role in "The Door in the Floor" (2004). Basinger has received seven nominations for the Razzie Awards—six for Worst Actress and one for Worst Supporting Actress— and has been nominated at the People's Choice Awards, the Saturn Awards (three times), and the MTV Movie Awards (four times). For her lifetime achievements in the cinematic arts, she has a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


title: ISO 8601

text: ISO 8601 is an international standard covering the worldwide exchange and communication of date and time-related data. It is maintained by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and was first published in 1988, with updates in 1991, 2000, 2004, and 2019, and an amendment in 2022. The standard provides a well-defined, unambiguous method of representing calendar dates and times in worldwide communications, especially to avoid misinterpreting numeric dates and times when such data is transferred between countries with different conventions for writing numeric dates and times.


title: ISO 8601

text: ISO 8601 applies to these representations and formats: "dates," in the Gregorian calendar (including the proleptic Gregorian calendar); "times," based on the 24-hour timekeeping system, with optional UTC offset; "time intervals"; and combinations thereof. The standard does not assign specific meaning to any element of the dates/times represented: the meaning of any element depends on the context of its use. Dates and times represented cannot use words that do not have a specified numerical meaning within the standard (thus excluding names of years in the Chinese calendar), or that do not use computer characters (excludes images or sounds).


title: ISO 8601

text: In representations that adhere to the ISO 8601 "interchange standard", dates and times are arranged such that the greatest temporal term (typically a year) is placed at the left and each successively lesser term is placed to the right of the previous term. Representations must be written in a combination of Arabic numerals and the specific computer characters (such as "-", ":", "T", "W", "Z") that are assigned specific meanings within the standard; that is, such commonplace descriptors of dates (or parts of dates) as "January", "Thursday", or "New Year's Day" are not allowed in interchange representations within the standard.


title: ISO 8601

text: The first edition of the ISO 8601 standard was published as "ISO 8601:1988" in 1988. It unified and replaced a number of older ISO standards on various aspects of date and time notation: ISO 2014, ISO 2015, ISO 2711, ISO 3307, and ISO 4031. It has been superseded by a second edition "ISO 8601:2000" in 2000, by a third edition "ISO 8601:2004" published on 1 December 2004, and withdrawn and revised by "ISO 8601-1:2019" and "ISO 8601-2:2019" on 25 February 2019. ISO 8601 was prepared by, and is under the direct responsibility of, ISO Technical Committee TC 154.


title: ISO 8601

text: ISO 2014, though superseded, is the standard that originally introduced the all-numeric date notation in most-to-least-significant order . The ISO week numbering system was introduced in ISO 2015, and the identification of days by ordinal dates was originally defined in ISO 2711.


title: ISO 8601

text: Issued in February 2019, the fourth revision of the standard ISO 8601-1:2019 represents slightly updated contents of the previous ISO 8601:2004 standard, whereas the new ISO 8601-2:2019 defines various extensions such as uncertainties or parts of the Extended Date/Time Format (EDTF).


title: ISO 8601

text: An amendment was published in October 2022 featuring minor technical clarifications and attempts to remove ambiguities in definitions. The most significant change, however, was the reintroduction of the `24:00:00` format to refer to the instant at the "end" of a calendar day.


title: ISO 8601

text: ISO 8601:2004 fixes a reference calendar date to the Gregorian calendar of 20 May 1875 as the date the (Metre Convention) was signed in Paris (the explicit reference date was removed in ISO 8601-1:2019). However, ISO calendar dates before the convention are still compatible with the Gregorian calendar all the way back to the official introduction of the Gregorian calendar on 15 October 1582.


title: ISO 8601

text: Earlier dates, in the proleptic Gregorian calendar, may be used by mutual agreement of the partners exchanging information. The standard states that every date must be consecutive, so usage of the Julian calendar would be contrary to the standard (because at the switchover date, the dates would not be consecutive).


title: ISO 8601

text: ISO 8601 prescribes, as a minimum, a four-digit year [YYYY] to avoid the year 2000 problem. It therefore represents years from 0000 to 9999, year 0000 being equal to 1 BC and all others AD, similar to astronomical year numbering. However, years before 1583 are not automatically allowed by the standard. Instead, the standard states that "values in the range [0000] through [1582] shall only be used by mutual agreement of the partners in information interchange".


title: ISO 8601

text: To represent years before 0000 or after 9999, the standard also permits the expansion of the year representation but only by prior agreement between the sender and the receiver. An expanded year representation [±YYYYY] must have an agreed-upon number of extra year digits beyond the four-digit minimum, and it must be prefixed with a + or − sign instead of the more common AD/BC (or CE/BCE) notation; by convention 1 BC is labelled +0000, 2 BC is labeled −0001, and so on.


title: ISO 8601

text: Calendar date representations are in the form shown in the adjacent box. [YYYY] indicates a four-digit year, 0000 through 9999. [MM] indicates a two-digit month of the year, 01 through 12. [DD] indicates a two-digit day of that month, 01 through 31. For example, "5 April 1981" may be represented as either in the "extended format" or "19810405" in the "basic format".


title: ISO 8601

text: The standard also allows for calendar dates to be written with reduced precision. For example, one may write to mean "1981 April". One may simply write "1981" to refer to that year, "198" to refer to the decade from 1980 to 1989 inclusive, or "19" to refer to the century from 1900 to 1999 inclusive. Although the standard allows both the and YYYYMMDD formats for complete calendar date representations, if the day [DD] is omitted then only the format is allowed. By disallowing dates of the form YYYYMM, the standard avoids confusion with the truncated representation YYMMDD (still often used). The 2000 version also allowed writing the truncation to mean "April 5" but the 2004 version does not allow omitting the year when a month is present.


title: ISO 8601

text: Week date representations are in the formats as shown in the adjacent box. [YYYY] indicates the "ISO week-numbering year" which is slightly different from the traditional Gregorian calendar year (see below). [Www] is the "week number" prefixed by the letter "W", from W01 through W53. [D] is the "weekday number", from 1 through 7, beginning with Monday and ending with Sunday.


title: ISO 8601

text: As a consequence, if 1 January is on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, it is in week 01. If 1 January is on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, it is in week 52 or 53 of the previous year (there is no week 00). 28 December is always in the last week of its year.


title: ISO 8601

text: The week number can be described by counting the Thursdays: week 12 contains the 12th Thursday of the year.


title: ISO 8601

text: The "ISO week-numbering year" starts at the first day (Monday) of week 01 and ends at the Sunday before the new ISO year (hence without overlap or gap). It consists of 52 or 53 full weeks. The first ISO week of a year may have up to three days that are actually in the Gregorian calendar year that is ending; if three, they are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Similarly, the last ISO week of a year may have up to three days that are actually in the Gregorian calendar year that is starting; if three, they are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Thursday of each ISO week is always in the Gregorian calendar year denoted by the ISO week-numbering year.


title: ISO 8601

text: An "ordinal date" is a simple form for occasions when the arbitrary nature of week and month definitions are more of an impediment than an aid, for instance, when comparing dates from different calendars. As represented above, [YYYY] indicates a year and [DDD] is the "day of year", from 001 through 365 (366 in leap years). For example, is also .


title: ISO 8601

text: This format is used with simple hardware systems that have a need for a date system, but where including full calendar calculation software may be a significant nuisance. This system is sometimes referred to as "Julian Date", but this can cause confusion with the astronomical Julian day, a sequential count of the number of days since day 0 beginning Greenwich noon, Julian proleptic calendar (or noon on ISO date which uses the Gregorian proleptic calendar with a year 0000).


title: ISO 8601

text: ISO 8601 uses the 24-hour clock system. As of ISO 8601-1:2019, the "basic format" is T[hh][mm][ss] and the "extended format" is T[hh]:[mm]:[ss]. Earlier versions omitted the T (representing time) in both formats.


title: ISO 8601

text: So a time might appear as either "T134730" in the "basic format" or "T13:47:30" in the "extended format". ISO 8601-1:2019 allows the T to be omitted in the extended format, as in "13:47:30", but only allows the T to be omitted in the basic format when there is no risk of ambiguity with date expressions.


title: ISO 8601

text: Either the seconds, or the minutes and seconds, may be omitted from the basic or extended time formats for greater brevity but decreased precision; the resulting reduced precision time formats are:


title: ISO 8601

text: As of ISO 8601-1:2019/Amd 1:2022 "midnight" may be referred to as "00:00:00", corresponding to the instant at the beginning of a calendar day; or "24:00:00", corresponding to the instant at the end of a calendar day. ISO 8601-1:2019 as originally published removed "24:00" as a representation for the end of day although it was permitted in earlier versions of the standard.


title: ISO 8601

text: A decimal fraction may be added to the lowest order time element present, in any of these representations. A decimal mark, either a comma or a dot is used as a separator between the time element and its fraction. (Following ISO 80000-1 according to ISO 8601:1-2019, it does not stipulate a preference except within International Standards, but with a preference for a comma according to ISO 8601:2004.)


title: ISO 8601

text: For example, to denote "14 hours, 30 and one half minutes", do not include a seconds figure; represent it as "14:30,5", "1430,5", "T14:30.5", or "T1430.5".


title: ISO 8601

text: There is no limit on the number of decimal places for the decimal fraction. However, the number of decimal places needs to be agreed to by the communicating parties. For example, in Microsoft SQL Server, the precision of a decimal fraction is 3 for a DATETIME, i.e., "yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss[.mmm]".


title: ISO 8601

text: Time zones in ISO 8601 are represented as local time (with the location unspecified), as UTC, or as an offset from UTC.


title: ISO 8601

text: If no UTC relation information is given with a time representation, the time is assumed to be in local time. While it "may" be safe to assume local time when communicating in the same time zone, it is ambiguous when used in communicating across different time zones. Even within a single geographic time zone, some local times will be ambiguous if the region observes daylight saving time. It is usually preferable to indicate a time zone (zone designator) using the standard's notation.


title: ISO 8601

text: If the time is in UTC, add a "Z" directly after the time without a space. "Z" is the zone designator for the zero UTC offset. "09:30 UTC" is therefore represented as "09:30Z" or "T0930Z". "14:45:15 UTC" would be "14:45:15Z" or "T144515Z".


title: ISO 8601

text: The "Z" suffix in the ISO 8601 time representation is sometimes referred to as "Zulu time" or "Zulu meridian" because the same letter is used to designate the Zulu time zone. However the ACP 121 standard that defines the list of military time zones makes no mention of UTC and derives the "Zulu time" from the Greenwich Mean Time which was formerly used as the international civil time standard. GMT is no longer precisely defined by the scientific community and can refer to either UTC or UT1 depending on context.


title: ISO 8601

text: The UTC offset is appended to the time in the same way that 'Z' was above, in the form ±[hh]:[mm], ±[hh][mm], or ±[hh].


title: ISO 8601

text: Negative UTC offsets describe a time zone west of , where the civil time is behind (or earlier) than UTC so the zone designator will look like "−03:00","−0300", or "−03".


title: ISO 8601

text: Positive UTC offsets describe a time zone at or east of , where the civil time is the same as or ahead (or later) than UTC so the zone designator will look like "+02:00","+0200", or "+02".


title: ISO 8601

text: To represent a negative offset, ISO 8601 specifies using a minus sign, (). If the interchange character set is limited and does not have a minus sign character, then the hyphen-minus should be used, (). ASCII does not have a minus sign, so its hyphen-minus character (code is 45 decimal or 2D hexadecimal) would be used. If the character set has a minus sign, then that character should be used. Unicode has a minus sign, and its character code is U+2212 (2212 hexadecimal); the HTML character entity invocation is codice_1.


title: ISO 8601

text: The following times all refer to the same moment: "18:30Z", "22:30+04", "1130−0700", and "15:00−03:30". Nautical time zone letters are not used with the exception of Z. To calculate UTC time one has to subtract the offset from the local time, e.g. for "15:00−03:30" do 15:00 − (−03:30) to get 18:30 UTC.


title: ISO 8601

text: An offset of zero, in addition to having the special representation "Z", can also be stated numerically as "+00:00", "+0000", or "+00". However, it is not permitted to state it numerically with a negative sign, as "−00:00", "−0000", or "−00". The section dictating sign usage states that a plus sign must be used for a positive or zero value, and a minus sign for a negative value. Contrary to this rule, RFC 3339, which is otherwise a profile of ISO 8601, permits the use of "-00", with the same denotation as "+00" but a differing connotation.


title: ISO 8601

text: A single point in time can be represented by concatenating a complete date expression, the letter ""T"" as a delimiter, and a valid time expression. For example, . In ISO 8601:2004 it was permitted to omit the ""T"" character by mutual agreement as in , but this provision was removed in ISO 8601-1:2019.


title: ISO 8601

text: Separating date and time parts with other characters such as space is not allowed in ISO 8601, but allowed in its profile RFC 3339.


title: ISO 8601

text: Either basic or extended formats may be used, but both date and time must use the same format. The date expression may be calendar, week, or ordinal, and must use a complete representation. The time may be represented using a specified reduced precision format.


title: ISO 8601

text: Durations define the amount of intervening time in a time interval and are represented by the format P[n]Y[n]M[n]DT[n]H[n]M[n]S or P[n]W as shown on the aside. In these representations, the [n] is replaced by the value for each of the date and time elements that follow the [n]. Leading zeros are not required, but the maximum number of digits for each element should be agreed to by the communicating parties. The capital letters "P", "Y", "M", "W", "D", "T", "H", "M", and "S" are designators for each of the date and time elements and are not replaced.


title: ISO 8601

text: For example, "P3Y6M4DT12H30M5S" represents a duration of "three years, six months, four days, twelve hours, thirty minutes, and five seconds".


title: ISO 8601

text: Date and time elements including their designator may be omitted if their value is zero, and lower-order elements may also be omitted for reduced precision. For example, "P23DT23H" and "P4Y" are both acceptable duration representations. However, at least one element must be present, thus "P" is not a valid representation for a duration of 0 seconds. "PT0S" or "P0D", however, are both valid and represent the same duration.


title: ISO 8601

text: To resolve ambiguity, "P1M" is a one-month duration and "PT1M" is a one-minute duration (note the time designator, T, that precedes the time value). The smallest value used may also have a decimal fraction, as in "P0.5Y" to indicate half a year. This decimal fraction may be specified with either a comma or a full stop, as in "P0,5Y" or "P0.5Y". The standard does not prohibit date and time values in a duration representation from exceeding their "carry over points" except as noted below. Thus, "PT36H" could be used as well as "P1DT12H" for representing the same duration. But keep in mind that "PT36H" is not the same as "P1DT12H" when switching from or to Daylight saving time.


title: ISO 8601

text: Alternatively, a format for duration based on combined date and time representations may be used by agreement between the communicating parties either in the basic format PYYYYMMDDThhmmss or in the extended format . For example, the first duration shown above would be . However, individual date and time values cannot exceed their moduli (e.g. a value of 13 for the month or 25 for the hour would not be permissible).


title: ISO 8601

text: The standard describes a duration as part of time intervals, which are discussed in the next section. The duration format on its own is ambiguous regarding the total number of days in a calendar year and calendar month. The number of seconds in a calendar day is also ambiguous because of leap seconds. For example "P1M" on its own could be 28, 29, 30, or 31 days. There is no ambiguity when used in a time interval. Using example "P2M" duration of two calendar months:


title: ISO 8601

text: The duration format (or a subset thereof) is widely used independent of time intervals, as with the Java 8 Duration class which supports a subset of the duration format.


title: ISO 8601

text: A time interval is the intervening time between two time points. The amount of intervening time is expressed by a duration (as described in the previous section). The two time points (start and end) are expressed by either a combined date and time representation or just a date representation.


title: ISO 8601

text: Of these, the first three require two values separated by an "interval designator" which is usually a solidus (more commonly referred to as a forward slash "/"). Section 3.2.6 of ISO 8601-1:2019 notes that "A solidus may be replaced by a double hyphen ["--"] by mutual agreement of the communicating partners", and previous versions used notations like "2000--2002". Use of a double hyphen instead of a solidus allows inclusion in computer filenames; in common operating systems, a solidus is a reserved character and is not allowed in a filename.


title: ISO 8601

text: For <start>/<end> expressions, if any elements are missing from the end value, they are assumed to be the same as for the start value including the time zone. This feature of the standard allows for concise representations of time intervals. For example, the date of a two-hour meeting including the start and finish times could be simply shown as "2007-12-14T13:30/15:30", where "/15:30" implies "/2007-12-14T15:30" (the same date as the start), or the beginning and end dates of a monthly billing period as "2008-02-15/03-14", where "/03-14" implies "/2008-03-14" (the same year as the start).


title: ISO 8601

text: If greater precision is desirable to represent the time interval, then more time elements can be added to the representation. An interval denoted can start at any time on and end at any time on , whereas includes the start and end times.


title: ISO 8601

text: Repeating intervals are specified in clause "4.5 Recurring time interval". They are formed by adding "R[n]/" to the beginning of an interval expression, where "R" is used as the letter itself and [n] is replaced by the number of repetitions. Leaving out the value for [n] or specifying a value of -1, means an unbounded number of repetitions. A value of 0 for [n] means the interval is not repeated.


title: ISO 8601

text: If the interval specifies the start (forms 1 and 2 above), then this is the start of the repeating interval. If the interval specifies the end but not the start (form 3 above), then this is the end of the repeating interval. For example, to repeat the interval of "P1Y2M10DT2H30M" five times starting at , use .


title: ISO 8601

text: ISO 8601:2000 allowed truncation (by agreement), where leading components of a date or time are omitted. Notably, this allowed two-digit years to be used and the ambiguous formats YY-MM-DD and YYMMDD. This provision was removed in ISO 8601:2004.


title: ISO 8601

text: Only the first type (specific date in the implied century) omits the leading codice_2 for century. All other formats have one leading codice_2 per omitted century, year, and month.


title: ISO 8601

text: On the Internet, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) uses the IETF standard based on ISO 8601 in defining a profile of the standard that restricts the supported date and time formats to reduce the chance of error and the complexity of software. The very simple specification is based on a draft of the <nowiki>RFC 3339</nowiki> mentioned below.


title: ISO 8601

text: ISO 8601 is referenced by several specifications, but the full range of options of ISO 8601 is not always used. For example, the various electronic program guide standards for TV, digital radio, etc. use several forms to describe points in time and durations. The ID3 audio meta-data specification also makes use of a subset of ISO 8601.


title: ISO 8601

text: The ISO 8601 week date, as of 2006, appeared in its basic form on major brand commercial packaging in the United States. Its appearance depended on the particular packaging, canning, or bottling plant more than any particular brand. The format is particularly useful for quality assurance, so that production errors can be readily traced.


title: ISO 8601

text: IETF RFC 3339 defines a profile of ISO 8601 for use in Internet protocols and standards. It explicitly excludes durations and dates before the common era. The more complex formats such as week numbers and ordinal days are not permitted.


title: ISO 8601

text: <nowiki>RFC 3339</nowiki> deviates from ISO 8601 in allowing a zero time zone offset to be specified as "-00:00", which ISO 8601 forbids. <nowiki>RFC 3339</nowiki> intends "-00:00" to carry the connotation that it is not stating a preferred time zone, whereas the conforming "+00:00" or any non-zero offset connotes that the offset being used is preferred. This convention regarding "-00:00" is derived from earlier RFCs, such as RFC 2822 which uses it for timestamps in email headers. <nowiki>RFC 2822</nowiki> made no claim that any part of its timestamp format conforms to ISO 8601, and so was free to use this convention without conflict.


The United States Declaration of Independence, formally The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen States of America, is the pronouncement and founding document adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Pennsylvania State House (later renamed Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. Enacted during the American Revolution, the Declaration explains why the Thirteen Colonies at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain regarded themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states, no longer subject to British colonial rule. With the Declaration, these new states took a collective first step in forming the United States of America and, de facto, formalized the American Revolutionary War, which had been ongoing since April 1775.


title: United States Declaration of Independence

text: The Declaration of Independence was signed by 56 of America's Founding Fathers, congressional representatives from New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The Declaration became one of the most circulated and widely reprinted documents in early American history.


text: The Lee Resolution for independence was passed unanimously by the Congress on July 2. The Committee of Five had drafted the Declaration to be ready when Congress voted on independence. John Adams, a leader in pushing for independence, had persuaded the committee to select Thomas Jefferson to compose the original draft of the document, which Congress edited. The Declaration was a formal explanation of why Congress had voted to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War.


text: After ratifying the text on July 4, Congress issued the Declaration of Independence in several forms. It was initially published as the printed Dunlap broadside that was widely distributed and read to the public. Jefferson's original draft is preserved at the Library of Congress, complete with changes made by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, as well as Jefferson's notes of changes made by Congress. The best-known version of the Declaration is a signed copy that is displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and which is popularly regarded as the official document. This engrossed copy was ordered by Congress on July 19 and signed primarily on August 2.


text: The sources and interpretation of the Declaration have been the subject of much scholarly inquiry. The Declaration justified the independence of the United States by listing 27 colonial grievances against King George III and by asserting certain natural and legal rights, including a right of revolution. Its original purpose was to announce independence, and references to the text of the Declaration were few in the following years. Abraham Lincoln made it the centerpiece of his policies and his rhetoric, as in the Gettysburg Address of 1863. Since then, it has become a well-known statement on human rights, particularly its second sentence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."


text: The declaration was made to guarantee equal rights for every person, and if it had been intended for only a certain section of people, Congress would have left it as "rights of Englishmen". Stephen Lucas called it "one of the best-known sentences in the English language", with historian Joseph Ellis writing that the document contains "the most potent and consequential words in American history". The passage came to represent a moral standard to which the United States should strive. This view was notably promoted by Lincoln, who considered the Declaration to be the foundation of his political philosophy and argued that it is a statement of principles through which the United States Constitution should be interpreted.


text: The Declaration of Independence inspired many similar documents in other countries, the first being the 1789 "Declaration of United Belgian States" issued during the Brabant Revolution in the Austrian Netherlands. It also served as the primary model for numerous declarations of independence in Europe and Latin America, as well as Africa (Liberia) and Oceania (New Zealand) during the first half of the 19th century.


text: By the time the Declaration of Independence was adopted in July 1776, the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain had been at war for more than a year. Relations had been deteriorating between the colonies and the mother country since 1763. Parliament enacted a series of measures to increase revenue from the colonies, such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767. Parliament believed that these acts were a legitimate means of having the colonies pay their fair share of the costs to keep them in the British Empire.


text: Many colonists, however, had developed a different perspective of the empire. The colonies were not directly represented in Parliament, and colonists argued that Parliament had no right to levy taxes upon them. This tax dispute was part of a larger divergence between British and American interpretations of the British Constitution and the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies. The orthodox British view, dating from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, was that Parliament was the supreme authority throughout the empire, and anything that Parliament did was constitutional. In the colonies, however, the idea had developed that the British Constitution recognized certain fundamental rights that no government could violate, including Parliament. After the Townshend Acts, some essayists questioned whether Parliament had any legitimate jurisdiction in the colonies. Anticipating the arrangement of the British Commonwealth, by 1774 American writers such as Samuel Adams, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson argued that Parliament was the legislature of Great Britain only, and that the colonies, which had their own legislatures, were connected to the rest of the empire only through their allegiance to the Crown.


text: In 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, known as the Intolerable Acts in the colonies. This was intended to punish the colonists for the Gaspee Affair of 1772 and the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Many colonists considered the Coercive Acts to be in violation of the British Constitution and thus a threat to the liberties of all of British America; the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in September 1774 to coordinate a formal response. Congress organized a boycott of British goods and petitioned the king for repeal of the acts. These measures were unsuccessful, since King George and the Prime Minister, Lord North, were determined to enforce parliamentary supremacy over America. As the king wrote to North in November 1774, "blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent".


text: Most colonists still hoped for reconciliation with Great Britain, even after fighting began in the American Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. The Second Continental Congress convened at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia in May 1775, and some delegates hoped for eventual independence, but no one yet advocated declaring it. Many colonists believed that Parliament no longer had sovereignty over them, but they were still loyal to King George, thinking he would intercede on their behalf. They were disabused of that notion in late 1775, when the king rejected Congress's second petition, issued a Proclamation of Rebellion, and announced before Parliament on October 26 that he was considering "friendly offers of foreign assistance" to suppress the rebellion. A pro-American minority in Parliament warned that the government was driving the colonists toward independence.


text: Thomas Paine's pamphlet "Common Sense" was published in January 1776, when the king clearly was not inclined to act as a conciliator. Paine, recently arrived in the colonies from England, argued in favor of colonial independence, advocating republicanism as an alternative to monarchy and hereditary rule. "Common Sense" made a persuasive, impassioned case for independence, which had not been given serious consideration in the colonies. Paine linked independence with Protestant beliefs, as a means to present a distinctly American political identity, and he initiated open debate on a topic few had dared to discuss. Public support for separation from Great Britain steadily increased after the publication of "Common Sense".


text: Some colonists still hoped for reconciliation, but public support for independence further strengthened in early 1776. In February 1776, colonists learned of Parliament's passage of the Prohibitory Act, which established a blockade of American ports and declared American ships to be enemy vessels. John Adams, a strong supporter of independence, believed that Parliament had effectively declared American independence before Congress had been able to. Adams labeled the Prohibitory Act the "Act of Independency", calling it "a compleat Dismemberment of the British Empire". Support for declaring independence grew even more when it was confirmed that King George had hired German mercenaries to use against his American subjects.


text: Despite this growing popular support for independence, Congress lacked the clear authority to declare it. Delegates had been elected to Congress by 13 different governments, which included extralegal conventions, ad hoc committees, and elected assemblies, and they were bound by the instructions given to them. Regardless of their personal opinions, delegates could not vote to declare independence unless their instructions permitted such an action. Several colonies, in fact, expressly prohibited their delegates from taking any steps toward separation from Great Britain, while other delegations had instructions that were ambiguous on the issue; consequently, advocates of independence sought to have the Congressional instructions revised. For Congress to declare independence, a majority of delegations would need authorization to vote for it, and at least one colonial government would need to specifically instruct its delegation to propose a declaration of independence in Congress. Between April and July 1776, a "complex political war" was waged to bring this about.


text: In the campaign to revise Congressional instructions, many Americans formally expressed their support for separation from Great Britain in what were effectively state and local declarations of independence. Historian Pauline Maier identifies more than ninety such declarations that were issued throughout the Thirteen Colonies from April to July 1776. These "declarations" took a variety of forms. Some were formal written instructions for Congressional delegations, such as the Halifax Resolves of April 12, with which North Carolina became the first colony to explicitly authorize its delegates to vote for independence. Others were legislative acts that officially ended British rule in individual colonies, such as the Rhode Island legislature renouncing its allegiance to Great Britain on May 4—the first colony to do so. Many "declarations" were resolutions adopted at town or county meetings that offered support for independence. A few came in the form of jury instructions, such as the statement issued on April 23, 1776, by Chief Justice William Henry Drayton of South Carolina: "the law of the land authorizes me to declare ... that "George" the Third, King of "Great Britain" ... has no authority over us, and we owe no obedience to him." Most of these declarations are now obscure, having been overshadowed by the resolution for independence, approved by Congress on July 2, and the declaration of independence, approved and printed on July 4 and signed in August. The modern scholarly consensus is that the best-known and earliest of the local declarations is most likely inauthentic, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, allegedly adopted in May 1775 (a full year before other local declarations).


text: Some colonies held back from endorsing independence. Resistance was centered in the middle colonies of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Advocates of independence saw Pennsylvania as the key; if that colony could be converted to the pro-independence cause, it was believed that the others would follow. On May 1, however, opponents of independence retained control of the Pennsylvania Assembly in a special election that had focused on the question of independence. In response, Congress passed a resolution on May 10 which had been promoted by John Adams and Richard Henry Lee, calling on colonies without a "government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs" to adopt new governments. The resolution passed unanimously, and was even supported by Pennsylvania's John Dickinson, the leader of the anti-independence faction in Congress, who believed that it did not apply to his colony.


text: As was the custom, Congress appointed a committee to draft a preamble to explain the purpose of the resolution. John Adams wrote the preamble, which stated that because King George had rejected reconciliation and was hiring foreign mercenaries to use against the colonies, "it is necessary that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said crown should be totally suppressed". Adams's preamble was meant to encourage the overthrow of the governments of Pennsylvania and Maryland, which were still under proprietary governance. Congress passed the preamble on May 15 after several days of debate, but four of the middle colonies voted against it, and the Maryland delegation walked out in protest. Adams regarded his May 15 preamble effectively as an American declaration of independence, although a formal declaration would still have to be made.


text: On the same day that Congress passed Adams's radical preamble, the Virginia Convention set the stage for a formal Congressional declaration of independence. On May 15, the Convention instructed Virginia's congressional delegation "to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain". In accordance with those instructions, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presented a three-part resolution to Congress on June 7. The motion was seconded by John Adams, calling on Congress to declare independence, form foreign alliances, and prepare a plan of colonial confederation. The part of the resolution relating to declaring independence read: "Resolved, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."