title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: The Chinese delegation was led by Lou Tseng-Tsiang, who was accompanied by Wellington Koo and Cao Rulin. Koo demanded Germany's concessions on Shandong be returned to China. He also called for an end to imperialist institutions such as extraterritoriality, legation guards, and foreign leaseholds. Despite American support and the ostensible spirit of self-determination, the Western powers refused his claims but instead transferred the German concessions to Japan. That sparked widespread student protests in China on 4 May, later known as the May Fourth Movement, which eventually pressured the government into refusing to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Thus, the Chinese delegation at the conference was the only one not to sign the treaty at the signing ceremony.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: While Russia was formally excluded from the Conference although it had fought against the Central Powers for three years. However the Russian Provincial Council (chaired by Prince Lvov), the successor to the Russian Constitutional Assembly and the political arm of the Russian White movement attended the conference and was represented by the former tsarist minister Sergey Sazonov, who, if the Tsar had not been overthrown, would most likely have attended the conference anyway. The Council maintained the position of an indivisible Russia, but some were prepared to negotiate over the loss of Poland and Finland. The Council suggested all matters relating to territorial claims or demands for autonomy within the former Russian Empire be referred to a new All-Russian Constituent Assembly.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: Delegations from the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, led respectively by Jaan Poska, Jānis Čakste and Augustinas Voldemaras, also participated in the conference, and successfully achieved international recognition of the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: Ukraine had its best opportunity to win recognition and support from foreign powers at the conference. At a meeting of the Big Five on 16 January, Lloyd George called Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura (1874–1926) an adventurer and dismissed Ukraine as an anti-Bolshevik stronghold. Sir Eyre Crowe, British Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, spoke against a union of East Galicia and Poland. The British cabinet never decided whether to support a united or dismembered Russia. The United States was sympathetic to a strong, united Russia, as a counterpoise to Japan, but Britain feared a threat to India. Petliura appointed Count Tyshkevich as his representative to the Vatican, and Pope Benedict XV recognized Ukrainian independence, but Ukraine was effectively ignored.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: A delegation of the Belarusian Democratic Republic, under Prime Minister Anton Łuckievič, also participated in the conference, and attempted to gain international recognition of the independence of Belarus. On the way to the conference, the delegation was received by Czechoslovak President Tomáš Masaryk in Prague. During the conference, Łuckievič had meetings with the exiled foreign minister of Admiral Alexander Kolchak's Russian government, Sergey Sazonov, and Polish Prime Minister Ignacy Jan Paderewski.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: At the insistence of Wilson, the Big Four required Poland to sign a treaty on 28 June 1919 that guaranteed minority rights in the new nation. Poland signed under protest and made little effort to enforce the specified rights for Germans, Jews, Ukrainians, and other minorities. Similar treaties were signed by Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria and later by Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. Estonia had already given cultural autonomy to minorities in its declaration of independence. Finland and Germany were not asked to sign a minority treaty.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: In Poland, the key provisions were to become fundamental laws, which would override any national legal codes or legislation. The new country pledged to assure "full and complete protection of life and liberty to all individuals... without distinction of birth, nationality, language, race, or religion." Freedom of religion was guaranteed to everyone. Most residents were given citizenship, but there was considerable ambiguity on who was covered. The treaty guaranteed basic civil, political, and cultural rights and required all citizens to be equal before the law and enjoy identical rights of citizens and workers. Polish was to be the national language, but the treaty provided for minority languages to be freely used privately, in commerce, in religion, in the press, at public meetings, and before all courts. Minorities were to be permitted to establish and control at their own expense private charities, churches, social institutions, and schools, without interference from the government, which was required to set up German-language public schools in districts that had been German before the war. All education above the primary level was to be conducted exclusively in the national language. Article 12 was the enforcement clause and gave the Council of the League of Nations the responsibility to monitor and enforce the treaties.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: The three South Caucasian republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia and the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus all sent a delegation to the conference. Their attempts to gain protection from threats posed by the ongoing Russian Civil War largely failed since none of the major powers was interested in taking a mandate over the Caucasian territories. After a series of delays, the three South Caucasian countries ultimately gained "de facto" recognition from the Supreme Council of the Allied powers but only after all European troops had been withdrawn from the Caucasus, except for a British contingent in Batumi. Georgia was recognized "de facto" on 12 January 1920, followed by Azerbaijan the same day and Armenia on 19 January 1920. The Allied leaders decided to limit their assistance to the Caucasian republics to the supply of arms, munitions, and food.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: The Armenian delegation included Avetis Aharonyan, Hamo Ohanjanyan, and Armen Garo. The Azerbaijan mission was headed by Alimardan Topchubashev. The Georgian delegation included Nikolay Chkheidze, Irakli Tsereteli, and Zurab Avalishvili.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: After a failed attempt by the Korean National Association to send a three-man delegation to Paris, a delegation of Koreans from China and Hawaii made it there. It included a representative from the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai, Kim Kyu-sik. They were aided by the Chinese, who were eager for the opportunity to embarrass Japan at the international forum. Several top Chinese leaders at the time, including Sun Yat-sen, told US diplomats that the conference should take up the question of Korean independence. However, the Chinese, already locked in a struggle against the Japanese, could do little else for Korea. Other than China, no nation took the Koreans seriously at the conference because it already had the status of a Japanese colony. The failure of Korean nationalists to gain support from the conference ended their hopes of foreign support.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: After the conference's decision to separate the former Arab provinces from the Ottoman Empire and to apply the new mandate-system to them, the World Zionist Organization submitted its draft resolutions for consideration by the conference on 3 February 1919.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: However, despite those attempts to influence the conference, the Zionists were instead constrained by Article 7 of the resulting Palestine Mandate to having the mere right of obtaining Palestinian citizenship: "The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine."


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: Citing the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the Zionists suggested it meant the British had already recognized the historic title of the Jews to Palestine. The preamble of the British Mandate of 1922 in which the Balfour Declaration was incorporated, stated, "Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical "connection" of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country..."


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: During the Peace Conference, a delegation of Aromanians participated in the talks in order to fulfill autonomist wishes for the Aromanian people in the same vein as the Principality of the Pindus attempt two years earlier, but failed to accomplish any recognition for the self-rule desires of their people.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: An unprecedented aspect of the conference was concerted pressure brought to bear on delegates by a committee of women, who sought to establish and entrench women's fundamental social, economic, and political rights, such as that of suffrage, within the peace framework. Although they were denied seats at the Paris Conference, the leadership of Marguerite de Witt-Schlumberger, the president of the French Union for Women's Suffrage, caused an Inter-Allied Women's Conference (IAWC) to be convened, which met from 10 February to 10 April 1919. The IAWC lobbied Wilson and then also the other delegates of the Paris Conference to admit women to its committees, and it was successful in achieving a hearing from the conference's Commissions for International Labour Legislation and then the League of Nations Commission. One key and concrete outcome of the IAWC's work was Article 7 of the Covenant of the League of Nations: "All positions under or in connection with the League, including the Secretariat, shall be open equally to men and women." More generally, the IAWC placed the issue of women's rights at the center of the new world order that was established in Paris.


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: The remaking of the world map at the conferences gave birth to a number of critical conflict-prone contradictions internationally that would become some of the causes of World War II. The British historian Eric Hobsbawm claimed:


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: Hobsbawm and other left-wing historians have argued that Wilson's Fourteen Points, particularly the principle of self-determination, were measures that were primarily against the Bolsheviks and designed, by playing the nationist card, to tame the revolutionary fever that was sweeping across Europe in the wake of the October Revolution and the end of the war:


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: The right-wing historian John Lewis Gaddis agreed: "When Woodrow Wilson made the principle of self-determination one of his Fourteen Points his intent had been to undercut the appeal of Bolshevism."


title: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)

text: That view has a long history and can be summarised by Ray Stannard Baker's famous remark: "Paris cannot be understood without Moscow."


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: Kelly's Heroes is a 1970 World War II comedy-drama heist film, directed by Brian G. Hutton, about a motley crew of American GIs who go AWOL in order to rob a French bank, located behind German lines, of its stored Nazi gold bars. The film stars Clint Eastwood and Telly Savalas, and co-stars Don Rickles, Carroll O'Connor, and Donald Sutherland providing the comic absurdity, with secondary, comedic roles by Harry Dean Stanton, Gavin MacLeod, Karl-Otto Alberty, and Stuart Margolin. The screenplay was written by British film and television writer Troy Kennedy Martin. The film was a US-Yugoslav co-production, filmed mainly in the Croatian village of Vižinada on the Istria peninsula.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: During a thunderstorm in early September 1944, units of the 35th Infantry Division are nearing the French town of Nancy. One of the division's mechanized reconnaissance platoons is ordered to hold their position when the Germans counterattack. The outnumbered platoon is also hit by friendly fire from their own mortars.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: Private Kelly, a former lieutenant scapegoated for a failed infantry assault, captures Colonel Dankhopf of Wehrmacht Intelligence. Interrogating his prisoner, Kelly notices the officer's briefcase has several gold bars disguised under lead plating. Curious, he gets the colonel drunk and learns that there is a cache of 14,000 gold bars, worth US$16 million ($ million today), stored in a bank vault behind German lines in the French town of Clermont. When their position is overrun and the Americans pull back, a Tiger I tank kills Dankhopf.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: Kelly decides to steal the gold. He recruits Supply Sergeant "Crapgame" in order to obtain the supplies and weapons that will be needed. A spaced-out tank commander known as "Oddball" overhears the heist plan and suggests his three unattached M4 Sherman tanks join the caper. With their commanding officer, Captain Maitland, preoccupied with visiting his uncle "The General" (and stealing a yacht), Kelly's platoon are all eager to join Kelly in the heist. After much argument, Kelly finally persuades cynical Master Sergeant "Big Joe" to go along.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: Kelly decides that his infantrymen and Oddball's tanks and crew will proceed separately and meet near Clermont. The Shermans fight their way through the German lines, destroying a railway depot in the process, but the bridge they must cross is blown up by Allied fighter-bombers. Oddball contacts an engineering unit to build a bridge for the crossing, and the engineers in turn bring in even more men to supply support.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: After losing their jeeps and half-tracks to friendly fire from an American fighter aircraft that mistakes them for Germans, Kelly and his men proceed on foot. They walk into a minefield, and Private Grace is blown up when he steps on a mine. The last two men still trapped in the minefield, PFC Mitchell and Corporal Job, are killed after being forced to engage a German patrol that suddenly arrives before Kelly and Big Joe can kill all the Germans.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: Oddball links up with Kelly two nights later, bringing with him the extra troops that he has acquired. They battle their way across the river to Clermont. By this time, intercepted radio messages attract the notice of Major General Colt, who misinterprets them as efforts by an aggressive Army unit pushing forward on their own initiative. He immediately rushes to the new front to exploit this "breakthrough."


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: Clermont is defended by three Tiger tanks of the 1st SS Panzer Division and its infantry support. The Americans are able to eliminate the German infantry and two of the Tigers, but the final tank parks itself right in front of the bank after Oddball's last Sherman breaks down, leaving them stalemated. At Crapgame’s suggestion, Kelly, Big Joe, and Oddball approach the Tiger and offer the commander and his crew "a deal-deal": equal shares of the gold if the Tiger will shoot the armored doors off the bank.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: After the Tiger blows the bank doors open, the Germans and Americans divide the spoils, each gold share amounting to US$875,000 (more than $14.3 million today). They go their separate ways, just barely ahead of the still-oblivious General Colt. His way into Clermont has been blocked by the joyous crowd of relieved French residents, who have been deceived by Big Joe into thinking that Colt is French Gen. Charles de Gaulle.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: The screenplay was written by British film and television writer Troy Kennedy Martin. He relied on a true story, featured as "The Greatest Robbery on Record" in "Guinness World Records" from 1956 to 2000. On 4 December 1968, Elliott Morgan, MGM's Head of Research, wrote to the "Guinness Book of World Records" requesting information on this entry: "The greatest robbery on record was of the German National Gold Reserves in Bavaria by a combine of U.S. military personnel and German civilians in 1945". On 10 December the editor, Norris D. McWhirter, wrote back to Morgan, stating that he had very little information and that he essentially suspected that there had been a cover-up, which required that the story should be subject to a "restricted classification". He closed by suggesting that until that security classification was changed, "due to death or eflux "[sic]" of time, "any film made will have to be an historical romance rather than history".


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: In 1975 British researcher Ian Sayer began a nine-year investigation into the Guinness entry. The results of his investigation, which confirmed a cover up by the U.S. government together with the involvement of U.S. military and former "Wehrmacht" and SS officers in the theft, were published in the 1984 book "Nazi Gold — The Sensational Story of the World's Greatest Robbery — and the Greatest Criminal Cover-Up". The investigation finally led to two of the missing gold bars (valued in 2019 at over $1 million) being handed over by German officials to the U.S. government in a secret ceremony at Bonn on 27 September 1996. The bullion was transported to the Bank of England where it was held to the account of the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold (TCRMG). The first disclosure that the Bank was holding the two bars (complete with Nazi markings) came from a press release issued by the bank on 8 May 1997 which confirmed that the two bars were those that had been identified as missing in the book "Nazi Gold". Sayer had given information to the United States Department of State concerning the two bars (amongst other things) in July 1978. In 1983 they finally agreed to investigate using Sayer's evidence. The State Department investigation did not conclude until 1997. On 11 December 1997 Sayer was invited, by the Secretary General of the TCRMG, to view the two bars in the gold bullion vaults of the Bank of England. In addition to being accorded this rare honour, he was also photographed holding the bars, which he had been instrumental in tracking down.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: The project was announced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in November 1968 under the title of "The Warriors". Filming commenced in July 1969 and was completed in December. The film was made and released during a time of great financial difficulties for MGM, in the early days of the turbulent ownership by Kirk Kerkorian. It was shot on location in the Istrian village of Vižinada in Croatia, in the ruins of the Beočin palace in Serbia, in the Yugoslavia, and finally in London. One of the reasons for the selection of Yugoslavia as the main location was that, in 1969, it was one of the few nations whose army were still equipped with operating World War II mechanized equipment, both German and American, including in particular the M4 Sherman tank. This simplified the film's logistics tremendously.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: During pre-production, George Kennedy turned down the role of Big Joe, despite an offered fee of $300,000, because he did not like the role. The original script included a female role which was removed just before filming began. Ingrid Pitt had been cast in the role (she had worked on "Where Eagles Dare" with Eastwood and Hutton the previous year). She later said she was "virtually climbing on board the plane bound for Yugoslavia when word came through that my part had been cut". In the film's climax, there is a nod to the ending of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", another Eastwood film, including a similar musical score, and the overdubbing on the soundtrack of non-existent jangling spurs.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: The Tiger I tanks were actually Soviet T-34 tanks that had been modified to look like the German tank. The U.S. Sherman tanks were the M4A3E4 variant. Kelly's platoon also drove an M3 Gun Motor Carriage before it was destroyed on the hill, as well as several half-tracks. The Germans also drove a Kübelwagen.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: Kelly's men were armed with a mix of .30 caliber machine guns, Browning Automatic Rifles, and Thompson submachine guns, with few carbines and no M-1 rifles. Gutkowski, the unit's sniper, was armed with a Soviet Mosin–Nagant M91/30 rifle. The German soldiers were armed almost exclusively with MP 40 submachine guns.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: The U.S. plane that attacked Kelly's group was a Yugoslavian Soko 522 with a U.S. Army air force roundels.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: MGM cut approximately 20 minutes from the film before its theatrical release. Eastwood said later in interviews that he was very disappointed about the re-cut by MGM because he felt that many of the deleted scenes not only gave depth to the characters, but also made the movie much better. Some of the deleted scenes were shown on promotional stills and described in interviews with cast and crew for Cinema Retro's special edition article about "Kelly's Heroes":


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: The film score was composed, arranged, and conducted by Lalo Schifrin, while the soundtrack album was released by MGM Records in 1970. The President of MGM Records, Mike Curb, wrote two songs for the film, with his group the Mike Curb Congregation performing on a number of the songs.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: The soundtrack was released on LP, as well a subsequent CD featuring the LP tracks, by Chapter III Records; both were mostly re-recordings. An expanded edition of the soundtrack was released by Film Score Monthly in 2005.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: The main musical theme of the film (at both beginning and end) is "Burning Bridges", sung by the Mike Curb Congregation with music by Schifrin. There is also a casual rendition of the music heard in the background near the middle of the film. The Mike Curb Congregation's recording of "Burning Bridges" reached #34 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 singles chart on March 6, 1971; but did much better in South Africa, where it was the #1 song on the charts for five weeks ending in November 1970, and in New Zealand, where it spent two weeks at #1 in March 1971. It also had a two-week stay at #1 in Australia, and in Canada the song reached #23 in March 1971.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: Mike Curb wrote the song "All for the Love of Sunshine" for the film, with the Mike Curb Congregation providing background on the recording by Hank Williams, Jr. The song became the first #1 country hit for Williams.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: The film received mostly positive reviews. It was voted at number 34 in Channel 4's "100 Greatest War Films of All Time". The film earned $5.2 million in US theatrical rentals.


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: Film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an approval rating of 78% based on 23 reviews, with an average rating of 6.83/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Kelly's Heroes subverts its World War II setting with pointed satirical commentary on modern military efforts, offering an entertaining hybrid of heist caper and battlefield action".


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: Roger Greenspun of "The New York Times" described the action scenes as "good clean scary fun," until it goes "terribly wrong" when many soldiers are killed and "the balance alters to the horrors of war. To acknowledge its deaths the film has no resources above the conventional antagonistic ironies and comradely pieties of most war movies. And since its subject is not war, but burglary masquerading as war, the easy acceptance of the masquerade—which is apparently quite beyond the film's control—becomes a denial of moral perception that depresses the mind and bewilders the imagination". Arthur D. Murphy of "Variety" called the film "a very preposterous, very commercial World War II comedy meller, the type which combines roadshow production values and length with B-plot artistry". Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote that "the bombing becomes tedious. One quickly realizes anytime a large object is brought into focus it will soon be incinerated. With only one dramatic problem—getting the gold—it is hard to imagine how the producers and directors could let the film run nearly two-and-one-half hours". Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" called the film "a picture which confuses shrillness with wit and slaughter with slapstick", adding, "Even the estimable Donald Sutherland can't redeem the picture. Despite his artful efforts, his role as a long-haired hippie tank commander is so ludicrously out of time and place that it becomes hard to stomach in a film in which, elsewhere, two GIs trapped in a mine field are gunned down like cans on a stump. You can't poison your cake and eat it too". Alan M. Kriegsman of "The Washington Post" described the film as "a case of machismo gone mad," and wondered "how a photographer like Gabriel Figueroa, who shot a number of Luis Bunuel's finest films, among other things, ever got roped into such a jejune, tasteless project". "The Monthly Film Bulletin" stated that "In terms of rip-roaring, bulldozing action, this attempt to cross "The Dirty Dozen" with "Where Eagles Dare" can be said to have achieved its object". However, the review went on, "With all energy apparently expended on sustaining over two hours of consistently devastating explosions, pyrotechnics and demolition, little attention has been paid either to period detail (resulting in mini-skirted townswomen and the description of conditions in terms of 'hung-up' and 'freaked out') or to the script, which is jolly, vituperative, and little else".


title: Kelly's Heroes

text: "Kelly's Heroes" was released on DVD by Warner Home Video on August 1, 2000, in a Region 1 widescreen DVD (one of several solo DVDs marketed as the Clint Eastwood Collection). The film was re-released again on June 1, 2010, this time as a Blu-ray Region A widescreen two-disc set also with Eastwood's 1968 World War II feature film, "Where Eagles Dare".


title: Murders of Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and Maren Ueland

text: On 17 December 2018, the bodies of Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, a 24-year-old Danish woman, and Maren Ueland, a 28-year-old Norwegian woman, were found decapitated in the foothills of Mount Toubkal near to the village of Imlil in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.


text: A total of 18 men have been arrested by Moroccan Police in relation to the murders. The murders were described by the Moroccan general prosecutor as a terrorist act, after a video of several of the suspects were shown swearing allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant while decapitating Jespersen was released on the Internet.


text: Louisa Vesterager Jespersen (born 1994) grew up in Ikast, Denmark. She attended Vestre School, and became a student at the in 2013. She had been travelling to various different countries, such as Argentina, Peru, and Norway. Jespersen applied for participation in Fjällräven Polar expedition in 2017 and 2018.


text: Jespersen and Ueland were students at the University of South-Eastern Norway, where they studied outdoor recreation and nature guidance to become tour guides. The pair had arrived in Morocco on 9 December as tourists, with the intention of trekking and "chasing experiences", according to Jespersen's mother. The two women first arrived in Marrakesh, before travelling to Imlil in the Atlas Mountains. The village of Imlil is popular with travellers as the main base for summiting Toubkal, which is the highest peak in North Africa.


text: Four attackers had shared a video on social media before the attacks, pledging allegiance to the ISIS terror group, and discussed "destruction caused by the warplanes of the Crusader alliance". One of the attackers stated, "Keep fighting the enemies of Allah, wherever you are, you have no excuse and, be informed that we are your supporters… you have allies among us."


text: According to Swedish Defence University researcher Magnus Ranstorp, terrorists attacking tourists is not a new phenomenon, and it aims to destabilise the country where such attacks take place.


text: While Morocco is generally seen as a secure destination for tourists; the last terrorist attack happened in 2011, where 17 people were killed by a bombing at a restaurant in Marrakesh, over 1600 people have travelled from Morocco to join the Islamic State in the Syrian civil war. Moroccan authorities initially ignored the people who joined ISIS, but later on realised they could return to commit terrorist offences in Morocco. As a result, the "" (BCIJ) was formed.


text: According to a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, "Moroccan authorities appear to have a good grip on the jihadist situation, and cooperate with European and US authorities". Moroccans are overrepresented in "diaspora terrorism", which is terrorism which takes place outside the borders of Morocco; for example, two Moroccans were behind the 2017 London Bridge attack, a Moroccan killed people by driving his van into pedestrians in La Rambla in the 2017 Barcelona terrorist attacks, and the following day, another Moroccan killed two women in the 2017 Turku attack.


text: On the morning of 17 December 2018, a pair of French hikers came across the decapitated bodies of the victims, and their tent, near a trail connecting Imlil to Mount Toubkal. A suspect named Abderrahim Khayali was quickly apprehended following the incident, after police found an ID in the victims' tent, that had been left behind by the suspect. Three additional suspects, Abdessamad Ejjoud, Rachid Afatti, and Younes Ouaziyad, were later apprehended by the police while riding a bus during the morning rush hour in the nearby city of Marrakesh. The three suspects were caught in possession of bladed weapons. Abdessamad Ejjoud is assumed to be the leader of the group, and the four men had shot a video the week before the murders, where they pledged allegiance to ISIS.


text: The killers had agreed to carry out a terrorist act on either security services or foreign tourists, before deciding to travel to the Imlil region to look for foreigners, and where they would target the two backpackers. In the video of the killings, the attackers can be heard shouting "enemies of Allah", and "revenge for our brothers in Hajin".


text: Moroccan police later made additional arrests of individuals believed to have connections with the suspects.


text: In total, 24 went on trial in Salé, near Rabat in Morocco. Of those charged, 23 suspects are Moroccans from Marrakesh, and one is a Swiss-Spanish Muslim convert. Three of them were charged with murder, and the other 23 of various terrorist charges.


text: In May 2019, one of the suspects admitted to killing one of the women. He had previously been jailed for having attempted to join the Islamic State in Syria, and was released in 2015.


text: In July 2019, three of the suspects were given a death sentence, which their lawyer said he would appeal.


text: On 31 October, the death sentence for three of the convicted was upheld by the anti-terrorist court in Salé. In total, 24 suspects connected to the murders, or whom were members of the jihadist cell, were sentenced.


text: The prime suspect, Abdessamad Ejjoud, was 25 years of age and organised the murder expedition with two accomplices, Younes Ouaziyad (27) and Rachid Afatti (33) who filmed the murders. A fourth suspect, Abderrahim Khayali, had his sentence elevated from life imprisonment to the death penalty. Khayali was part of the expedition into the mountain, but left the group before the killings. The court upheld received sentences from 5 to 30 years in prison for nineteen of the accused, and elevated one sentence from 15 to 20 years in prison. Ejjoud used his chance to speak before the sentence to ask for the death penalty, as he believed in neither the laws nor human rights. Ouaziyad and Afatti recited verses from the Quran.


text: Like in the first trial, the court ordered the four prime suspects to pay 190,000 euros to the parents of Maren Ueland.


text: The death penalty is still in effect in Morocco. In practice, no executions have taken place since 1993.


text: Jespersen's funeral was held in her native town of Ikast, Denmark on 12 January. The Prime Minister of Denmark, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, attended the funeral.


text: Ueland was buried on 21 January in Jæren, Norway. The Norwegian Minister of Health, Bent Høie, and the Moroccan Ambassador, Lamia Radi, attended the ceremony.


text: In Morocco, news of the attack was met with widespread outrage and condemnation. The incident received extensive coverage in the international press. Reactions in the native countries of the victims were of shock and outrage. A public torchlit vigil was held in Ueland's native town of Bryne in support of her family and loved ones.


text: Vigils for the victims were held in Rabat, Morocco at the embassies of Norway and Denmark, along with vigils in Marrakesh and Imlil.


text: Two videos, one depicting the murder, and another where the suspects filmed themselves swearing allegiance to ISIS, were published onto social media. Moroccan authorities and Norway's National Criminal Investigation Service agents have said the videos are authentic.


title: Literary modernism

text: Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented with literary form and expression, as exemplified by Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new." This literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time. The horrors of the First World War saw the prevailing assumptions about society reassessed, and much modernist writing engages with the technological advances and societal changes of modernity moving into the 20th century.


title: Literary modernism

text: In the 1880s, increased attention was given to the idea that it was necessary to push aside previous norms entirely, instead of merely revising past knowledge in light of contemporary techniques. The theories of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), and Ernst Mach (1838–1916) influenced early Modernist literature. Ernst Mach argued that the mind had a fundamental structure, and that subjective experience was based on the interplay of parts of the mind in "The Science of Mechanics" (1883). Freud's first major work was "Studies on Hysteria" (with Josef Breuer) (1895). According to Freud, all subjective reality was based on the play of basic drives and instincts, through which the outside world was perceived. As a philosopher of science, Ernst Mach was a major influence on logical positivism, and through his criticism of Isaac Newton, a forerunner of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.


title: Literary modernism

text: Many prior theories about epistemology argued that external and absolute reality could impress itself, as it were, on an individual, as, for example, John Locke's (1632–1704) empiricism, which saw the mind beginning as a "tabula rasa", a blank slate ("An Essay Concerning Human Understanding", 1690). Freud's description of subjective states, involving an unconscious mind full of primal impulses and counterbalancing self-imposed restrictions, was combined by Carl Jung (1875–1961) with the idea of the collective unconscious, which the conscious mind either fought or embraced. While Charles Darwin's work remade the Aristotelian concept of "man, the animal" in the public mind, Jung suggested that human impulses toward breaking social norms were not the product of childishness or ignorance, but rather derived from the essential nature of the human animal.


title: Literary modernism

text: Another major precursor of modernism was Friedrich Nietzsche, especially his idea that psychological drives, specifically the "will to power", were more important than facts, or things. Henri Bergson (1859–1941), on the other hand, emphasized the difference between scientific clock time and the direct, subjective, human experience of time. His work on time and consciousness "had a great influence on twentieth-century novelists," especially those modernists who used the stream of consciousness technique, such as Dorothy Richardson for the book "Pointed Roofs" (1915), James Joyce for "Ulysses" (1922) and Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) for "Mrs Dalloway" (1925) and "To the Lighthouse" (1927). Also important in Bergson's philosophy was the idea of "élan vital", the life force, which "brings about the creative evolution of everything." His philosophy also placed a high value on intuition, though without rejecting the importance of the intellect. These various thinkers were united by a distrust of Victorian positivism and certainty. Modernism as a literary movement can also be seen as a reaction to industrialization, urbanization and new technologies.


title: Literary modernism

text: Important literary precursors of modernism were Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81) ("Crime and Punishment" (1866), "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880)); Walt Whitman (1819–92) ("Leaves of Grass") (1855–91); Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) ("Madame Bovary" (1856-57), "Sentimental Education" (1869), "The Temptation of Saint Anthony" (1874), "Three Tales" (1877), "Bouvard et Pécuchet" (1881)); Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) ("Les Fleurs du mal"), Rimbaud (1854–91) ("Illuminations", 1874); Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) ("Hunger", 1890); August Strindberg (1849–1912), especially his later plays, including the trilogy "To Damascus" 1898–1901, "A Dream Play" (1902), "The Ghost Sonata" (1907).


title: Literary modernism

text: Initially, some modernists fostered a utopian spirit, stimulated by innovations in anthropology, psychology, philosophy, political theory, physics and psychoanalysis. The poets of the Imagist movement, founded by Ezra Pound in 1912 as a new poetic style, gave modernism its early start in the 20th century, and were characterized by a poetry that favoured a precision of imagery, brevity and free verse. This idealism, however, ended with the outbreak of World War I, and writers created more cynical works that reflected a prevailing sense of disillusionment. Many modernist writers also shared a mistrust of institutions of power such as government and religion, and rejected the notion of absolute truths.


title: Literary modernism

text: Modernist works such as T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" (1922) were increasingly self-aware, introspective, and explored the darker aspects of human nature.


title: Literary modernism

text: The term modernism covers a number of related, and overlapping, artistic and literary movements, including Imagism, Symbolism, Futurism, Vorticism, Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and Dada.


title: Literary modernism

text: Early modernist writers, especially those writing after World War I and the disillusionment that followed, broke the implicit contract with the general public that artists were the reliable interpreters and representatives of mainstream ("bourgeois") culture and ideas, and, instead, developed unreliable narrators, exposing the irrationality at the roots of a supposedly rational world.


title: Literary modernism

text: They also attempted to address the changing ideas about reality developed by Charles Darwin, Ernst Mach, Freud, Albert Einstein, Nietzsche, Bergson and others. From this developed innovative literary techniques such as stream-of-consciousness, interior monologue, as well as the use of multiple points-of-view. This can reflect doubts about the philosophical basis of realism, or alternatively an expansion of our understanding of what is meant by realism. For example, the use of stream-of-consciousness or interior monologue reflects the need for greater psychological realism.


title: Literary modernism

text: It is debatable when the modernist literary movement began, though some have chosen 1910 as roughly marking the beginning and quote novelist Virginia Woolf, who declared that human nature underwent a fundamental change "on or about December 1910". But modernism was already stirring by 1902, with works such as Joseph Conrad's (1857–1924) "Heart of Darkness", while Alfred Jarry's (1873–1907) absurdist play, "Ubu Roi" appeared even earlier, in 1896.


title: Literary modernism

text: Among early modernist non-literary landmarks is the atonal ending of Arnold Schoenberg's Second String Quartet in 1908, the Expressionist paintings of Wassily Kandinsky starting in 1903 and culminating with his first abstract painting and the founding of the Expressionist Blue Rider group in Munich in 1911, the rise of fauvism, and the introduction of cubism from the studios of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and others between 1900 and 1910.


title: Literary modernism

text: Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" (1919) is known as an early work of modernism for its plain-spoken prose style and emphasis on psychological insight into characters.


title: Literary modernism

text: James Joyce was a major modernist writer whose strategies employed in his novel "Ulysses" (1922) for depicting the events during a twenty-four-hour period in the life of his protagonist, Leopold Bloom, have come to epitomize modernism's approach to fiction. The poet T.S. Eliot described these qualities in 1923, noting that Joyce's technique is "a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history... Instead of narrative method, we may now use the mythical method. It is, I seriously believe, a step toward making the modern world possible for art." Eliot's own modernist poem "The Waste Land" (1922) mirrors "the futility and anarchy" in its own way, in its fragmented structure, and the absence of an obvious central, unifying narrative. This is in fact a rhetorical technique to convey the poem's theme: "The decay and fragmentation of Western Culture". The poem, despite the absence of a linear narrative, does have a structure: this is provided by both fertility symbolism derived from anthropology, and other elements such as the use of quotations and juxtaposition.


title: Literary modernism

text: In Italian literature, the generation of poets represented by Eugenio Montale (with his Ossi di seppia), Giuseppe Ungaretti (with his Allegria di naufragi), and Umberto Saba (with his Canzoniere) embodies modernism. This new generation broke with the tradition of Giosuè Carducci, Giovanni Pascoli, and Gabriele D'Annunzio in terms of style, language and tone. They were aware of the crisis deriving from the decline of the traditional role of the poet as foreseer, teacher, prophet. In a world that has absorbed Friedrich Nietzsche's lesson, these poets want to renew literature according to the new cultural world of the 20th century. For example, Montale uses epiphany to reconstruct meaning, while Saba incorporates Freudian concepts of psychoanalysis.


title: Literary modernism

text: Modernist literature addressed similar aesthetic problems as contemporary modernist art. Gertrude Stein's abstract writings, such as "Tender Buttons" (1914), for example, have been compared to the fragmentary and multi-perspective Cubist paintings of her friend Pablo Picasso. The questioning spirit of modernism, as part of a necessary search for ways to make sense of a broken world, can also be seen in a different form in the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid's "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle" (1928). In this poem, MacDiarmid applies Eliot's techniques to respond to the question of nationalism, using comedic parody, in an optimistic (though no less hopeless) form of modernism in which the artist as "hero" seeks to embrace complexity and locate new meanings.


title: Literary modernism

text: Regarding technique, modernist works sought to obfuscate the boundaries between genres. Thus prose works tended to be poetical and poetry prose-like. T. S. Eliot's poetry sacrified lyrical grace for the sake of fragmented narrative while Virginia Woolf's novels (such as Mrs Dalloway and The Waves) have been described as poetical.


title: Literary modernism

text: Significant modernist works continued to be created in the 1920s and 1930s, including further novels by Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Robert Musil ("The Man Without Qualities"), and Dorothy Richardson. The American modernist dramatist Eugene O'Neill's career began in 1914, but his major works appeared in the 1920s and 1930s and early 1940s. Two other significant modernist dramatists writing in the 1920s and 1930s were Bertolt Brecht and Federico García Lorca. D. H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was published in 1928, while another important landmark for the history of the modern novel came with the publication of William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" in 1929. The 1920s would prove to be watershed years in modernist poetry. In this period, T. S. Eliot published some of his most notable poetic works, including "The Waste Land", "The Hollow Men", and "Ash Wednesday".


title: Literary modernism

text: In the 1930s, in addition to further major works by William Faulkner ("As I Lay Dying", "Light in August"), Samuel Beckett published his first major work, the novel "Murphy" (1938), while in 1932 John Cowper Powys published "A Glastonbury Romance", the same year as Hermann Broch's "The Sleepwalkers". Djuna Barnes published her famous lesbian novel "Nightwood" in 1936. One of the greatest achievements in modernist poetry is then followed by Miroslav Krleža's "Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh" in 1936. Then in 1939 James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" appeared. It was in this year that another Irish modernist, W. B. Yeats, died. In poetry, E. E. Cummings, and Wallace Stevens continued writing into the 1950s. It was in this period when T. S. Eliot began writing what would become his final major poetic work, Four Quartets. Eliot shifted focus in this period, writing several plays, including "Murder in the Cathedral".


title: Literary modernism

text: While modernist poetry in English is often viewed as an American phenomenon, with leading exponents including Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and Louis Zukofsky, there were important British modernist poets, including T. S. Eliot, David Jones, Hugh MacDiarmid, Basil Bunting, and W. H. Auden. European modernist poets include Federico García Lorca, Fernando Pessoa, Anna Akhmatova, Constantine Cavafy, and Paul Valéry.


title: Literary modernism

text: Though "The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature" sees Modernism ending by c.1939, with regard to British and American literature, "When (if) Modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been contested almost as hotly as when the transition from Victorianism to Modernism occurred". Clement Greenberg sees Modernism ending in the 1930s, with the exception of the visual and performing arts. In fact, many literary modernists lived into the 1950s and 1960s, though generally speaking they were no longer producing major works.


title: Literary modernism

text: The term late modernism is sometimes applied to modernist works published after 1930. Among modernists (or late modernists) still publishing after 1945 were Wallace Stevens, Gottfried Benn, T. S. Eliot, Anna Akhmatova, William Faulkner, Dorothy Richardson, John Cowper Powys, and Ezra Pound. Basil Bunting, born in 1901, published his most important modernist poem "Briggflatts" in 1965. In addition Hermann Broch's "The Death of Virgil" was published in 1945 and Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus" in 1947 (early works by Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain" (1924), and "Death in Venice" (1912) are sometimes considered modernist). Samuel Beckett, who died in 1989, has been described as a "later modernist". Beckett is a writer with roots in the expressionist tradition of modernism, who produced works from the 1930s until the 1980s, including "Molloy" (1951), "En attendant Godot" (1953), "Happy Days" (1961) and "Rockaby" (1981). The terms minimalist and post-modernist have also been applied to his later works. The poets Charles Olson (1910–1970) and J. H. Prynne (b. 1936) have been described as late modernists.


title: Literary modernism

text: More recently the term late modernism has been redefined by at least one critic and used to refer to works written after 1945, rather than 1930. With this usage goes the idea that the ideology of modernism was significantly re-shaped by the events of World War II, especially the Holocaust and the dropping of the atom bomb.


title: Literary modernism

text: The first modernist work of Reunionnais literature was "" (), published first in 1952, by Marguerite-Hélène Mahé.


title: Literary modernism

text: The term Theatre of the Absurd is applied to plays written by primarily European playwrights, that express the belief that human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence. While there are significant precursors, including Alfred Jarry (1873–1907), the Theatre of the Absurd is generally seen as beginning in the 1950s with the plays of Samuel Beckett.


title: Literary modernism

text: Critic Martin Esslin coined the term in his 1960 essay, "Theatre of the Absurd." He related these plays based on a broad theme of the Absurd, similar to the way Albert Camus uses the term in his 1942 essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus". The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man's reaction to a world apparently without meaning, and/or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces. Though the term is applied to a wide range of plays, some characteristics coincide in many of the plays: broad comedy, often similar to Vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images; characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism and the concept of the "well-made play".


title: Literary modernism

text: Playwrights commonly associated with the Theatre of the Absurd include Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), Eugène Ionesco (1909–1994), Jean Genet (1910–1986), Harold Pinter (1930–2008), Tom Stoppard (b. 1937), Alexander Vvedensky (1904–1941), Daniil Kharms (1905–1942), Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990), Alejandro Jodorowsky (b. 1929), Fernando Arrabal (b. 1932), Václav Havel (1936–2011) and Edward Albee (1928–2016).


title: Janet Jones

text: Janet Marie Gretzky (née Jones; born January 10, 1961) is an American actress. She is married to retired ice hockey Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky.


title: Janet Jones

text: Jones was born Janet Marie Jones in Bridgeton, Missouri, the daughter of a business executive. She attended Pattonville High School in Maryland Heights, Missouri.


title: Janet Jones

text: One of Jones' earliest appearances was as a contestant on Merv Griffin's syndicated US television program "Dance Fever" in 1979, and then later as a member of the dance duo "Motion", dancing choreographed routines with the show's host, Deney Terrio. Jones performed in "Annie" (1982), "Staying Alive" (1983) and "Snow White Live" (1980), and had a bit part in "The Beastmaster" (1982). She also had a small role in the musical comedy, "Grease 2" (1982). On April 4, 1983, Jones was a contestant on the television game show "The Price Is Right". Her big break came in "The Flamingo Kid" (1984), which was followed by the film version of "A Chorus Line" (1985). In 1986, she appeared in "American Anthem", co-starring gymnast Mitch Gaylord and, in 1987, she appeared on the cover and in a semi-nude pictorial in the March issue of "Playboy".


title: Janet Jones

text: Other credits include 1988's "" and the baseball film "A League of Their Own" (1992) with Geena Davis, Rosie O'Donnell, and Madonna.


title: Janet Jones

text: Jones served as host of an infomercial for Jackie Chan and as the "master instructor" for a workout video produced by The FIRM. She and daughter Paulina were featured in the movie "Alpha Dog".


title: Janet Jones

text: Playing on her surname, she appeared in a 1986 TV commercial endorsing Jones Sausage along with other people who shared her last name.


title: Janet Jones

text: Jones, who was engaged to Vitas Gerulaitis from 1985 to 1987, first met Gretzky when he was a judge on "Dance Fever" in 1984. They met again at a Los Angeles Lakers game in 1987, and on July 16, 1988, married in a lavish ceremony at St. Joseph's Basilica that was broadcast live across Canada. That August 9, Gretzky was traded to the Los Angeles Kings. One of the motivations behind the deal was rumoured to be furthering Jones' career. Jones refuted this in "Kings Ransom", saying she would not have allowed herself to become "barefoot and pregnant for the next eight years" were she intent on pursuing her career. She and Gretzky have five children: Paulina, Ty Robert, Trevor Douglas, Tristan Wayne, and Emma Marie. Her daughter Paulina was on the Canadian cover of the Flare (magazine) August 2005, seventeen years after Janet appeared on the cover, making them the first mother-daughter to appear on the cover of Flare Magazine.


title: Janet Jones

text: Paulina and Dustin Johnson announced their engagement on August 18, 2013. Ty played hockey at Shattuck-Saint Mary's. Trevor was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the 2011 MLB draft. He was traded on March 20, 2014, to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim for Matt Scioscia, son of Angels' manager Mike Scioscia. In June 2014, he was named to the roster of the Orem Owlz.


title: Janet Jones

text: Jones introduced Vanna White to Merv Griffin while appearing on "Dance Fever", leading White to her long-term engagement as a presenter on "Wheel of Fortune".


title: Janet Jones

text: On February 7, 2006, Jones and a half-dozen NHL players were among those implicated in a New Jersey-based sports gambling ring allegedly financed by Phoenix Coyotes assistant coach Rick Tocchet. Then-Coyotes' general manager and Gretzky's former agent, Michael Barnett, admitted to placing a bet on Super Bowl XL through Tocchet.


title: Janet Jones

text: Gretzky told reporters that Jones "would sit down at some point and answer questions that everybody has for her and be her own person" while denying any involvement. Jones released a statement through the Coyotes: "At no time did I ever place a wager on my husband's behalf. Other than the occasional horse race, my husband does not bet on any sports."


title: Janet Jones

text: The "Newark Star-Ledger" revealed that New Jersey State Police wiretaps have Gretzky speaking about the ring. Lawyers for the couple later announced that there was no evidence of any betting on their part, and neither would face criminal charges. "They were trying to paint something that just wasn't true," Jones later told "Chatelaine Magazine". "It's unfair that Wayne and I have had a great marriage for 20 years and a nice family, and the people in the media could care less [sic] if they are trying to cause friction in your marriage, trouble in your family, and make your kids feel a certain way. That was a little hurtful because it was like, 'Why? What have we ever done to you?'" In 2007, she took part in a high-stakes golf tournament broadcast by ESPN. The NHL prohibits personnel from betting on its own games, but does not have a policy against other sports betting.


title: Janet Jones

text: On March 15, 2006, the New Jersey Attorney General's Office announced it would subpoena Jones to testify about the alleged ring as soon as a grand jury convenes. On May 8, Tocchet and Jones filed notices in New Jersey that they intend to sue the state for defamation, claiming each lost business opportunities in the wake of the investigation.


title: Janet Jones

text: On May 25, 2007, Tocchet pleaded guilty to conspiracy and promoting gambling. New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram announced on August 17, 2007, that Tocchet had been sentenced to two years probation in exchange for his plea. He could have received up to five years in New Jersey state prison, but there is a presumption against incarceration for first-time offenders who plead guilty to such crimes.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Urban Legend is a 1998 slasher film directed by Jamie Blanks, written by Silvio Horta, and starring Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Tara Reid, and Michael Rosenbaum, and is the first installment in the "Urban Legend" film series. Its plot focuses on a series of murders on the campus of a private New England university, all of which appear to be modeled after popular urban legends. In addition to its younger cast, the film features supporting performances from Robert Englund, Loretta Devine, John Neville, and Brad Dourif.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Filmed in Toronto in the spring of 1998, "Urban Legend" was released in the United States on September 25, 1998. It grossed $72.5 million worldwide on a budget of $14 million, and received generally negative reviews from critics, with chief criticisms being that the film was a blatant rip-off of "Scream" (1996). The film has been credited by both cinema and folklore scholars as being one of the first major films to redistribute the urban legends and folklore depicted within it to the public.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: It was followed by two sequels: "", which was released theatrically in 2000, and the direct-to-video film "" in 2005. In February 2020, a reboot of the film was announced to be in development, to be written and directed by Colin Minihan.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: A killer decapitates Pendleton University student Michelle Mancini in the backseat of her car during a rainstorm. Meanwhile, at the campus coffee shop, student Parker Riley regales friends Natalie Simon and Brenda Bates by describing a massacre in the abandoned Stanley Hall dormitory, which journalism student Paul Gardner discredits as an urban legend. News of Michelle's murder spreads the following day, but Dean Adams and campus police officer Reese Wilson seem determined to bury the story. Damon Brooks, a jokester fraternity member, attempts to console the notably-disturbed Natalie, who rejects his sexual advances while in his parked car at a bluff. When Damon goes outside to urinate, an assailant in a hooded parka attacks him and hangs him from a tree. Natalie flees for help, but Damon's body and car have disappeared when she returns with Reese. Parker and his girlfriend Sasha Thomas assure Natalie that Damon has pranked her.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Later, while Natalie sleeps, the killer strangles her goth roommate Tosh Guaneri to death. She finds Tosh's body in the morning, along with a bloody message scrawled on the wall. Distraught, she tells Brenda that she and Michelle, her high school friend, had received probation for causing a fatal car accident after driving with their headlights turned off and pursuing the first driver who flashed them. Paul meanwhile investigates local urban legends, and discovers that the Stanley Hall massacre actually occurred, with William Wexler, a professor of American folklore, its sole survivor.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Dean Adams is murdered in the campus parking garage, and Reese later finds Wexler's office disorganized and covered in blood. Meanwhile, Natalie, Brenda, and Sasha attend a fraternity party coinciding with the massacre's 25th anniversary, during which the killer incapacities Parker in the bathroom and murders him by forcing pop rocks and bathroom chemicals down his throat. Sasha departs to host her late-night talkshow at the campus radio station. During the broadcast, the killer attacks her and her assistant, and her screams are played live on air; the fraternity partygoers assume it is a prank referencing the massacre, but Natalie, fearing Sasha is in danger, rushes to the station, where she witnesses the killer murder Sasha with an axe.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Natalie soon finds Paul and Brenda on campus. Paul, convinced of Wexler's complicity, escorts them away in his car. They stop at a gas station, and while Paul is inside, Natalie and Brenda find Wexler's mutilated body in the trunk. The two women flee through the woods back toward campus as Paul pursues them. They become separated, and Natalie flags down the university's janitor passing by in his truck. He picks her up, but the killer forces their car off the road, pursuing them in a separate vehicle. The crash kills the janitor, but Natalie leaves unscathed and flees on foot.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: While passing Stanley Hall, Natalie hears Brenda's screams from inside. In the building, she finds her friend's corpses, along with an apparently dead Brenda outstretched on a bed; however, Brenda knocks Natalie unconscious moments later. When Natalie awakens, Brenda reveals herself as the killer, enacting revenge for her fiancé David Evans, the fatality in the road accident Natalie and Michelle caused. Brenda attempts to remove Natalie's kidney, but is thwarted when Reese arrives and holds Brenda at gunpoint. Brenda manages to stab Reese with a switchblade, and when Paul arrives, Natalie gains control of the gun and shoots Brenda, who falls out a window, before leaving with him to get help for Reese. As they drive away, the two discuss how this will later be an urban legend and all the facts will be misconstrued. Paul asks, "Well if this is an urban legend, where is the twist?" Brenda then appears in the back seat and attacks them with an axe. Paul crashes the car on a bridge, causing Brenda to go through the windshield and into the river below.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Later, a group of students at a different university have recounted the events of Brenda's killing spree, during which they say that her body was never discovered. Most of them disbelieve the tale, except for one young woman, revealed to be Brenda, who claims that the story was incorrectly told, and begins explaining "how the story really goes".


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: The film depicts various urban legends, some of which are featured as murder sequences and others that are merely referenced or discussed in passing.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: The concept for the film was developed by Silvio Horta, a recent film school graduate from New York University who was working at the perfume counter in a Nordstrom. Horta pitched the idea in late-1997 to Gina Mathews, a producer who was leading writers' workshops at the time. Mathews liked the story, and the two began further developing the concept before Horta drafted a screenplay. Producer Neal H. Moritz subsequently became involved, and agreed to co-produce with Mathews and Michael McDonnell. Horta and Mathews pitched the screenplay to numerous film studios, but none expressed interest in funding the project. In a last-ditch effort at getting the film made, Horta brought the screenplay to Phoenix Pictures, a then-new company who had only produced a small number of films. Mike Medavoy, an executive at Phoenix, was impressed by the concept, but Horta recalled that his screenplay "needed to be better," and re-writes began to take place in the late-fall of 1997.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: In seeking a director, executive producer Brad Luff scouted potential filmmakers from Australia, and was impressed by then-26-year-old Jamie Blanks's short horror film, "Silent Number", which he had made as his thesis film while attending film school in Melbourne. Blanks had initially wanted to direct producer Moritz's "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (1997), and went so far as directing a mock-trailer for the project, but Jim Gillespie had already been hired to direct it. Instead, Blanks was offered the screenplay to "Urban Legend", and signed on as director in February 1998.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Jared Leto was cast in the role of Paul Gardner, the student journalist investigating the murders. Mathews recalled that he was cast based on a "dark" quality he possessed that was at odds with his conventional appeal, and because he was already an established actor, known for his role on the teen drama series "My So-Called Life". Alicia Witt was cast as the female lead, Natalie, as the producers felt she was "against type" and also a strong actress, whose previous credits included David Lynch's "Dune" (1984) and the series "Twin Peaks" (1990). Witt said she was intrigued by the prospect of playing a survivor character who has to endure "extraordinary circumstance[s]."


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Rebecca Gayheart auditioned for the role of Brenda, Natalie's friend who eventually unveils herself as the film's villain. Numerous actresses were interested in the role, and Gayheart recalled having to "go in and fight" for the part. She read for the role numerous times, and performed multiple screen tests before the producers settled on her for the part. The production chose to straighten Gayheart's hair, which is naturally curly, for the majority of the shoot, as they were concerned it may foreshadow her revelation as the villain. During the finale, however, her hair appears in its natural form.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Of the supporting cast, Joshua Jackson was granted the role of Damon, the joking fraternity member. At the time, Jackson had earned recognition for his featured role on the series "Dawson's Creek". Michael Rosenbaum was cast as Parker, a friend of Damon; Rosenbaum was just beginning his film career, and had recently had a small role in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" (1997). Originally, a different actor had been considered for the role of Parker, but Blanks ultimately wanted Rosenbaum for the part. For the role of Sasha, Parker's girlfriend and the campus radio host, Tara Reid was cast.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Robert Englund, already well known for his portrayal of Freddy Krueger in the "Nightmare on Elm Street" film series, appears as Wexler, a psychology professor. Englund agreed to the part after being impressed by the concept of the screenplay, and was also a fan of several of the other cast members. Loretta Devine was cast as Reese, the witty campus police officer. Devine identified with the role based on her past experience as a dormitory director at Brandeis University, which provided her insight into "some of the goofy and dumb stuff they do." Danielle Harris, who had previously starred as Jamie Lloyd in "" (1988) and "" (1989), originally auditioned for the lead role of Natalie, but was instead cast as Tosh, her temperamental roommate.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: In the role of Michelle Mancini, the ill-fated coed who is murdered in the opening scene, actress Natasha Gregson Wagner was cast. Wagner was drawn to the part as she felt it encompassed a "proper scene" that she could "sink [her] teeth into." Brad Dourif was given an uncredited cameo appearance as the gas station attendant who appears opposite Wagner in the opening sequence.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Principal photography began on April 20, 1998 in Toronto. The University of Toronto served as a stand-in for the fictional Pendleton University. The film's production design was completed by Charles William Breen, who had previously worked on such films as "Blade Runner" (1982).


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: The opening sequence was among the first to be filmed, as Blanks wanted to present a completed sequence to the producers early on to assure them of his directorial abilities. It was filmed on location at a gas station outside of Toronto; to achieve the effect of the storm, artificial rain machines were used. For the film's final sequence inside Stanley Hall, the screenplay called for a dilapidated locale. The production found a rundown building in Toronto that was scheduled to be demolished, and were granted permission to shoot there. As the sequence takes place entirely at night, the crew built a scaffolding out of pipe that was then draped in black tarping, giving the appearance of it being nighttime while inside the building. The interiors during this sequence were lit with candlelight, and cinematographer James Chressanthis drew inspiration from "El Norte" (1984), aspiring for a "ritual"-like appearance.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Additionally, aerial images from Trinity College School in Port Hope, were used for Pendleton campus.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Throughout the shoot, Blanks sought to keep on-screen violence "muted" or implied rather than shown in explicit detail. Several moments of violence written in the script were not filmed, among them a shot of Wagner's character's severed head rolling onto the road after her death. The death sequences in the film, however, required significant technical planning, with Sid Armour providing makeup effects. Reid performed her own stunts during her character's chase sequence, including the fall over the staircase landing, during which she was secured by a harness. According to Reid, the stuntman who performed the scene used a real ax throughout the filming of it.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Post-production of the film took place in Los Angeles over a period of less than two months, beginning in July 1998 and to be completed for the film's September 25 release. During the post-production process, producer McDonnell returned to Toronto to complete pick-ups. A rough cut was pre-screened for a test audience in Pasadena during post-production, and the audience response was favorable.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: The film's score was composed by Christopher Young, who had previously scored several horror films, including "The Dorm That Dripped Blood" (1982), and "Hellraiser" (1987). Producer McDonnell had previously been in a band with Young in the 1970s in their home state of New Jersey. While Young admired the synthesizer scores of such films as "Halloween" (1978), Blanks insisted that he compose an orchestral score, which was more in alignment with Young's composing background.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: There were two albums released from film, the original score by composer Christopher Young, and the original motion picture soundtrack.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: "Urban Legend" was released on DVD by Columbia-TriStar Home Video on February 23, 1999. The release contained an audio commentary with director Blanks, writer Horta, and actor Michael Rosenbaum, as well as a making-of-featurette. The film received a region-free Blu-ray release on July 22, 2008 by Sony. Scream Factory released a 2-disc collector's edition Blu-ray of the film on November 20, 2018.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: "Urban Legend" premiered at the Fox Village Theatre in Westwood Village, Los Angeles before being released theatrically in the United States on September 25, 1998. The film earned $10.5 million in its opening weekend (nearly recouping its $14 million budget), showing at 2,257 theaters across the United States. It would go on to gross $38 million domestically, and earn an additional $34 million internationally for a worldwide total of $72.5 million.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 24% based on 62 reviews, with an average rating of 4.40/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Elements of "Scream" reappear in a vastly inferior vehicle." On Metacritic it has a weighted average score of 35 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Anita Gates of "The New York Times" called the film a "teen-age moviegoer's dream", adding: "It has familiar young television stars, familiar older stars with cult followings (Robert Englund as the aforementioned professor, John Neville as the dean), an edgy sense of humor, a tricky plot and characters too genre-savvy for their own good. Maybe there will be an oversaturation of "Scream"-inspired horror films someday soon, but this one feels fresh." Bob Heisler of the "Los Angeles Times" called it an unoriginal "low-voltage drive-in movie, made strictly by-the-book."


title: Urban Legend (film)

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" awarded the film two out of four stars, but praised Christopher Young's musical score, and adding: "The film is competently made, and the attractive cast emotes and screams energetically, and does a good job of unwisely grabbing one another by the shoulders." "Entertainment Weekly"s Ty Burr wrote of the film: "Proficiently filmed and utterly uninspired, it at least features a ghostly lead performance by "Cybill"s Alicia Witt and a final twist that's entertainingly stupid. But why do all the characters have to be such nasty little dorks? Oh, right, otherwise we'd care about them." Kim Newman of the British publication "Sight & Sound" wrote: ""Urban Legend" manages somehow to be rather endearing, from Natasha Gregson Wagner's opening bit (what must now, after "Scream", be called 'the Drew Barrymore position') to the hokey shaggy-dog punchline."


title: Compromise of 1850

text: The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War. It also set Texas' western and northern borders and included provisions addressing fugitive slaves and the slave trade. The compromise was designed by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: A debate over slavery in the territories had erupted during the Mexican–American War, as many Southerners sought to expand slavery to the newly-acquired lands and many Northerners opposed any such expansion. The debate was further complicated by Texas's claim to all former Mexican territory north and east of the Rio Grande, including areas it had never effectively controlled. These issues prevented the passage of organic acts to create organized territorial governments for the land acquired in the Mexican–American War. In early 1850, Clay proposed a package of eight bills that would settle most of the pressing issues before Congress. Clay's proposal was opposed by President Zachary Taylor, anti-slavery Whigs like William Seward, and pro-slavery Democrats like John C. Calhoun, and congressional debate over the territories continued. The debates over the bill were the most famous in Congressional history, and the divisions devolved into fistfights and drawn guns on the floor of Congress.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: After Taylor died and was succeeded by Fillmore, Douglas took the lead in passing Clay's compromise through Congress as five separate bills. Under the compromise, Texas surrendered its claims to present-day New Mexico and other states in return for federal assumption of Texas's public debt. California was admitted as a free state, while the remaining portions of the Mexican Cession were organized into New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory. Under the concept of popular sovereignty, the people of each territory would decide whether or not slavery would be permitted. The compromise also included a more stringent Fugitive Slave Law and banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C. The issue of slavery in the territories would be re-opened by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, but the Compromise of 1850 played a major role in postponing the American Civil War.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: The Republic of Texas declared its independence from Mexico following the Texas Revolution of 1836, and, partly because Texas had been settled by a large number of Americans, there was a strong sentiment in both Texas and the United States for the annexation of Texas by the United States. In December 1845, President James K. Polk signed a resolution annexing Texas, and Texas became the 28th state in the union. Polk sought further expansion through the acquisition of the Mexican province of Alta California, which represented new lands to settle as well as a potential gateway to trade in Asia. His administration attempted to purchase California from Mexico, but the annexation of Texas stoked tensions between Mexico and the United States. Relations between the two countries were further complicated by Texas's claim to all land north of the Rio Grande; Mexico argued that the more northern Nueces River was the proper Texan border.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: In March 1846, a skirmish broke out on the northern side of the Rio Grande, ending in the death or capture of dozens of American soldiers. Shortly thereafter, the United States declared war on Mexico, beginning the Mexican–American War. In August 1846, Polk asked Congress for an appropriation that he hoped to use as a down payment for the purchase of California in a treaty with Mexico, igniting a debate over the status of future territories. A freshman Democratic Congressman, David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, offered an amendment known as the Wilmot Proviso that would ban slavery in any newly acquired lands. The Wilmot Proviso was defeated in the Senate, but it injected the slavery debate into national politics.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: In September 1847, an American army under General Winfield Scott captured the Mexican capital in the Battle for Mexico City. Several months later, Mexican and American negotiators agreed to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, under which Mexico agreed to recognize the Rio Grande as Texas's southern border and to cede Alta California and New Mexico. The Missouri Compromise had settled the issue of the geographic reach of slavery within the Louisiana Purchase territories by prohibiting slavery in states north of 36°30′ latitude, and Polk sought to extend this line into the newly acquired territory. However, the divisive issue of slavery blocked any such legislation. As his term came to a close, Polk signed the lone territorial bill passed by Congress, which established the Territory of Oregon and banned slavery in it. Polk declined to seek re-election in the 1848 presidential election, and the 1848 election was won by the Whig ticket of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: Prophetically, Ralph Waldo Emerson quipped that "Mexico will poison us", referring to the ensuing divisions around whether the newly conquered lands would be slave or free. As of the 1848 election of Taylor, the issue was not yet apparent. Taylor was both a Whig and a slaveholder; though Whigs were increasingly anti-slavery, Taylor's slaveholding had reassured the South, and he won handily. Taylor made a key electoral promise that he would not veto any congressional resolution on slavery. Much to the horror of Southerners, however, Taylor indicated that true to his promise, he would not even veto the Wilmot Proviso if it were passed. Tensions accelerated quickly into the fall of 1849. Midterm elections worsened matters, as the Free Soil Party had gained 12 seats, which gave them a king-maker position in the closely divided House: 105 Whigs to 112 Democrats. After three weeks and 62 ballots, the House could not elect a speaker; the main issue was slavery in the new territories. The tumult of that period was severe, with a loaded revolver drawn on the floor of Congress, several fistfights between Northerners and Southerners, and then Senator Jefferson Davis challenging an Illinois congressman to a duel. Southern congressmen increasingly bandied around the idea of secession. Finally, the House adopted a resolution that allowed a speaker to be elected with a plurality, and elected Howell Cobb on the 63rd ballot. As James McPherson puts it: "It was an inauspicious start to the 1850's."


title: Compromise of 1850

text: Three major types of issues were addressed by the Compromise of 1850: a variety of boundary issues, the status of territory issues, and the issue of slavery. While capable of analytical distinction, the boundary and territory issues were included in the overarching issue of slavery. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery interests were each concerned with both the amount of land on which slavery was permitted and with the number of States in the slave or free camps. Since Texas was a slave state, not only the residents of that state but also both camps on a national scale had an interest in the size of Texas.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: The independent Republic of Texas won the decisive Battle of San Jacinto (April 21, 1836) against Mexico and captured Mexican president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. He signed the Treaties of Velasco, which recognized the Rio Grande as the boundary of the Republic of Texas. The treaties were then repudiated by the government of Mexico, which insisted that Mexico remained sovereign over Texas since Santa Anna had signed the treaty under coercion, and promised to reclaim the lost territories. To the extent that there was a "de facto" recognition, Mexico treated the Nueces River as its northern boundary control. A vast, largely-unsettled area lay between the two rivers. Neither Mexico nor the Republic of Texas had the military strength to assert its territorial claim. On December 29, 1845, the Republic of Texas was annexed to the United States and became the 28th state. Texas was staunchly committed to slavery, with its constitution making it illegal for the legislature to free slaves.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo made no mention of the claims of the Republic of Texas; Mexico simply agreed to a Mexico–United States border south of both the "Mexican Cession" and the Republic of Texas claims. After the end of the Mexican–American War, Texas continued to claim a large stretch of disputed land that it had never effectively controlled in present-day eastern New Mexico. New Mexico had long prohibited slavery, a fact that affected the debate over its territorial status, but many New Mexican leaders opposed joining Texas primarily because Texas's capital lay hundreds of miles away and because Texas and New Mexico had a history of conflict dating back to the 1841 Santa Fe Expedition. Outside of Texas, many Southern leaders supported Texas's claims to New Mexico to secure as much territory as possible for the expansion of slavery.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: Another issue that would affect the compromise was Texas's debt; it had approximately $10 million in debt left over from its time as an independent nation, and that debt would become a factor in the debates over the territories.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: California was part of the Mexican Cession. After the Mexican War, California was essentially run by military governors. President James K. Polk tried to get Congress to establish a territorial government in California officially, but the increasingly sectional debates prevented that. The South wanted to extend slave territory to Southern California and to the Pacific Coast, but the North did not. The issue of whether it would be free or slave might well have gone undecided for years, as it had already after the end of the Mexican American war, if not for the finding of natural riches.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: Near the end of Polk's term in 1848, incredible news reached Washington: gold had been discovered in California. So began the California Gold Rush, which transformed California from a sleepy and almost forgotten land into a burgeoning hub with a population bigger than Delaware or Florida. The mostly lawless land found itself in desperate need of governance. Californians wanted to be made into a territory or state promptly. In response to growing demand for a better more representative government, a Constitutional Convention was held in 1849. The delegates unanimously outlawed slavery. They had no interest in extending the Missouri Compromise Line through California and splitting the state; the lightly populated southern half never had slavery and was heavily Hispanic. The issue of California would play a central role in the exhausting 1849 speaker dispute.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: Aside from the disposition of the territories, other issues had risen to prominence during the Taylor years. The Washington, D.C. slave trade angered many in the North, who viewed the presence of slavery in the capital as a blemish on the nation. Disputes around fugitive slaves had grown since 1830 in part due to improving means of transportation, as the enslaved used roads, railroads, and ships to escape. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 had granted jurisdiction to all state and federal judges over cases regarding fugitive slaves, but several Northern states, dissatisfied by the lack of due process in these cases, had passed personal liberty laws that made it more difficult to return alleged fugitive slaves to the South. Congress also faced the issue of Utah, which like California and New Mexico, had been ceded by Mexico. Utah was inhabited largely by Mormons, whose practice of polygamy was unpopular elsewhere in the United States.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: When Taylor took office, the issue of slavery in the Mexican Cession remained unresolved. While a Southern slaveowner himself, Taylor believed that slavery was economically infeasible in the Mexican Cession, and as such he opposed slavery in those territories as a needless source of controversy. In Taylor's view, the best way forward was to admit California as a state rather than a federal territory, as it would leave the slavery question out of Congress's hands. The timing for statehood was in Taylor's favor, as the Gold Rush was well underway at the time of his inauguration, and California's population was exploding. In October 1849, a California constitutional convention unanimously agreed to join the Union—and to ban slavery within their borders. In his December 1849 State of the Union report, Taylor endorsed California's and New Mexico's applications for statehood, and recommended that Congress approve them as written and "should abstain from the introduction of those exciting topics of a sectional character".


title: Compromise of 1850

text: The problem of what to do with the territories became the leading issue in Congress. So began the most famous debates in the history of Congress. At the head were the three titans of Congress: Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun. All had been born during the American Revolution, and had carried the torch of the Founding Fathers. This represented their last and greatest act in politics. The nationalist Clay and Webster sought compromise, while Southern sectionalist Calhoun warned of imminent disaster. The triumvirate would be broken before long as Calhoun would die of tuberculosis. In March, shortly before his death, his final speech was delivered by his friend the Virginia Senator James M. Mason, as the blanket-wrapped Calhoun sat nearby, too weak to do it himself. He provided a prescient warning that the South perceived the balance between North and South as broken, and that any further imbalance might lead to war. The situation was severe.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: Other players included a variety of rising politicians who would play key roles in the Civil War, such as the staunch anti-slavery William H. Seward and Salmon P. Chase, who would be in Lincoln's cabinet; the future president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis; and rival to Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: On January 29, 1850, Senator Henry Clay introduced a plan which combined the major subjects under discussion. His legislative package of eight bills included the admission of California as a free state, the cession by Texas of some of its northern and western territorial claims in return for debt relief, the establishment of New Mexico and Utah territories, a ban on the importation of slaves into the District of Columbia for sale, and a more stringent fugitive slave law. Clay had originally favored voting on each of his proposals separately, but Senator Henry S. Foote of Mississippi convinced him to combine the proposals regarding California's admission and the disposition of Texas's borders into one bill. Clay hoped that this combination of measures would convince congressmen from both North and South to support the overall package of laws even if they objected to specific provisions. Clay's proposal attracted the support of some Northern Democrats and Southern Whigs, but it lacked the backing necessary to win passage, and debate over the bill continued. Seven months of agonizing politicking lay ahead.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: President Taylor opposed the compromise and continued to call for immediate statehood for both California and New Mexico. Senator Calhoun and some other Southern leaders argued that the compromise was biased against the South because it would lead to the creation of new free states. Most Northern Whigs, led by William Henry Seward, who delivered his famous "Higher Law" speech during the controversy, opposed the Compromise as well because it would apply the Wilmot Proviso to the western territories and because of the pressing of ordinary citizens into duty on slave-hunting patrols. That provision was inserted by Democratic Virginia Senator James M. Mason to entice border-state Whigs, who faced the greatest danger of losing slaves as fugitives but were lukewarm on general sectional issues related to the South on Texas's land claims.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: On April 17, a "Committee of Thirteen" agreed on the border of Texas as part of Clay's plan. The dimensions were later changed. That same day, during debates on the measures in the Senate, Vice President Fillmore and Senator Benton verbally sparred, with Fillmore charging that the Missourian was "out of order." During the heated debates, Compromise floor leader Henry S. Foote of Mississippi drew a pistol on Benton.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: In early June, nine slaveholding Southern states sent delegates to the Nashville Convention to determine their course of action if the compromise passed. While some delegates preached secession, the moderates ruled and proposed a series of compromises, including extending the dividing line designated by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to the Pacific Coast.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: Taylor died in July 1850, and was succeeded by Vice President Fillmore, who had privately come to support Clay's proposal. The various bills were initially combined into one "omnibus" bill. Despite Clay's efforts, it failed in a crucial vote on July 31, opposed by southern Democrats and by northern Whigs. He announced on the Senate floor the next day that he intended to pass each part of the bill. The 73-year-old Clay, however, was physically exhausted as the effects of tuberculosis, which would eventually kill him, began to take their toll. Clay left the Senate to recuperate in Newport, Rhode Island, and Senator Stephen A. Douglas took the lead in attempting to pass Clay's proposals through the Senate.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: Fillmore, anxious to find a quick solution to the conflict in Texas over the border with New Mexico, which threatened to become an armed conflict between Texas militia and the federal soldiers, reversed the administration's position late in July and threw its support to the compromise measures. At the same time, Fillmore denied Texas's claims to New Mexico, asserting that the United States had promised to protect the territorial integrity of New Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Fillmore's forceful response helped convince Texas's U.S. Senators, Sam Houston and Thomas Jefferson Rusk, to support Stephen Douglas's compromise. With their support, a Senate bill providing for a final settlement of Texas's borders won passage days after Fillmore delivered his message. Under the terms of the bill, the U.S. would assume Texas's debts, while Texas's northern border was set at the 36° 30' parallel north (the Missouri Compromise line) and much of its western border followed the 103rd meridian. The bill attracted the support of a bipartisan coalition of Whigs and Democrats from both sections, though most opposition to the bill came from the South. The Senate quickly moved on to the other major issues, passing bills that provided for the admission of California, the organization of New Mexico Territory, and the establishment of a new fugitive slave law.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: The debate then moved to the House of Representatives, where Fillmore, Senator Daniel Webster, Douglas, Congressman Linn Boyd, and Speaker of the House Howell Cobb took the lead in convincing members to support the compromise bills that had been passed in the Senate. The Senate's proposed settlement of the Texas-New Mexico boundary faced intense opposition from many Southerners, as well as from some Northerners who believed that Texas did not deserve monetary compensation. After a series of close votes that nearly delayed consideration of the issue, the House voted to approve a Texas bill similar to that which had been passed by the Senate. Following that vote, the House and the Senate quickly agreed on each of the major issues, including the banning of the slave trade in Washington. The president quickly signed each bill into law save for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; he ultimately signed that law as well after Attorney General Crittenden assured him that the law was constitutional. Though some in Texas still favored sending a military expedition into New Mexico, in November 1850 the state legislature voted to accept the compromise.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: The general solution that was adopted by the Compromise of 1850 was to transfer a considerable part of the territory claimed by Texas state to the federal government; to organize two new territories formally, the Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah, which expressly would be allowed to locally determine whether they would become slave or free territories, to add another free state to the Union (California), to adopt a severe measure to recover slaves who had escaped to a free state or free territory (the Fugitive Slave Law); and to abolish the slave trade in the District of Columbia. A key provision of each of the laws respectively organizing the Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah was that slavery would be decided by local option, called popular sovereignty. That was an important repudiation of the idea behind the failure to prohibit slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. However, the admission of California as a free state meant that Southerners were giving up their goal of a coast-to-coast belt of slave states.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: Texas was allowed to keep the following portions of the disputed land: south of the 32nd parallel and south of the 36°30' parallel north and east of the 103rd meridian west. The rest of the disputed land was transferred to the Federal Government. The final border was designed to keep the frontier settlement of El Paso in Texas, since despite that settlement's geographic, historic, and economic ties to New Mexico, Texas had recently established a county government in El Paso and thus successfully claimed it as an integral part of Texas. A similar attempt to keep Santa Fe in Texas failed, and Santa Fe became part of the New Mexico territory. The United States Constitution (Article IV, Section 3) does not permit Congress unilaterally to reduce the territory of any state, so the first part of the Compromise of 1850 had to take the form of an offer to the Texas State Legislature, rather than a unilateral enactment. This ratified the bargain and, in due course, the transfer of a broad swath of land from the state of Texas to the federal government was accomplished. In return for giving up this land, the United States assumed the debts of Texas.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: From the Mexican Cession, the New Mexico Territory received most of the present-day state of Arizona, most of the western part of the present-day state of New Mexico, and the southern tip of present-day Nevada (south of the 37th parallel). The territory also received most of present-day eastern New Mexico, a portion of present-day Colorado (east of the crest of the Rocky Mountains, west of the 103rd meridian, and south of the 38th parallel); all of this land had been claimed by Texas.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: From the Mexican Cession, the Utah Territory received present-day Utah, most of present-day Nevada (everything north of the 37th parallel), a major part of present-day Colorado (everything west of the crest of the Rocky Mountains), and a small part of present-day Wyoming. That included the newly-founded colony at Salt Lake, of Brigham Young. The Utah Territory also received some land that had been claimed by Texas; this land is now part of present-day Colorado that is east of the crest of the Rocky Mountains.


title: Compromise of 1850

text: Perhaps the most important part of the Compromise received the least attention during debates. Enacted September 18, 1850, it is informally known as the Fugitive Slave Law, or the Fugitive Slave Act. It bolstered the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. The new version of the Fugitive Slave Law now required federal judicial officials in all states and federal territories, including free states, to assist with the return of escaped slaves to their masters in slave states. Any federal marshal or other official who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave was liable to a fine of $1,000 (). Law enforcement everywhere in the US now had a duty to arrest anyone suspected of being a fugitive slave on no more evidence than a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership. Suspected slaves could neither ask for a jury trial nor testify on their own behalf. Also, aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was now a crime nationwide, punished by six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Officers capturing a fugitive slave were entitled to a fee for their work, and this expense was to be paid by the Federal Government.