Lethal injection is the practice of injecting a person with a fatal dose of drugs (typically a barbiturate, paralytic, and potassium solution) for the express purpose of causing the immediate death of the subject. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broad sense to euthanasia and suicide. It kills the person by first putting the person to sleep, and then stopping the breathing and heart in that order.

Lethal injection gained popularity in the twentieth century as a form of execution intended to supplant other methods, notably electrocution, hanging, firing squad, gas chamber, and beheading, that were considered to be more painful. It is now the most common form of execution in the United States of America.

The concept of lethal injection as a means of putting someone to death was first proposed on January 17, 1888, by Julius Mount Bleyer, a New York doctor who praised it as being cheaper than hanging. Bleyer's idea, however, was never used. The British Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1949–53) also considered lethal injection, but eventually rejected it after pressure from the British Medical Association (BMA).

Sean Justin Penn (born August 17, 1960) is an American actor, screenwriter and film director, also known for his left-wing political and social activism (including humanitarian work). He is a two-time Academy Award winner for his roles in Mystic River (2003) and Milk (2008), as well as the recipient of a Golden Globe Award for the former and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the latter.

Penn began his acting career in television with a brief appearance in a 1974 episode of Little House on the Prairie, directed by his father Leo Penn. Following his film debut in 1981's Taps and a diverse range of film roles in the 1980s, Penn emerged as a prominent leading actor with the 1995 drama film Dead Man Walking, for which he earned his first Academy Award nomination and the Best Actor Award at the Berlin Film Festival. Penn received another two Oscar nominations for Sweet and Lowdown (1999) and I Am Sam (2001), before winning his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 2003 for Mystic River and a second one in 2008 for Milk. He has also won a Best Actor Award of the Cannes Film Festival for She's So Lovely (1997), and two Best Actor Awards at the Venice Film Festival for Hurlyburly (1998) and 21 Grams (2003).

Ángel Díaz (April 25, 1929 – December 11, 1998) was a famous singer of Argentine Tangos. He performed with the orchestras of Sassone, Gobbi, D'Agostino and Salgan and collaborated with many others.

Ice cubes are small, roughly cube-shaped pieces of ice, conventionally used to cool beverages. Ice cubes are sometimes preferred over crushed ice because they melt more slowly; they are standard in mixed drinks that call for ice, in which case the drink is said to be "on the rocks."

Ice cubes that are crushed or sheared into irregularly-shaped flakes may add an interesting aesthetic effect to some cocktails. Crushed ice is also used when faster cooling is desired, since the rate of cooling is governed by the number and average radius of the ice particles.

Melting ice cubes sometimes precipitate white flakes, commonly known as "floaties". This is calcium carbonate which is present in many water supplies and is completely harmless.^{[citation needed]}

American physician and humanitarian John Gorrie built a refrigerator in 1844 with the purpose of cooling air. His refrigerator produced ice which he hung from the ceiling in a basin. Gorrie can be considered the creator of ice cubes, but his aim was not to cool drinks: he used the ice to lower the ambient room temperature. During his time, a dominant idea was that bad air quality caused disease. Therefore, in order to help treat sickness, he pushed for the draining of swamps and the cooling of sickrooms.

Teresa Wilson Bean Lewis (April 26, 1969 – September 23, 2010) was an American who was the only woman on death row in Virginia prior to her execution. She was sentenced to death by lethal injection for using sex and money to arrange for the murders of her husband and stepson in October 2002. Lewis sought to profit from a $250,000 life insurance policy that her stepson had taken out as a U.S. Army reservist in anticipation of his deployment to Iraq.

In September 2010, Lewis became the first female inmate to die by lethal injection in the state of Virginia. The case attracted debate over capital punishment because of Lewis' sex and questions over her mental capacity. Novelist John Grisham joined the opposition against Lewis' execution, noting that she had not carried out the actual killings herself. The state had last executed a woman in 1912.

Teresa Wilson grew up in poverty in Danville, Virginia, where her parents both worked in a textile mill. Teresa sang in a church during her youth. She dropped out of school and left home at age 16 to marry a man she met at church. Though the couple had a daughter, Christie Lynn Bean, the marriage soon ended in divorce. Teresa then turned to alcohol and painkillers. Her mother-in-law, Marie Bean, described Teresa as "not right".