Did you know that in all of Europe, there is one (only one!) country that still has the death penalty? We'll tell you which one at the end of this profile.

San Marino was the first to abolish it, in 1848. (If you want to ignore the tiny republic, Portugal did it in 1867.) Slowly but surely, the rest of the continent followed, with Armenia being the last in 2003.

But let's talk about France, who used to have the death penalty for "bestiality, blasphemy, heresy, pederasty, sacrilege, sodomy, and witchcraft". In 1791 those reasons were abolished (yes, even witchcraft!), but murder still remained. The favored method of execution? Well, the guillotine, of course! (You took note of that year, right? It was invented just in time for the French Revolution!)

Executions were pretty much the norm up to World War II (no longer for witchcraft, natch), but petered out. It was finally abolished in 1981 (guillotine was last used in 1977!), due in large part to Robert Badinter, a Jewish lawyer famous for saving a murderer from death row. As soon as Francois Mitterand was elected president, he appointed Badinter as his Minister of Justice, a law was passed, and capital punishment was outlawed.

So what European country still has the death penalty? If you said Russia, you'd be almost right... it's not officially illegal, but forbidden by its Constitutional Court. (Besides, Russia has other ways to get rid of its undesirables.) It's Russia's BFF Belarus!