The Conspirator

In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, seven men and one woman are arrested and charged with conspiring to kill the President, Vice President, and Secretary of State. The lone woman charged, Mary Surratt, 42, owns a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth, 26, and others met and planned the simultaneous attacks.

1. Inauguration Day: this marks the debut project from the American Film Company.
2. Presidential premiere: the film was screened at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.
3. Another screening was arranged at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., the site of Lincoln's assassination in 1865.
4. Infamous date: the film was released in the US on April 15, 2011 -- the 146th anniversary of President Lincoln's death.
5. On your next visit to our nation's capital, you can see the Mary E. Surratt Boarding House. It still stands at 604 H Street NW.
6. What's in a name? Mary Surratt's farmhouse was originally in a Maryland town called Surrattsville. After the name Surratt became notorious, the U.S. Post Office changed the name of the town to Robeysville, and later Clinton.
7. Lit trivia: one of the unnamed generals on the court martial commission was Major General Lew Wallace, who wrote the novel Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
8. Heads up, history buffs: much of the film's dialogue is taken straight from the trial transcripts.
9. Type casting: before taking on the role of John Wilkes Booth, actor Toby Kebbell had played another assassin -- Pausanias, the man who murdered Alexander the Great's father in 2004's Alexander.
10. No photographs exist of the real Frederick Aiken. We're gonna go ahead and guess he probably wasn't as handsome as James McAvoy.