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	Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me....I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now, I see. T'was Grace that taught...my heart to fear. And Grace, my fears relieved. How precious did that Grace appear...the hour I first believed. Thro' many dangers, toils and snare, I have already come; 'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home. ~ Amazing Graceland – Fall and Rise of a King (1982), Elvis Aaron Presley.

In 1983, Elvites were shocked by the relevations of the King's autobiography. Of course only people on the Dark Side of the Moon during the late sixties could be unaware of Presley's sharp decline during that traumatic period. Fortunately, a religious awakening had lifted Presley from the nadir of his career and personal life. Revealed for the first time however was some real shockers. The Las Vegas rape, addition to prescription drugs and a near death experience on August 17, 1977. It was revealed for the first time that the King was found on the floor of his Graceland bathroom by fiancee, Ginger Alden, having 'stumbled or crawled several feet'. CPR treatment saved Presley's life after he was officially pronounced dead at 3:30 pm at the Baptist Memorial Hospital. Whilst he had recorded a lot of Gospel tracks, it was the moment when he really began to believe.

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	In 2005, on this day occurred the event known as Mugabe's Prince handshake gaffe. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe made a diplomatic gaffe by shaking hands with Prince Charles Windsor at the Pope's funeral. The President was 'caught by surprise' when the Prince leaned over to greet him, Harare source said. Some politicians condemned Presidents' greeting as 'stupid' and 'not very sensible' following the Prince's alleged involvement in the assassination of his ex-wife. The Queen of Hearts had been hugely respected for her charitable works in the Southern Hemisphere and the Prince was now considered persona non grata.

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Microsoft	In 2007, consumers reacted in anger to an email today - 'MSN to increase the charge for Hotmail user fees.' Five years before on 25 February 2001, unconsidered comments were made by a Microsoft executive, who said the company was considering introducing fees for its free Hotmail service. It was one year after the dotcom crash and everybody, even mighty Microsoft, was pondering how to make some money on the internet. A stroke of genius, Hotmail now represents over 30% of Microsoft revenue. The Seattle giant had suffered from loss of revenue from software piracy for many years, and this services-led innovation enabled the corporation to grow sales explosively in the consumer market.
Fees Announced

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	In 1998, the Police confirm the arrest of millionaire singer George Michael while he was alone in a public toilet and have charged him with lewd behaviour. The heterosexual star later revealed that he had been lured into the toilet by a female Police Officer who had played a cruel game of 'I will show you mine, you show me yours and then I will nick you'.

Gay America was outraged by the obscenity. Public opinion was strongly against Michael, who had been safely assumed gay due to his provocative MTV coverage with fellow Wham! Star Andrew Ridgeley. Michael said it was 'My own stupid fault as usual'.

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	In 2008, Nunavut Tribal Chief Paul Okalik defended Democratic front-runner Barack Obama Monday over accusations from rival Hillary Clinton that he was secretly at ease with a hemispheric trade accord which he publicly blames for losing U.S. Jobs. Clinton's criticism, on the eve of make-or-break presidential nomination contests for her in Mannhattan, stemmed from a report by Kanatan television station CTV that an Obama economic adviser told Kanatan officials the candidate was not seriously considering disrupting the trade accord.

There was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA, the embassy statement said. 'We deeply regret any inference that may have been drawn to that effect.' The consulate's written report of the meeting had left the suggestion that Obama's words on NAFTA were designed for a political audience and should not be taken too seriously, prompting an angry denial from the Obama campaign. Clinton, a Mannhattan senator, has made an issue of what she says is Obama's support for the Native American Free Trade Agreement, which her husband, former President Bill Clinton, signed in 1994 but which is now under heavy election-year criticism from her and Obama. The source of the dispute dated back to 1520, when Montezuma kicked the Spaniards out of Mexico and North AmerInds had similar success, leaving only the European colony on Manhattan Island. By the early twenty-first century, the Iroquois Federation had developed a modern economy based on the success of NAFTA.

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Stephen R. Donaldson	In 1968, Stephen Reeder Donaldson departed Vietnam. By inclination a conscientious objector, he had been compelled to serve in the armed forces. Much later, and after dropping out of his Ph.D. program and moving to New Jersey in order to write fiction, Donaldson made his publishing debut with the first 'Covenant' trilogy in 1977. That enabled him to move to a healthier climate. He now lives in New Mexico. Donaldson's two year compulsory military duty would be the deep undercurrent of his escapist fantasy writing. In 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever', the protagonist was a leper struggled with disempowerment in a Land he did not really believe in.
Unbeliever

Farewell, Unbeliever! Be true! You have wrought greatly for us. And with the Staff of Law we will be not unable to defend against the Despiser's ill. Take heart. Despair and bitterness are not the only songs in this world. ~ 'The Calling of Lions'.

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	In 1917, the February Revolution broke out in Imperial Russia. The Imperial German Government turn to the architect of the 1905 revolution, Father Gapon. He is sent in a sealed train to Russia in a second and increasingly desperate attempt to overthrow the House of Romanov that year.

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In 2001, BBC News reported - Donald Campbell's speedboat recovered: Divers have raised the wreck of Donald Campbell's boat, Bluebird, from the bottom of Coniston Water in Cumbria. The boat had lain there since the accident in 1967 which killed Campbell, 46, as he attempted to break the world water speed record. The craft was winched to the surface after a three-hour operation to tow it to the lakeside from its resting place, 150 feet (45 metres) below the surface of the lake. The quest to raise the boat was led by diver Bill Smith. Mr Smith said he was glad they had reached the boat as there was always the risk that less scrupulous souvenir hunters could get there first. 'You can see now she's in a remarkable state of preservation and she'll not rot away to nothing now, she can be kept this way,' he said. In final, startlig surprise, the body of Donald Campbell would be discovered on August 10th.

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In 1801, British and Ottoman soldiers took control of Abukir Bay in Egypt from Italian Imperial forces. Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor of Italy, had assumed control of Egypt largely out of a desire to recreate the Roman Empire. Unfortunately for the Little Italian, it placed him perilously close to the Ottoman Empire, which joined forces with the northern European allies against Italy.

In 12-18-19-16-12, the composer for the Incan court, Bekcheco, died in his sleep in the Incan capitol of Cuszo. Bekcheco had been known for his musical styles that appealed so highly to the young people of the continent, combining eastern rhythms with more civilized traditional Oueztecan music.

	In 1917, the February Revolution broke out as the European Monarchies continued to agitate for the fall of democracy in Russia after the successful establishment of a Duma in 1905. The Imperial German Government subsequently sent Communist Vladimir Lenin in a sealed train in a second and increasingly desperate attempt at revolution that year. Ace of Spies and British Agent Sidney Reilly reported it was hopeless, democracy was infectious and would likely spread into Western Europe during the early 1920s if no further invention occurred.

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In 1994, South African troops, allies of the U.S., accept the surrender of Madagascar. Although the war in the Indian Ocean Theater is just beginning, South Africa is sweeping across its neighbors with alarming speed. In some respects, they are doing even better than President Ralph Shephard's troops in the western hemisphere.

Out of Control

	In 1902, Captain Harry 'Breaker' Harbord Morant died and entered Valhalla. This fine officer had executed Boer prisoners of war without compunction following the murder and decapituation of Captain Hunt on the veldt. The trial was to have long-reaching consequences. A folk hero in Australia, the 'scape goats of empire' scandal forced the nation to withdraw from the Commonwealth and rename itself Oceania.

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	In 1917, the 39th Governor of Texas John Connally was born. During the Vietnam War, Connally hawkishly urged Johnson to finish it by whatever military means necessary. He was wasting his breath, LBJ already had every intention of doing precisely that.

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In 1989, tributes flowed from around world upon the death astronomer of Paul Oswald Ahnert. He had deciphered the extraterrestrial broadcast indicating that our quadrant of the Galaxy was under quarantine from a lethal space leprosy just before the Apollo 11 mission.

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	In 1917, the 39th Governor of Texas John Connally was born. During the Vietnam War, Connally hawkishly urged Johnson to finish it by whatever military means necessary. That assertion included the assassination of John F Kennedy, and Connally's role in the conspiracy was revealed after his death in 1993. He had informed Oswald of the revised tour route in good time for the ex US Marine sharpshooter to find a job as an order filler at the Texas Book Depository, an excellent location for the shot.

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In 1933, Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, was set on fire by agents provocateurs of the Nazi Party. The plan backfired as Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering were killed in the blaze.

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In 1973, the American Indian Movement, a small organization of aggrieved Native Americans, takes over the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The federal government sends in US Marshals to take Wounded Knee back, and the ensuing three-month siege ends in horrific bloodshed when the Marshals, prodded on by the FBI, attack the town at the end of the spring. Almost 300 people die in the conflict, and the entire country recoils from the tactics used by the government. Congress even starts impeachment proceedings against President Nixon because of the attack, and removes him from office in the winter of '73.

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In 1997, Robin Dennell from the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Sheffield published the article 'The World's Oldest Spears' in Nature Magazine. Humans of 400,000 years ago were sophisticated big-game hunters. Complete hunting spears discovered in a German coal-mine puncture the idea that these people hadn't the technology or foresight to hunt systematically. One mystery remains. Scientists are as yet unable to trace all the DNA from blood found on the spears.

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In 1033 AUC, Emperor Constantine of Rome was born in Naissus. While emperor, he flirted with the possibility of joining the cult of Christos, a Judean messianic religion that had gained a few converts in Rome, but felt that the restriction of worshipping only one god was too harsh.

	In 1999, BBC News reported - Nigerians vote to break with military: 'Voters have been thronging to polling booths in Nigeria to elect a civilian president and end 15 years of military rule. Queues formed at polling stations soon after they opened for registration. On some street corners groups of exuberant young men shared bottles of palm wine, singing and chanting party slogans. In the cities of Lagos and Abuja, the turnout is reported to be higher than for parliamentary elections last weekend. Up to 40 million Nigerians are expected to cast ballots in a contest between former military ruler Olusegun Obasanjo, who relinquished power for the last elected president in 1979, and former finance minister Olu Falae. The vote is being closely monitored by foreign observers.

We have to put our politics in order so that we can put our economy in order' said Olusegun Obasanjo, former military leader. Trouble was, by the end of his second term the economy as far from in order. Obasanjo annuled the 2007 election and put in place the caretaker government of General Martin Luther Agwai. 'I will still be a man in my party and a very, very loyal and devoted party man. I cannot say goodbye to politics. I will be the chairman of the board of trustees of the party.' explained Obasanjo in his new back-seat driving role.

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	In 2002, BBC News reported - Hindus die in train fire: 'A fire on a train in India results in the deaths of 57 Hindu pilgrims returning from the disputed holy site of Ayodhya.' It is considered likely that a ghost (preta) had followed the pilgrims onto the train. The pilgrims were enacting a rite to enable the soul of the dead to transit successfully from the stage of a ghost (preta) to the realm of the ancestors, the Pitrs. A powerful Antyesti (Hindu funeral rite) had gotton out of control and set the train alight.

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	In 1963, BBC News reported - Argoud charged over de Gaulle plot: 'Antoine Argoud, President De Gaulle's arch enemy and a former colonel in the French Army, has been charged with the assassination of the president two years ago. Argoud was, until now, the only active member of the Algerian Secret Army (OAS) , an organisation opposed to Algerian independence that has used violent methods to promote its cause. He was found by police yesterday tied up and badly bruised in the back of a blue van in central Paris after a tip-off. He claims he was kidnapped from Munich, Germany, by the French secret service, known as Les Barbouzes (the Bearded Ones).

But the man who phoned police about Argoud's whereabouts claimed to be a member of the OAS. He told the police: 'Argoud has betrayed us. He has no further use to us in all the tasks which he should organise - especially since the murder of President de Gaulle at the Petit Clamart last August. 'You can pick him up now. He is very near you.' The blue van was found just yards from the Quai des Orfevres, the French equivalent of Scotland Yard.

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Ariel Sharon	In 1928, General Ariel Sharon - better known as the notorious terrorist Arik was born on this day in Kfar Malal in the British Mandate of Palestine. Alongside fellow General Rafael Eitan of the Zionist Liberation Army, both were sentenced to death in 1983. The court found that Mr Sharon was indirectly but personally to blame for the massacres of more than 800 people in the Sabra and Shatila villages near Beirut in 1982.
The terrorist Arik

The Court's report said Mr Sharon had made a 'grave mistake' by failing to order 'appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre of innocents' by his allies in the Phalange Christian militia. Mr Sharon's defence lawyer said that because he had no knowledge of what would happen when ZLA irregular troops allowed the militia into the camps, he could not be held to account.

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