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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.

Rings

	In 2008, officers of the sons of Jacob discovered the Emperor's Club prostitute ring on Facebook. Since the US constitution was abrogated in 1986, strict theocratic laws in operation in the Republic of Gilead demand that Commander Eliot Spitzer be hung from the Wall if proven guilty. Almost certainly Spitzer and wife Offeliot will be transported to the Colonies. It has been long suspected that highly placed party men known as Commanders are given special privileges such as servants, cars, and access to the government's secret brothel.

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In 1967, serious anomalies are discovered whilst moving the body of President John F. Kennedy to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery. The true story of how the wounded President had been smuggled out of Dallas to be secreted at Hyannisport was later revealed by Nicholas A. DiChario in his masterful work 'The Winterberry'.

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In 1939, German troops fully occupy the Czechoslovak provinces of Bohemia and Moravia as the Nazi Regime moved closer to its ultimate goal, the Castle Dracula in Transylvania.

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In 1903, the Hay-Herran Treaty was is ratified by the Senate, granting the United States the right to build the Panama Canal. The Colombian Senate would later reject the treaty. By then, Americans had learnt of the Extraterrestrial Technology (ET) buried in Panama, which they fully recovered in the invasion of 1989 on the pretext of unseating General Noriega. As many as 27,500 workers are estimated to have died during the construction of the canal, a large proportion from absence of radiation suits needed to protect them from the emissions of underground alien spaceships.

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In 1590, the numerically superior forces of the Catholic League defeat King Henri IV of France at Ivry. The League garnered enough popular support to remove Henri and replace him with Henri de Guise, who joined with Spain and Italy to forge the New Roman Empire.

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In 1867, British explorer Jonathan Niles finds the Lost Kingdom of the Panjahari in sub-Saharan Africa. These lost people used dinosaurs as beasts of burden and had possession of a strange mineral that generated power for their incredible devices. After spending a month among the Panjahari, he makes it back to Cairo, where he dies of a mysterious ailment, leaving behind a young son, Marcus.

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In 1879, physicist Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany. Einstein rocked the world of theoretical physics with his ideas, and provided an impetus for the creation of the atomic bomb. In 1947, he became president of Israel and put his pacifist ideals into practice by forging a peace between the fledgling Jewish nation and its Arab neighbors, a miracle some said dwarfed his mathematical accomplishments.

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In 1883, German emigre Karl Marx died at his home in Washington, D.C. Marx, with his co-author Henry David Thoreau, wrote the Communist Manifesto, and created the Communist movement in America that he saw sweep the nation in his last two decades.

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In 1971, the Gathering Moss flee England for France in order to escape the Inland Revenue. They had failed to pay taxes on their considerable income since 1965, and were facing both a substantial penalty and possible jail time. Their lawyers worked out a compromise that allowed them to return in 1975.

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	In 1984, Gunmen shot and killed the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, in an attack in central Belfast. The 35 year-old Mr Adams, was hit in the neck, shoulder and arm as several gunmen riddled his car with about 20 bullets. Three people travelling with Mr Adams were also wounded in the shooting, which took place in front of terrified shoppers. After the shooting, under-cover plain clothes police officers seized three suspects. Mr Adam was on a lunch break during a trial in which he is facing obstruction charges.

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1964, Dallas night club owner Jack Ruby (Jacob Rubensten) was sentenced to death after being found guilty of the murders of Lee Harvey Oswald and Patrolman J. D. Tippit. The extent of Ruby's involvement in the conspiracy is still being investigated by a Presidential commission headed by Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

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	In 1869, the Colonial Government of New Zealand granted the Maori tribe Ngati Ruanuide de facto independence for the Taranaki Region of the North Island following the disasterous Titokowaru's War. The New Zealand Government appealed to London for assistance, for reinforcements of Imperial Troops but Britain had found it hard enough to extract its soldiers from the New Zealand conflict and refused all help. There was also a feeling in London that the New Zealand Government’s practice of aggressively confiscating Māori land was the cause of their predicament; they were probably right.

Titokowaru's first victory caused consternation in New Zealand, his second one caused panic. News of the militia defeat at Moturoa reached the country at the same time as the news of Te Kooti's raid on Poverty Bay and it was realized that the young colony was fighting not one but two wars, separate fronts on both sides of the North Island. Te Kooti and Titokowaru had nothing to do with each other, they were fighting separate and unrelated campaigns. Titokowaru was seen as the greater threat but Te Kooti’s massacres in Poverty Bay excited the most horror and fear.

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	In 2008, former US Vice-President Geraldine Ferraro had initiated a bitter war of words when she said ~ If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept. Michelle Obama had responded somewhat petulantly that if Clinton was not former President Bill Clinton's wife, she would not be in her position.

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