" Amazing Grace " is a Christian hymn with words written by the English poet and clergyman John Newton ( 1725 – 1807 ), published in 1779.

Containing a message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of sins committed and that the soul can be delivered from despair through the mercy of God, " Amazing Grace " is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world.

" Amazing Grace " was written to illustrate a sermon on New Year's Day of 1773.

In the United States however, " Amazing Grace " was used extensively during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century.

Author Gilbert Chase writes that " Amazing Grace " is " without a doubt the most famous of all the folk hymns ," and Jonathan Aitken, a Newton biographer, estimates that it is performed about 10 million times annually.

" Amazing Grace " saw a resurgence in popularity in the U. S. during the 1960s and has been recorded thousands of times during and since the 20th century, occasionally appearing on popular music charts.

According to the Dictionary of American Hymnology, " Amazing Grace " is John Newton's spiritual autobiography in verse.

The greatest influences in the 19th century that propelled " Amazing Grace " to spread across the U. S. and become a staple of religious services in many denominations and regions were the Second Great Awakening and the development of shape note singing communities.

" Amazing Grace " was one of many hymns that punctuated fervent sermons, although the contemporary style used a refrain, borrowed from other hymns, that employed simplicity and repetition such as:

William Walker ( composer ) | William Walker, the composer who first joined John Newton's verses to " New Britain ", to create the song that has become " Amazing Grace "

Common meter hymns were interchangeable with a variety of tunes ; more than twenty musical settings of " Amazing Grace " circulated with varying popularity until 1835 when William Walker assigned Newton's words to a traditional song named " New Britain ", which was itself an amalgamation of two melodies (" Gallaher " and " St. Mary ") first published in the Columbian Harmony by Charles H. Spilman and Benjamin Shaw ( Cincinnati, 1829 ).

" Amazing Grace ", with the words written by Newton and joined with " New Britain ", the melody most currently associated with it, appeared for the first time in Walker's shape note tunebook Southern Harmony in 1847.

" Amazing Grace " set to " New Britain " was included in two hymnals distributed to soldiers and with death so real and imminent, religious services in the military became commonplace.

Although " Amazing Grace " set to " New Britain " was popular, other versions existed regionally.

Primitive Baptists in the Appalachian region often used " New Britain " with other hymns, and sometimes sing the words of " Amazing Grace " to other folk songs, including titles such as " In the Pines ", " Pisgah ", " Primrose ", and " Evan ", as all are able to be sung in common meter, of which the majority of their repertoire consists.

Moody and Sankey began publishing their compositions in 1875, and " Amazing Grace " appeared three times with three different melodies, but they were the first to give it its title ; hymns were typically published using the first line of the lyrics, or the name of the tune such as " New Britain ".

A publisher named Edwin Othello Excell gave the version of " Amazing Grace " set to " New Britain " immense popularity by publishing it in a series of hymnals that were used in urban churches.

Several editions featuring Newton's first three stanzas and the verse previously included by Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin were published by Excell between 1900 and 1910, and his version of " Amazing Grace " became the standard form of the song in American churches.

With the advent of recorded music and radio, " Amazing Grace " began to cross over from primarily a gospel standard to secular audiences.

The ability to record combined with the marketing of records to specific audiences allowed " Amazing Grace " to take on thousands of different forms in the 20th century.

Where Edwin Othello Excell sought to make the singing of " Amazing Grace " uniform throughout thousands of churches, records allowed artists to improvise with the words and music specific to each audience.

" Amazing Grace " is emblematic of several kinds of folk music styles, often used as the standard example to illustrate such musical techniques as lining out and call and response, that have been practiced in both black and white folk music.

Mahalia Jackson employed " Amazing Grace " for Civil Rights marchers, writing that she used it " to give magical protection — a charm to ward off danger, an incantation to the angels of heaven to descend ...

" Folk singer Judy Collins, who knew the song before she could remember learning it, witnessed Fannie Lou Hamer leading marchers in Mississippi in 1964, singing " Amazing Grace ".

It was originally serialized in Amazing Stories magazine from October 1967 to February 1968, and came out in a paperback from Berkley Books later in 1968.

His debut came in the 1987 motion picture Amazing Grace and Chuck, playing a fictitious Boston Celtics star.

These plans came to nothing, though Amazing did switch to a digest format in 1953, shortly before the end of the pulp-magazine era.

The third story in Ron Dawson's Amazing Adventures of Scary Bones the Skeleton series creates a magical myth of how Durdle Door came to be.

* Amazing Sea-Monkeys-which were tiny brine shrimp that came to life when water was added.

After broadcasting ended, birdsong was broadcast on the channel until a permanent replacement, Amazing Radio, came on air on 1 June 2009.

Medleys in the review came from but are not limited to " Sweeney Todd ", " Les Miserables ", " Seussical ", " My Favorite Year ", " Joseph and the Amazing Technocolor Dreamcoat ", and " Beauty and the Beast " The 2009 Spring musical was " Beauty and the Beast ".

As an engaged couple, Mariano and Brkich participated in the seventh season of The Amazing Race and came in second place.

* When The Amazing Race 5 came to the Philippines in 2004, a segment of jeepney manufacturing was one of the task involved in Leg 11 of the reality show.

On the May 5 edition of Impact !, Kendrick came together with Amazing Red and Generation Me to battle for X Division's future, after the legitimate firing of Jay Lethal.

When the Evilings took over the Island, they all merged to create the Black Evil and the island was headed towards its doom until a Hero from the human world ( Amazing Island takes place in the Dream world inside the book ) came and destroyed the Black Evil.

He first came to public attention as part of the winning team together with his friend Chris Luca in the second season of the reality TV show The Amazing Race in 2002.

* When The Amazing Race 3, a reality television show, came to Singapore in 2002, contestants collected a clue at the fountain.

It is mentioned in the book about the band " It Shined ," by Michael Granda, that the band name was derived from " Cosmic Corn Cob & His Amazing Ozark Mountain Daredevils ," a name that John Dillon came up with at a Kansas City " naming party " after the band was told that the name they had previously been using, " Family Tree ," was already taken.

In 2006, on the 9th Season of The Amazing Race, the final 3 teams came here and rode Tondemina, Dodonpa and Fujiyama looking for a clue to their next destination.

Before Dooley came to DC, from 1986 to 1988 he edited Fantagraphics ' Amazing Heroes.

They also announced that TSR had restarted development of Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega, but that the manuscript would be completed using the Amazing Engine rules.

For example, the tune ' Austria ' ( originally Haydn's ' Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser ') is associated today with the hymn ' Glorious things of thee are spoken ', just as ' New Britain ' an American folk melody, believed to be Scottish or Irish in origin ; has since the 1830s been associated with ' Amazing grace '.

Season-long competitions such as The Amazing Race, Survivor, and America's Next Top Model generally perform more poorly and usually must be rerun in marathons to draw the necessary viewers to make it worthwhile.

Alongside the 1981 Spider-Man animated series, Amazing Friends was later re-aired in the late 1980s as part of the 90 minute Marvel Action Universe ( not to be confused with 1977's The Marvel Action Universe ), a syndicated series that was used as a platform for old and new Marvel-produced animated fare ( the newer programming featured RoboCop: The Animated Series, Dino-Riders and on occasion “ X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men ”, which was intended to serve as a pilot for a potential X-Men animated series ).

This time the characters ' names would be reversed and the show was called, The Amazing Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk.

The song's meter allows it to be sung to a number of popular tunes including: " Amazing Grace "; " Greensleeves "; " The House of the Rising Sun "; " The Rising of the Moon / Wearing of the Green "; Beethoven's " Ode to Joy " ( in his Ninth Symphony, fourth movement ); " Oh My Darling, Clementine "; " Semper Paratus "; " The Marine Corps Hymn "; " The Yellow Rose of Texas "; " I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing "; " Ghost Riders in the Sky "; " Acres of Clams ", and the theme song from the TV show Gilligan's Island.

In 1990, after a 28-issue run of Amazing Spider-Man, McFarlane told editor Jim Salicrup he'd grown tired of drawing other people's stories and would be leaving the book with issue # 328 to write his own work.

In Amazing World of DC Comics # 14 ( 1977 ), a magazine with articles on DC Comics characters and series, Smallville was stated to be in Maryland.

Several foundlings appear in Terry Pratchett's Discworld: most notably Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson ( found as a toddler among the ruins of a caravan party attacked by bandits, surrounded by the bodies of the adults ; Carrot was adopted and raised by the dwarfs who discovered him, and was surprised to learn at age 16-and 6ft 6in tall-that he was not a dwarf ; mounting evidence suggests that Carrot is the scion of the deposed Ankh-Morpork royal family, but he himself has suppressed this as much as possible, considering the role of police captain to be a preferable one in which to safeguard his city and keep order ), also Tomjohn ( rightful heir to the throne of Lancre, rescued from his father's killer by loyal servants, entrusted to the local witches and given to travelling actors to raise ; Tomjohn eventually returns to the kingdom, but does not wish to rule it, preferring to remain an actor ) and Keith ( The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents-ironically, Malicia, obsessed with fairytales, is certain that this makes him likely to be a prince, but Keith explains that it is common in the city to abandon babies outside the Guilds where they are likely to receive care and training in a trade ).

Shortly afterwards Peter David ( at the time the regular writer on The Spectacular Spider-Man ) was commissioned to write The Amazing Spider-Man # 289, a double-sized issue in which the Hobgoblin's identity would be revealed.

: Amazing Grace shall always be my song of praise,

Amazing Maurice was marketed as a children's book, to be followed in that respect by The Wee Free Men ( 2003, # 30 ).

Early issues of The Amazing Spider-Man featured a running joke about Peter dodging his Aunt May's attempts to set him up with " that nice Watson girl next door ", whom Peter had not yet met and assumed would not be his type, since his aunt liked her ( in the Parallel Lives graphic novel an identical scenario is shown between Mary Jane and her Aunt Anna ).

Writer David Michelinie created Carnage to be a darker version of Venom, intending to have Venom's human alter ego, Eddie Brock, be killed off in The Amazing Spider-Man # 400 and have the symbiote continue to bond with a series of hosts.

It can even be heard in the background of car commercials and television shows such as The Amazing Race, and Futurama.

The Colour of Magic is one of the few of the thirty-nine Discworld novels to be divided into sections or chapters, some others being Pyramids, Going Postal, Making Money, and some of the books for younger readers, specifically The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents and the four Tiffany Aching books, The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith and I Shall Wear Midnight.

* Hydro-Man can be seen in the Islands of Adventure ride The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man at Universal Orlando Resort voiced by Bill Fagerbakke.

They are the second set of triplets to be featured in the United States edition of Playboy, after " The Trio from Rio, The Amazing Brazilian Triplets " who were featured in the November 1993 issue.

In the ( Aerosmith ) video for " Amazing " A similar Chemlab poster can be seen at the end of the video.