" 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 " came to be an emblem of a religious movement and a symbol of the U. S. itself as the country was involved in a great political experiment, attempting to employ democracy as a means of government.

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 ".

They have also played important parts in television series like Lost, The Amazing Race, America's Next Top Model, Cycle 10 which have significant parts of their story set within airports.

* The Complete Blue Note and Roost Recordings-Four disc set containing all of the Amazing Bud Powell ... Blue Note sessions plus Roost sessions from 1947 and 1953.

Other notable writers of the turn of the 20th century include Michael Chabon, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay ( 2000 ) tells the story of two friends, Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, as they rise through the ranks of the comics industry in its heyday ; Denis Johnson, whose 2007 novel Tree of Smoke about falsified intelligence during Vietnam both won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was called by critic Michiko Kakutani " one of the classic works of literature produced by Vietnam War "; and Louise Erdrich, whose 2008 novel The Plague of Doves, a distinctly Faulknerian, polyphonic examination of the tribal experience set against the backdrop of murder in the fictional town of Pluto, North Dakota, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

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 ).

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.

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz: A Faithful Record of Their Amazing Adventures in an Underground World ; and How with the Aid of Their Friends Zeb Hugson, Eureka the Kitten, and Jim the Cab-Horse, They Finally Reached the Wonderful Land of Oz is the fourth book set in the Land of Oz written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by John R. Neill.

However, Straczynski wrote a short story set far in the future of the series called " Space, Time & the Incurable Romantic " which was published in Amazing Stories # 602.

Aside from McGregor, with whom the character became as associated as Howard the Duck with Steve Gerber or Tomb of Dracula with Marv Wolfman, other writers include Bill Mantlo ( a fill-in Amazing Adventures and a Marvel Team-Up with Killraven and a future-flung Spider-Man ); Joe Linsner ( a 2001 Marvel Knights one-shot, Killraven, set in 2020 New York City, at odds with the original series ' locale by that fictional year ); and Alan Davis ( also artist ), in a 2002 parallel universe miniseries, Killraven vol.

* Following minor controversy among fans whether the Killraven of Amazing Adventures is the same as that depicted in the past of the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Alternate Universes 2005 states that Killraven and the Guardians share the same timeline, set on the parallel universe Marvel Comics designates " Earth-691 ".

The cast of The Amazing Race 3 was increased to 12 teams and included Soccer Moms, Law School graduates, a Vietnam War veteran, and a set of model twins.

Many of these themes appear in three other Panshin stories set in the same fictional future: “ The Sons of Prometheus ” ( Analog, 1966 ), “ A Sense of Direction ” ( Amazing, 1969 ), and “ Arpad ” ( Quark 2, 1971 ).

The titles were set in the Marvel Universe and most of them ( Araña: The Heart of the Spider, Young Avengers, Runaways and Amazing Fantasy ) had connections to pre-existing titles, taking advantage of settings, characters and events from previous stories.

In Amazing Fantasy ## 16-20, set further in the same future, A. I. M is on the point of making peace with the UN, when a renegade AIM scientist unleashes Death's Head 3. 0 on the peace conference.

A roving nature exhibition entitled Singapore ’ s Amazing Wildlife, was set up in 2004 that toured primary schools in order to reach out to students and receive their feedback.

* The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man is a 3-D simulator ride set in New York as Spider-man defeats The Sinister Syndicate from taking the Statue of Liberty.

There is also another set of characters who appear in each episode called Alberto Frog and his Amazing Animal Band.

Zappa also released a video titled The Amazing Mr. Bickford, which was entirely composed of Bickford animations set to a soundtrack of Zappa's orchestral music.

In 1949, while filming Treasure of Monte Cristo, a film noir set in San Francisco, she met and married co-star Glenn Langan ( The Amazing Colossal Man ).