Hilary Swank, as Amelia Earhart, has a big, toothy smile, high cheekbones, and short, irregular hair that seems to have been chopped by a butcher knife.

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Van Gogh, having declined bodyguards of his own, was gunned down and nearly decapitated on an Amsterdam street, and a letter threatening Hirsi Ali was staked to his chest with a butcher knife.

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Defense attorney Tony Abbatangelo later told the judge he believed Drayton may have been acting in self-defense when he allegedly grabbed the butcher knife, a steak knife and a pizza cutter during the scuffle.

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Virtually every morning, it seems, image-makers in the gainful employ of opposition leader Tony Abbott and Prime Minister Julia Gillard conjure up some kind of unimaginative photo-opportunity, where their leaders appear brandishing a blow-torch, a spade, a butcher's knife, an on-button or some kind of piece of light industrial machinery.

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As David Stokes has documented in an excellent article posted over the weekend at Townhall.com , the perpetrators have run the gamut from those implicated in plots to assassinate a sitting president of the United States, to casing the structural supports for a major bridge to trying to smuggle a butcher's knife aboard an airplane.

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She had tried to stab Ms Clark shortly before attacking Mrs Hodkin, who was a law firm accounts clerk, with a knife stolen from a butcher.

BBC: Nicola Edgington

Moments later she ran into a butcher's shop to grab another knife which she used to kill Mrs Hodkin.

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Burlingame said Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told interrogators that the hijackers each used "a Swiss knife, " a brand of pocketknife, to butcher a sheep and a camel as part of their training.

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