A halo around the sun startled people in Ethiopia during Sunday's local elections, with many seeing it as a miracle or a sign from God.
The ring of light caused by sunlight refracted by ice crystals hung in the sky for almost an hour before it finally faded and disappeared.
Some Ethiopians say it last appeared in 1991 before a military regime fell.
Churchgoers who had flocked to see the visiting Patriarch of Alexandria, Pope Shenouda, acclaimed the phenomenon as a miracle, or at least a sign of a blessing from God
Pope Shenouda himself believed it was a signal from above.
Older people in Addis Ababa remember seeing the ring around the sun once before - in the last days of the Derg, the despised military dictatorship, just before its leader Mengistu Haile Mariam fled to Zimbabwe.
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