A Song Flung Up to Heaven is the sixth book in a series of
autobiographies by author Maya Angelou (pictured). Set between 1965 and
1968, it begins where her previous book All God's Children Need
Traveling Shoes ends, with her return to the United States from Accra,
Ghana, where she had lived for four years. The assassinations of
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. frame the beginning and end of
the book. Angelou describes how she dealt with these events and the
sweeping changes both in the country and in her personal life, and how
she coped with her return home. The book ends with Angelou writing the
opening lines to her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings. Angelou wrote Song in 2002, sixteen years after All God's
Children. By that time she had received recognition as an author, poet
and spokesperson. A recorded version of the book received the Grammy
Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2003. (This article is part of a
featured topic: Maya Angelou autobiographies.).
Read more:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_topics/Maya_Angelou_autobiographies>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1520:
Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Exsurge Domine, censuring 41
propositions from Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses and subsequent
writings, and threatening him with excommunication unless he recanted.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exsurge_Domine>
1920:
Three African-American circus workers were lynched by a mob in
Duluth, Minnesota (memorial pictured), a crime that shocked the country
for having taken place in the Northern United States.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duluth_lynchings>
1996:
The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a
truck bomb in the commercial centre of Manchester, England, injuring
more than 200 people and causing widespread damage to buildings.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing>
2012:
American acrobat Nik Wallenda became the first person to walk a
tightrope stretched directly over Niagara Falls.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nik_Wallenda>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
Magna Carta:
1. (law, historical) A charter granted by King John to the barons at
Runnymede in 1215, which is one of the bases of English constitutional
tradition; a physical copy of this charter, or a later version.
2. (figuratively) A landmark document that sets out rights or important
principles.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Magna_Carta>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all
the government we need. We believe in a government that is
characterized by fairness and reasonableness, a reasonableness that goes
beyond labels, that doesn't distort or promise to do things that we know
we can't do. We believe in a government strong enough to use words like
"love" and "compassion" and smart enough to convert our noblest
aspirations into practical realities. We believe in encouraging the
talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a
good working description of the process of evolution, a government of
humans should elevate itself to a higher order.
--Mario Cuomo
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mario_Cuomo>