Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 June 15

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From today's featured article

Maya Angelou

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.)

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Did you know ...

The Burning of the United States steam frigate Missouri at Gibraltar, 1843

... that George Pechell Mends witnessed the burning of the steam frigate USS Missouri at Gibraltar on 26 August 1843, and his sketch was the basis for a painting by Edward Duncan (lithograph shown)?
... that during the COVID-19 pandemic, United Nations secretary-general António Guterres called for a global domestic violence "ceasefire"?
... that when sports journalist Andy O'Brien discovered John Landy bleeding in the locker room at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, the runner swore him to secrecy?
... that Rob Wiethoff's work as John Marston in Red Dead Redemption lasted almost two years?
... that after logging their 199th win, Hendrick Motorsports had to wait for seven months and sixteen races before they won their 200th NASCAR Cup Series, with Jimmie Johnson at the wheel?
... that Casualty struggled to portray the open-air scenes from Episode 1067 as winter because passers-by were wearing summer clothing?
... that Susan Benesch, founder of the Dangerous Speech Project, advocates the use of "counterspeech" and humor against hate speech?
... that the 2018 Nepali comedy-drama Mr. Virgin was criticised for its title?

In the news

COVID-19 pandemic

Pierre Nkurunziza

Burundian president Pierre Nkurunziza (pictured) dies in office at the age of 55.
Russian president Vladimir Putin declares a state of emergency after a diesel spill near Norilsk.
SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 make their first crewed launch for NASA.
Protests and riots break out across the United States and elsewhere following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

On this day

June 15

Memorial of the Duluth lynchings

1215 – Magna Carta, an influential charter of rights, was agreed to and sealed by King John of England at Runnymede.
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.
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.
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.
2012 – American acrobat Nik Wallenda became the first person to walk a tightrope stretched directly over Niagara Falls.

Lisa del Giocondo (b. 1479)
Marcel Pronovost (b. 1930)
Capitola Dickerson (d. 2012)

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From today's featured list

Santana, an American rock band, has received several awards and nominations throughout its career. Its first nomination for a major award when its fourth album Caravanserai (1972) was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance with Vocal Coloring in 1973. The band was nominated for further Grammys in 1993 and 1996. In 2000, following the success of the previous year's album Supernatural, the band was nominated for nine Grammys and won eight, tying the record held by Michael Jackson for the most awards at a single Grammy ceremony. The album won the awards for Album of the Year and Best Rock Album and the single "Smooth" received two Grammys for Record of the Year and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. Four other songs from the album also won Grammys. In the same year, the band received three awards at the Latin Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year. (Full list...)

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Baselios Cleemis (born 15 June 1959) is the current major archbishop of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. He was elevated to the College of Cardinals by Pope Benedict XVI on 24 November 2012. Cleemis is the first bishop of the Syro-Malankara Church, and the fifth Keralite, to be created a cardinal. He said it was a sign of the Pope's appreciation of Indian Catholics' "unity in diversity", and cited the witness, the defence of human life, and the example of authentic prayer given by Mother Teresa.

Photograph credit: Prathyush Thomas

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