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🔗 United States 🔗 African diaspora 🔗 Holidays 🔗 United States/Texas 🔗 United States/U.S. history 🔗 Black Lives Matter 🔗 Project-independent assessment 🔗 Houston

Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. The holiday's name, first used in the 1890s, is a portmanteau of the words "June" and "nineteenth", referring to June 19, 1865, the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War. In the Civil War period, slavery came to an end in various areas of the United States at different times. Many enslaved Southerners escaped, demanded wages, stopped work, or took up arms against the Confederacy of slave states. In January 1865, Congress finally proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution for the national abolition of slavery. By June 1865, almost all enslaved persons had been freed by the victorious Union Army or by state abolition laws. When the national abolition amendment was ratified in December, the remaining enslaved people in Delaware and in Kentucky were freed.

Early Juneteenth celebrations date back to 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas. They spread across the South among newly freed African-Americans and their descendants and became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s, often centering on a food festival. Participants in the Great Migration brought these celebrations to the rest of the country. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, these celebrations were eclipsed by the nonviolent determination to achieve civil rights, but grew in popularity again in the 1970s with a focus on African-American freedom and African-American arts. Beginning with Texas by proclamation in 1938, and by legislation in 1979, every U.S. state and the District of Columbia has formally recognized the holiday in some way.

Juneteenth is also celebrated by the Mascogos, descendants of Black Seminoles who escaped from slavery in 1852 and settled in Coahuila, Mexico.

The day was recognized as a federal holiday in 2021, when the 117th U.S. Congress enacted and President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. Juneteenth became the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was adopted in 1983.

🔗 Human rights 🔗 Disability 🔗 South Africa 🔗 Primates

Jack (died 1890) was a chacma baboon, who attained some fame for acting as an assistant to a disabled railway signalman in South Africa.

🔗 Psychology

Cabin fever refers to the distressing claustrophobic irritability or restlessness experienced when a person, or group, is stuck at an isolated location or in confined quarters for an extended period of time. A person may be referred to as stir-crazy, derived from the use of stir to mean 'prison'.

A person may experience cabin fever in a situation such as being isolated within a vacation cottage out in the country, spending long periods underwater in a submarine, or being otherwise isolated from civilization. During cabin fever, a person may experience sleepiness or sleeplessness, have a distrust of anyone they are with, or have an urge to go outside even in adverse conditions such as poor weather or limited visibility. The concept is also invoked humorously to indicate simple boredom from being home alone for an extended period of time.

Cabin fever is not itself a disease and there is no prognosis. However, related symptoms can lead the sufferer to make irrational decisions that could potentially threaten their life or the life of the group with whom they are confined. Some examples would be suicide or paranoia, or leaving the safety of a cabin during a terrible snow storm that one may be stuck in.

🔗 Computing

Plankalkül (German pronunciation: [ˈplaːnkalkyːl]) is a programming language designed for engineering purposes by Konrad Zuse between 1942 and 1945. It was the first high-level programming language to be designed for a computer.

Kalkül is the German term for a formal system—as in Hilbert-Kalkül, the original name for the Hilbert-style deduction system—so Plankalkül refers to a formal system for planning.

🔗 Germany 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Military history/Maritime warfare 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Military history/German military history 🔗 Military history/European military history 🔗 Military history/British military history

Operation Sea Lion, also written as Operation Sealion (German: Unternehmen Seelöwe), was Nazi Germany's code name for the plan for an invasion of the United Kingdom during the Battle of Britain in the Second World War. Following the Battle of France, Adolf Hitler, the German Führer and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, hoped the British government would accept his offer to end the war, and he reluctantly considered invasion only as a last resort if all other options failed.

As a precondition, Hitler specified the achievement of both air and naval superiority over the English Channel and the proposed landing sites, but the German forces did not achieve either at any point during the war, and both the German High Command and Hitler himself had serious doubts about the prospects for success. Nevertheless, both the German Army and Navy undertook a major programme of preparations for an invasion: training troops, developing specialised weapons and equipment, and modifying transport vessels. A large number of river barges and transport ships were gathered together on the Channel coast, but with Luftwaffe aircraft losses increasing in the Battle of Britain and no sign that the Royal Air Force had been defeated, Hitler postponed Sea Lion indefinitely on 17 September 1940 and it was never put into action.

🔗 Languages 🔗 Iceland

The Basque–Icelandic pidgin was a Basque-based pidgin spoken in Iceland in the 17th century. It consisted of Basque, Germanic and Romance words.

Basque whale hunters who sailed to the Icelandic Westfjords used the pidgin as a means of rudimentary communication with locals. It might have developed in Westfjords, where manuscripts were written in the language, but since it had influences from many other European languages, it is more likely that it was created elsewhere and brought to Iceland by Basque sailors. Basque entries are mixed with words from Dutch, English, French, German and Spanish. The Basque–Icelandic pidgin is thereby not a mixture between Basque and Icelandic, but between Basque and other languages. It was named from the fact that it was written down in Iceland and translated into Icelandic.

Only a few manuscripts have been found containing Basque–Icelandic glossary, and knowledge about the pidgin is limited.

🔗 Chemistry 🔗 Plants

Lignum nephriticum (Latin for "kidney wood") is a traditional diuretic that was derived from the wood of two tree species, the narra (Pterocarpus indicus) and the Mexican kidneywood (Eysenhardtia polystachya). The wood is capable of turning the color of water it comes in contact with into beautiful opalescent hues that change depending on light and angle, the earliest known record of the phenomenon of fluorescence. Due to this strange property, it became well known in Europe from the 16th to the early 18th-century. Cups made from lignum nephriticum were given as gifts to royalty. Water drunk from such cups, as well as imported powders and extracts from lignum nephriticum, were thought to have great medicinal properties.

The lignum nephriticum derived from Mexican kidneywood was known as the coatli, coatl, or cuatl ("snake water") or tlapalezpatli ("blood-tincture medicine") in the Nahuatl language. It was traditionally used by the Aztec people as a diuretic prior to European contact. Similarly, the lignum nephriticum cups made from narra wood were part of the native industry of the Philippines before the arrival of the Spanish. The cups were manufactured in southern Luzon, particularly in the Naga region. The name of which was derived from the abundance of the narra trees, which was known as naga in the Bikol language (literally "serpent" or "dragon").

🔗 Chemicals 🔗 Molecular and Cell Biology 🔗 Evolutionary biology

Evolution of metal ions in biological systems refers to the incorporation of metallic ions into living organisms and how it has changed over time. Metal ions have been associated with biological systems for billions of years, but only in the last century have scientists began to truly appreciate the scale of their influence. Major (iron, manganese, magnesium and zinc) and minor (copper, cobalt, nickel, molybdenum, tungsten) metal ions have become aligned with living organisms through the interplay of biogeochemical weathering and metabolic pathways involving the products of that weathering. The associated complexes have evolved over time.

Natural development of chemicals and elements challenged organisms to adapt or die. Current organisms require redox reactions to induce metabolism and other life processes. Metals have a tendency to lose electrons and are important for redox reactions.

Metals have become so central to cellular function that the collection of metal-binding proteins (referred to as the metallomes) accounts for over 30% of all proteins in the cell. Metals are known to be involved in over 40% of enzymatic reactions, and metal-binding proteins carry out at least one step in almost all biological pathways.

Metals are also toxic so a balance must be acquired to regulate where the metals are in an organism as well as in what quantities. Many organisms have flexible systems in which they can exchange one metal for another if one is scarce. Metals in this discussion are naturally occurring elements that have a tendency to undergo oxidation. Vanadium, molybdenum, cobalt, copper, chromium, iron, manganese, nickel, and zinc are deemed essential because without them biological function is impaired.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Comedy 🔗 Biography/arts and entertainment 🔗 Japan 🔗 Japan/Biography 🔗 Japan/Owarai 🔗 Japan/Gaijin tarento

Jason David Danielson (born April 9, 1986), known professionally as Atsugiri Jason (厚切りジェイソン, Atsugiri Jeison, lit. "Thick-sliced Jason"), is an American comedian based in Japan and associated with Watanabe Entertainment. Danielson's comedic narrative is based on his confusion with kanji, ending with the punchline, "Why Japanese people?!"

🔗 Time 🔗 University of Cambridge

The Corpus Clock, also known as the Grasshopper clock, is a large sculptural clock at street level on the outside of the Taylor Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, in the United Kingdom, at the junction of Bene't Street and Trumpington Street, looking out over King's Parade. It was conceived and funded by John C. Taylor, an old member of the college.

It was officially unveiled to the public on 19 September 2008 by Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking. The clock was named one of Time's Best Inventions of 2008.