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But there’s one holiday you may know little about — even though, for many, it is the most important of the year.

Read on to learn about the history, present, and future of Juneteenth, the oldest celebration of the end of slavery in the United States.

Juneteenth Honors a Significant Moment in History

Many people think of Emancipation Day (the end of American slavery) as Jan. 1, 1863, the day President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring “all persons held as slaves … shall be then, thenceforward and forever free.”

But it wasn’t until June 19, 1865–2.5 years later — that news of the proclamation finally reached the quarter-million slaves living in Texas. That’s when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston to make the announcement, reading, “The people of Texas are informed … all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves…” 

The name “Juneteenth” marks this historic day literally, as a combination of “June” and “19th.”

In Texas, a Long Delay Keeps Slavery Alive

Why was there such a long delay to abolish slavery in Texas?

Many white landowners in Texas, as elsewhere, resisted granting enslaved Africans their freedom, and because there weren’t many Union troops in the state to enforce the new order, they were able to keep Black people enslaved for long after they were officially declared free. (It’s also worth noting that the proclamation only applied to enslaved people in the confederacy and not to Union-loyal states like Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Mississippi.)

Even after Granger arrived, some Texas slaves remained in bondage for several more years.

Other Stories Emerge to Explain the Delay

Many folkloric stories have been shared over the years to explain the delay in Texas. As one story goes, it took more than two years for a messenger traveling by mule to make his way from Washington to Texas. In another tale, this messenger was murdered on his way to delivering the news.

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Juneteenth celebrations

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If it seems like things are kind of off these days, you’re not alone. Recently, more than 100,000 people liked a post marking the start of the pandemic that said, “[Four] years ago, this week was the last normal week of our lives.”

Objectively speaking, we are living through a dumpster fire of a historical moment. Right now more than one million people are displaced and at risk of starvation in Gaza, as are millions more in Sudan. Wars are on the rise around the globe, and 2023 saw the most civilian casualties in almost 15 years.

H5N1 bird flu has jumped to cows, several farm workers have been infected, and scientists are warning about another potential pandemic. According to data from wastewater, the second biggest COVID surge occurred this winter. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates at least 24,000 people have died of COVID so far in 2024.

Last year was the hottest ever and recorded the highest number of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. Not to mention that over the past few years, mass shootings have significantly increased, we’ve seen unparalleled attacks on democracy and science, and mental health issues have skyrocketed.

Truth be told, things were bananas even before the pandemic: just think of the Great Recession, the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and Brexit. Academics use terms like “polycrisis” and “postnormal times” to describe the breadth and scale of the issues we now face.

Welcome to the new normal, an age where many things that we used to deem unusual or unacceptable have become just what we live with. Concerningly, though, “living with it” means tolerating greater suffering and instability than we used to, often without fully noticing or talking about it. When authorities tell us to “resume normal activities” after an on-campus shooting or give guidance on how to increase our heat tolerance in an ever-hotter world, we may sense that something is awry even as we go along with it.

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It didn’t take long for me to recognize the low bar awaiting me as a new father. In the early, bleary days of parenthood, I was congratulated for relaying the vaguest details of my son’s whereabouts and received pats on the back for explaining the origin of his name. New moms were rarely granted the same level of enthusiasm; they couldn’t delight a crowd by remarking on whatever precociously cool song their kid smiled along to. Meanwhile, I had only the faintest grasp of my son’s diaper size. I remember the approving nods I received from strangers when I folded his stroller or produced a clean pacifier from my pocket. As he grew into a state that one is contractually obliged to call “cherubic,” people would offer their seats and a sympathetic smile when we boarded the bus, my son wielding a remote control, for some reason.

It’s nice when random people smile at you, yet few of these interactions felt truly meaningful. They merely confirmed a basic competency, an ability to not completely flub my lines. How we behave, at home or in public, is a product of our innate impulses and feelings in concert with the expectations of our surroundings. For the modern-day American father, prescribed identities can be contradictory. On one hand, there’s probably never been an age that so values a kind of chill sensitivity among fathers; witness the dawn of the #girldad, the think pieces about new frontiers in hands-on fatherhood, the mainstream rejection of the withholding, stoic paterfamilias archetype. And, yet, I’ve never been bombarded with so much frothy anxiety around masculinity and testosterone. In an age of declining global birthrates, it is, in the eyes of figures such as Elon Musk, about fathering, rather than fatherhood.

Perhaps it’s safest to keep expectations low. For a while, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, hewed to the belief that males were simply wired differently; one of her initial forays into academic research explored the penchant for infanticide among male langur monkeys. She spent much of her career studying the behaviors of primates, particularly the reproductive and resilient survival strategies of females. In 1981, she published “The Woman That Never Evolved,” which argued that traditional views on evolutionary biology hadn’t accounted for the ways in which female primates had developed instincts for competition, independence, and sexual assertiveness. In 1999, she published “Mother Nature,” a history of mothers and infants, in which she explored the idea of the “allomother,” a term she popularized to refer to anyone other than the birth mother who helps to care for an infant.

“Father Time,” Hrdy’s latest book, picks up where “Mother Nature” and “Mothers and Others,” published in 2009, left off. Her interest lies in how external forces shape what’s happening inside our bodies, and vice versa. She contends that the emergence of more egalitarian norms of parenthood aren’t just changing society; they could change the biochemical makeup of men, too.

Hrdy writes of the researchers Katherine Wynne-Edwards and Anne Story, whose “shared interest in what renders males caring” spanned species. Wynne-Edwards had studied the mating habits of Campbell’s dwarf hamsters, found in China, Russia, and Central Asia. Male hamsters don’t just stick around pregnant females—already a rarity—they are integral parts of the birthing process, nuzzling with their partners and “oh so delicately” assisting with delivery. Wynne-Edwards found that levels of prolactin, a hormone that’s responsible for lactation and that affects a mammal’s immune system and metabolism, rose in the male hamster as his mate’s pregnancy progressed.

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As flowers bloom and temperatures climb, many are eager to get back outside. But while the Sun may be shining, there is a dark side that can make the great outdoors not so great.

Gangs of germs are lurking in the woods, in the soil, in the water, and in your food, ready to rain on your summer parade.

I’m a professor of microbiology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, where I study and teach about infectious disease. Here are some things to keep in mind to help you and your loved ones stay free of illness while enjoying summer activities.

Germs in the backyard

There’s nothing like the smell of a good barbecue and fresh goodies from your own garden. To make sure people leave your party with only good memories, be aware of germs commonly linked to food poisoning, which can result in diarrhea, cramps, nausea, vomiting, and fever.

Meats, including fish and poultry, often house harmful bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli, or Listeria. Raw meat can contaminate anything it touches, so be sure to wash your hands and disinfect surfaces and utensils. To avoid cross contamination, do not keep uncooked meat near prepared foods. Meat products must be cooked to proper temperatures to ensure harmful germs are destroyed before consuming.

In addition to bacteria, a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii can cause acute food poisoning. Toxoplasma parasites are shed as microscopic oocysts in the feces of infected cats. Oocysts persist in the environment for a year or more, and other animals, including people, can inadvertently ingest them.

Upon infection, Toxoplasma forms tissue cysts in the flesh of food animals – another reason to cook your meats thoroughly. Pregnant people need to take special care in avoiding Toxoplasma, since the parasite can cross the placenta and cause miscarriage or birth defects.

To avoid getting toxoplasmosis from oocysts, people should wear gloves while gardening, wash fruits and vegetables, and make sure the sandbox is free of cat poop and covered when not in use.

Germs in the water

Recreational water facilities, such as pools, water parks, and fountains, are a great way to beat the summer heat. The smell of chlorine is a good sign that the water is being treated to kill many types of germs.

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Taking precautions against outdoor pathogens can keep you from getting sidelined over the summer. galitskaya/iStock via Getty Images Plus

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Being in this heightened state can lead to sleep problems, issues with blood pressure, and just an overall sense of anxiousness. According to a survey more than half of Americans say that money negatively impacts their mental health. Economic factors are playing a large part in overall mental deterioration, and despite the current administration’s efforts, there still is very little relief from financial strain. 

When an emergency occurs, many Americans turn to traditional banking and financial solutions like credit cards to borrow money that don’t always have their best interest in mind. Many lending products come with hidden “junk fees” and an annual percentage rate (APR) that is misleading for consumers and doesn’t truly reveal the costs to those in need. Most individuals and households carry a credit card balance month to month and are unable to make payments. Credit card interest margins rise daily, and consumers are cash-poor, but credit-rich.

Earlier this year, President Biden took another initiative against junk fees—specifically credit cards. Under the new rule, most credit card late fees will be capped at $8. The Administration estimates credit card companies are generating five times more on late fees than it costs to recoup the late payment. Biden said, “They’re padding their profit margins and charging hard-working Americans. This action will collectively save families $10 billion in credit card late fees every year.” On average, credit card companies were charging $32, making it more difficult and stressful for hardworking Americans to save and not be cash-strapped. It goes way beyond late fees, however, which is why it’s surprising that the entire issue is not being addressed and will not solve the overlying problem. 

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The single-celled organism Lacrymaria olor uses one of the most curious hunting techniques of all. Its oval-shaped body measures around 40 micrometers and has a small protrusion at the end. When it detects food, it stretches this “neck” out to around 30 times its own body length within seconds in order to grab prey that is far away, an action that makes it look like the Loch Ness monster. But how L. olor manages to do this without enormous tensile forces tearing its cell membrane has so far been a complete mystery. Experts suspect that the organism must store the extra length of this feeding apparatus somewhere to be able to retrieve it so quickly.

Now, Eliott Flaum and Manu Prakash of Stanford University seem to have solved the mystery. As they report in the journal Science, the cell membrane and internal structure of the single-celled organism are folded like origami and can be easily pulled apart and folded together again. This means that the forces on the membrane and the energy costs are very low, write the two researchers. L. olor stretches its neck around 20,000 times over the course of its life without incident.

The tiny single-celled organism’s unusual hunting technique brings with it a whole series of potential problems. Normally, it takes a lot of energy to deform a cell membrane so drastically—and at the speed with which L. olor stretches its neck, the organism would not be able to produce enough new membrane material. And while the neck has to be extremely flexible to allow for the rapid movement, it also has to be stiff and stable at the same time so that it doesn’t simply snap over at the first opportunity. L. olor solves all of these problems by folding the membrane of its neck into several layers.

The membrane’s fold lines have a complicated curved geometry that enable it to unfold into a cylinder. Beneath the folded membrane lies a network of spirally wound tubes that are folded together with the membrane and in turn help in the orderly folding and unfolding. The principle is similar to so-called Yoshimura origami, in which a cylinder consists of a grid of folded rhombuses and can be stretched out and folded up. One question still remains unanswered, however: When micrometer-sized objects move toward each other in the water, a repulsive force is created, so the protruding neck should cause the prey to drift away. Why that doesn’t happen is unclear—not all of the mysteries surrounding L. olor have been solved yet.

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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) will be issuing a mass pardon for more than 175,000 marijuana convictions on Monday.

The pardons will be one of the country’s biggest acts of clemency involving the drug that’s now widely used recreationally.

ll be one of the country’s biggest acts of clemency involving the drug that’s now widely used recreationally.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Moore said it will be a step to heal decades of social and economic injustice that disproportionately harmed people of color.

“I’m ecstatic that we have a real opportunity with what I’m signing to right a lot of historical wrongs,” he said. “If you want to be able to create inclusive economic growth, it means you have to start removing these barriers that continue to disproportionately sit on communities of color.”

The Post noted that nine other states and multiple cities have pardoned hundreds of thousands of previous marijuana convictions in recent years but Moore’s actions impact communities of color significantly because Maryland has one of the country’s worst records for disproportionately incarcerating Black people.

The Post also noted that the pardons fall on the same week as Juneteenth celebrations across the country, which symbolizes the end of slavery. Moore is the only Black governor of a U.S. state.

The pardons rival only Massachusetts, where Gov. Maura Healey (D) issued a blanket pardon in March that is expected to impact hundreds of thousands of people, the outlet reported.

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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) speaks following a meeting on the federal response to the Key Bridge Collapse at the Capitol on April 9, 2024.

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At the far end of the periodic table is a realm where nothing is quite as it should be. The elements here, starting at atomic number 104 (rutherfordium), have never been found in nature. In fact, they’d emphatically prefer not to exist. Their nuclei, bursting with protons and neutrons, tear themselves apart via fission or radioactive decay within instants of their creation.

These are the superheavy elements: after rutherfordium come dubnium, seaborgium, bohrium, and other oddities, all the way up to the heaviest element ever created, oganesson, element 118. Humans have only ever made vanishingly small amounts of these elements. As of 2020, 18 years after the first successful creation of oganesson in a laboratory, scientists had reported making a total of five atoms of it. Even if they could make much more, it would never be the kind of stuff you could hold in your hand—oganesson is so radioactive that it would be less matter, more heat.

Using ultrafast, atom-at-a-time methods, researchers are starting to explore this unmapped region of the periodic table and finding it as fantastical as any medieval cartographer’s imaginings. Here at the uncharted coastline of chemistry, atoms have a host of weird properties, from pumpkin-shaped nuclei to electrons bound so tightly to the nucleus they’re subject to the rules of relativity, not unlike objects orbiting a black hole.

Their properties may reveal more about the primordial elements created in massive astrophysical phenomena such as supernovae and neutron star mergers. But more than that, studying this strange matter may help scientists understand the more typical matter that occurs naturally all around us. As researchers get better at pinning these atoms down and measuring them, they’re pushing the boundaries of the way we organize matter in the first place.

“The periodic table is something fundamental,” says Witold Nazarewicz, a theoretical nuclear physicist and chief scientist at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University. “What are the limits of this concept? What are the limits of atomic physics? Where is the end of chemistry?”

Affixed to the wall in a concrete-block corridor known as Cave 1 in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), just steps from one of the few instruments in the world that can create superheavy atoms, is a poster-size printout of a table that organizes elements by nuclide, meaning based on the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus. This graph shows all the known information about the nuclear structure and decay of the elements, as well as of their isotopes—variations on elements with the same number of protons in the nucleus but different numbers of neutrons.

It’s a living document. There’s a typo in the title, and there are tears along the poster’s edges where duct tape holds it to the wall. It’s been marked up with notations in Sharpie, added after the poster was printed in 2006. These notations are the atomic physics version of seafarers penciling in new islands as they sail, but in this case, the islands are isotopes of elements so heavy they can be seen only in particle accelerators like the one here. In a field where it can take a week to make just one atom of what you want, a record of progress is essential.

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Few outdoor accessories are more important than the grill you choose for you summertime cookouts. It was already time to retire your old grill when that rust hole appeared and a family of mice moved in three years ago, so don’t put it off any longer. If you’ve already weighed the benefits of an electric grill, but you haven’t been able to shake the siren’s call of the classic charcoal grill, you’re in the right place. Considering this, my argument for why charcoal still can be a great choice, and how to choose a good grill.

Charcoal gives food that classic summertime flavor you associate with the activity of grilling. Any morsel cooked over charcoal’s radiant heat is blessed with a smoky flavor unmatched by any other outdoor cooking device (barring a smoker, but that’s a different world altogether). With the right mindset, it also can be a lot of fun, from the moment you pack the chimney to when you close down the vents—and those glowing embers will always inspire s’mores.

I feel like a big time grill master whenever I cook with charcoal, probably because it takes a bit of work and know-how to successfully get one going versus a propane gas grill that lights with a click, or an electric grill that activates with a flip of the switch. But it’s also something a beginner can handle. (They say that each time you get those charcoal briquettes glowing, your ego grows three sizes.)

Is a charcoal grill right for you?

When considering which type of grill to buy, think about your priorities. Do you need it to be portable? What size do you think is best? Do you just want something that lights the first time, or are you okay with some trial and error? Consider charcoal’s advantages: 

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