Main Page

New World Encyclopedia integrates facts with values. Written by certified experts.

Featured Article: Juneteenth

Site where General Order No. 3 was read on Monday, June 19, 1865

Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth) – also known as African American Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, – is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. Originating in Galveston, Texas, it commemorates the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865 announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas. The day is now celebrated annually on June 19 throughout the United States, and is recognized as a federal holiday. The holiday is considered the longest-running African-American holiday.

Popular Article: Behavior

Social interaction and creative expression are forms of human behavior

Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms in response to a given stimulus or situation. In addition to living beings, human and other, the ways in which natural phenomena, artificial entities, and even machines function are included in behavior. Human behavior is the most complex, from activities that satisfy biological needs to sustain physical life, through cognitive activities and reasoning, emotions, social and economic activities, to the most advanced moral and ethical choices that affect not only the individual but society as a whole.

Did you know?

Lee Falk's comic strip character 'The Phantom' inspired the costumed image of what has today become known as the "superhero." (source: Lee Falk)

> more interesting facts