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Yesterday was free Slurpees, today it’s free fries. July 12 is National French Fry Day, which means plenty of chains have deals and freebies on the menu. In honor of the “holiday,” USA Today polled its food team across the country to come up with a list of the best french fries in America — check it out, but don’t shoot the messenger if your favorite didn’t make the cut.
Environment
Quirky Pacific Northwest Museum Displays Nearly 50 Years of Beachcombing Finds
Plenty of people enjoy spotting and snagging beach souvenirs — pretty shells, a sand dollar, perhaps. But for John Anderson, picking up treasures from the shore is more than a casual hobby. The Washington state resident has been beachcombing for nearly five decades, and he displays his countless finds in a makeshift museum that opens to visitors each summer.
His exhibits represent a vast world beneath the waves. He’s got thousands of colorful rubber buoys arranged into giant sculptural installations; a collection of Raggedy Ann doll heads from a container spill in the 1970s; a binder full of messages found in bottles; a juvenile gray whale skull; chains from medieval ships; and so much more.
“There’s a lot of history, and there’s a story in everything,” Anderson explained to NBC News of his passion for scouring the sand, adding: “One of the things that I never gave up from childhood was adventure.” Explore more photos.
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Culture
Park Service Finds Musket Balls From 1775 “Shot Heard ’Round the World”
You may remember the story from an elementary school history lesson: In April of 1775, British soldiers met with colonial militiamen in Massachusetts and someone fired a shot, resulting in the battles of Lexington and Concord and thus, the start of the American Revolution. More than half a century later, poet Ralph Waldo Emerson would famously call the first firing the “shot heard ’round the world.”
Now, let’s bring us into the present. Archeologists with the National Park Service recently found five musket balls at Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord — and analysis of the artifacts indicates they were fired during that “world-changing event.”
“It’s incredible that we can stand here and hold what amounts to just a few seconds of history that changed the world almost 250 years ago,” Minute Man park ranger and historic weapons specialist Jarrad Fuoss said in a statement. He added that the discovery serves as “a poignant reminder that we are all stewards of this battlefield and are here to preserve and protect our shared history.”
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Humanity
“A Step Forward”: Researchers Work to Identify Victims of Tulsa Race Massacre
After the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, local officials in Oklahoma worked to cover up the attack on what was once known as Black Wall Street. Their efforts were unfortunately successful and we still don’t know the full death count — it’s estimated to be between 36 and 300, The New York Times reports. Today, investigators are working to right that wrong.
In 2020, Tusla began excavating a section of Oaklawn Cemetery to identify victims of the massacre for a project dubbed the 1921 Graves investigation. Researchers are now comparing DNA samples from a mass gravesite they uncovered to genealogy databases, in hopes of finding living descendants.
“To be able to tie back to any of the burials is finally a step forward, a concrete piece of information on a subject that has had no new information for such a long time,” Alison Wilde, the project’s genealogy case manager, told the Times. “We are talking about trying to find a name and a narrative of a real person tied to someone living today.”
Jeanette Batchelor-Young may be one of those living descendants; she recently learned her DNA matches that of remains exhumed from the cemetery. For the 64-year-old, who has spent years trying to trace her roots, the revelation provides some closure. “It gives me a sense of just feeling like I belong,” she said, “to someone, somewhere.”
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Global Good
🇬🇧 Buckingham Palace’s new tour gives the public a look inside the room that leads to its famed balcony.
🇮🇪 Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions are the lowest they’ve been in 30 years.
🇩🇰 Copenhagen, Denmark, is rewarding tourists who engage in eco-friendly behavior, like picking up litter.
🇸🇬 Yum! Singapore approved 16 species of insects for human and animal consumption.
🇨🇱 A Chilean zoo welcomed a rare white rhinoceros — watch a video of the youngin, named Silverio.
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Inspiring Story
Highs and lows
British explorer Oli France recently became the second person to complete a journey from the lowest point in North America — Death Valley, California — to the highest, the peak of Denali in Alaska.
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Photo of the Day
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick launched to the International Space Station in March, serving as a flight engineer, conducting science experiments, and maintaining the station. But he’s also taken up a hobby while in space: photography. Dominick has been sharing his stunning (and creative) photos of the cosmos on social media, with the moon shot above garnering more than 250,000 views. See more of his work.
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Quote of the Day
“I always have a comfortable feeling that nothing is impossible if one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction.”
– NELLIE BLY
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