March 14 is Pi Day, an annual celebration of the mathematical constant of pi, representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
The holiday is observed on March 14 or 3/14 because 3.14 are the first three digits of the infinite number pi — 3.14159 … and on and on.
The celebration of Pi Day was the brainchild of physicist Larry Shaw and was first observed in 1988 at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, a science museum, and has since grown into an international event.
At that first simple salute to pi in 1988, Shaw and his wife, Catherine, took — guess what? — pies — and tea to the museum for the celebration of the infinite number. Shaw became known as the Prince of Pi and reigned over the museum’s annual honoring of the never-ending number for years, until his death in 2017.
Pi Day festivities grew to include the honoring of mathematical genius Albert Einstein because he was born on March 14.
The U.S. House of Representatives officially designated March 14 as National Pi Day in 2009.
The Exploratorium posted on its website that this year’s observance of pi would include the annual Pi Procession, which the museum described as being executed by “a high spirited crowd” through the museum and would circle the museum’s Pi Shrine 3.14 times, while “waving the digits of pi and dancing along” to a brass band.
And, of course, all participants in the revelry would be rewarded with a free slice of pie.
Pi Day is now celebrated around the world by pi lovers and is viewed as a way to arouse interest in the sciences among young people.
Pi lovers had a special treat in 2015, History.com reports. That year Pi Day was celebrated on 3/14/15 at 9:26:53 a.m. The combined numbers of the date and time represent the first 10 digits of pi — 3.141592653.
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Day: March 14, 2025
Kansala, Guinea-Bissau — For centuries, the history of the West African kingdom of Kaabu has been told mainly by word of mouth.
Kaabu existed from the mid-1500s to the 1800s. At its peak, it encompassed Guinea-Bissau and reached into what are now Senegal and Gambia.
Sometimes Kaabu’s story passed from father to son. Often it was passed by griots — or West African oral historians — who sang about the kingdom’s rulers.
“The griots have already sung it, but now we know it’s real,” is what Nino Galissa recounts in a recent song commissioned by archaeologists from their recent dig in Kansala — a site that was once the wealthy capital of the West African kingdom.
Galissa is a direct descendent of the griots who sang for the last emperor of Kaabu.
The song performed by Galissa is being shared along with a report of the archaeological findings, Sirio Canos-Donnay from the Spanish National Research Council, which was a lead institution of the dig, told VOA.
“He’s combined all of the ways and methods and phrases that are the trade of the griot with the archaeological information and, hence, using that we’ll be able to transmit what we’ve done to the local population in a much more effective manner.”
In Kansala, griots have long been the way history lessons were passed between generations. They often sing the history accompanied by the kora, a string instrument that resembles both a harp and a guitar.
‘The puzzle you cannot miss’
Antonio Queba Banjai, a descendant of the last emperors of Kaabu, remembers listening as a young boy to the griots sing about his ancestors.
“Griots are not just important,” he said. “They are the puzzle you cannot miss in African history, because to know what we know now is because of griots. I am from the tree of the last emperor of Kaabu. We were educated by the music of kora. The storytellers tell us where we come from.”
Banjai is also president of Guinea-Lanta, an NGO that worked with the archaeologists.
When team members began the project, they knew they wanted griots and oral history to play an important role in what is the biggest archaeological dig to ever take place in Guinea-Bissau.
Canos-Donnay said she hoped that including oral storytelling in this report would show the academic world that things can be done differently and more inclusively.
“We should pay and need to pay respect to local ways of producing and consuming history. And the collaboration and the knowledge that can come from that dialogue from these two disciplines is something that is quite extraordinary.”
Canos-Donnay and others worked closely to verify that many events griots had sung about for generations actually occurred.
One such event was the explosive ending of the kingdom.
“Kansala had a fairly spectacular end in the 1860s, when the town was sieged by an enemy kingdom, and the local king realized he was going to lose the battle,” she said. “The legend is he set fire to the gunpowder house and blew the whole site up. So, this particular point of the site is where the elders said it happened. And one of the fun things is we proved that’s where it properly did.”
The dig also produced evidence of residents’ extensive trading with Europeans – Venetian beads, Dutch gin and more.
Joao Paulo Pinto is the former director of Guinea-Bissau’s National Institute of Study and Research. He says West African ways of recording history should be taken as seriously as European techniques.
“In our system, when you talk about the ritual of passage – everything has a process, everything has a code of conduct,” he said. “All our oral history systems have a commitment to the truth. I have a commitment to the truth as I speak, just the same as a book has a commitment to the truth.”
As for Banjai, he hopes the project will allow others to learn about the histories and kingdoms of West Africa that he says are too often neglected in school.
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JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA — Researchers warn that type 2 diabetes could affect millions more people in the coming decades after a study published this month revealed the disease is rising far faster among people in sub-Saharan Africa than previously thought.
Take 51-year-old security guard Sibusiso Sithole, for example. Being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes came as a shock, he said, because he walked six miles to and from work every day and never thought his weight was a problem.
Then his wife noticed changes in his health.
Since his diagnosis 13 years ago, Sithole has been on a rigorous treatment for diabetes and high blood pressure.
“I have to take six … medications every day,” he said.
Diabetes is a condition in which the body struggles to turn food into energy due to insufficient insulin. Without insulin, sugar stays in the blood instead of entering cells, leading to high blood-sugar levels. Long-term complications include heart disease, kidney failure, blindness and amputations.
The International Diabetes Federation estimated in 2021 that 24 million adults in sub-Saharan Africa were living with the condition. Researchers had projected that by 2045, about 6% of sub-Saharan Africans — over 50 million — would have diabetes.
The new study, published this month in the medical journal The Lancet, suggested the actual percentage could be nearly double that.
By tracking more than 10,000 participants in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Burkina Faso over seven years, researchers found that poor eating habits, lack of health care access, obesity and physical inactivity are key drivers of diabetes in Africa.
Dr. Raylton Chikwati, a study co-author from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, said another risk factor is living in or moving to the outskirts of cities, or “peri-urban areas.”
“Access to health care, you know, in the rural areas is a bit less than in the urban areas,” Chikwati said, adding that increased use of processed foods in the peri-urban areas was a problem.
Palwende Boua, a research associate at the Clinical Research Unit of Nanoro in Burkina Faso, said long-term studies are rare in Africa but essential to understanding diseases.
“Being able to have a repeated measure and following up [with] the same people … is providing much more information and much valuable information,” Boua said, “rather than having to see people once and trying to understand a phenomenon.”
Boua is preparing a policy brief for Burkina Faso’s government to assist in the fight against diabetes.
For Sithole, managing his diabetes has been a long journey. But with treatment and lifestyle changes, he has regained control over his health.
“What I can tell people is that they must go and check — check the way they eat — because that time I was having too much weight in my body,” he said. “I was wearing size 40 that time. Now I’m wearing size 34.”
Experts stressed that Africans should get their blood-sugar level tested and seek treatment when diabetes is diagnosed.
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The U.S. bird population is declining at an alarming rate, according to a report published Thursday by an alliance of science and conservation groups.
Habitat loss and climate change are among the key contributing factors to the bird population losses, according to the 2025 U.S. State of the Birds report.
More than 100 of the species studied, have reached a “tipping point,” losing more than half their populations in the last 50 years. The report revealed that the avian population in all habitats is declining, including the duck population, previously considered a triumph of conservation. “The only bright spot is water birds such as herons and egrets that show some increases,” Michael Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy, told Reuters.
The decline in the duck population fell by approximately 30% from 2017, but duck population numbers still remain higher, however, than their 1970 numbers, according to an Associated Press account on the report.
“Roughly one in three bird species (229 species) in the U.S. requires urgent conservation attention, and these species represent the major habitats and systems in the U.S. and include species that we’ve long considered to be common and abundant,” Amanda Rodewald, faculty director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Center for Avian Population Studies told Reuters.
Included among the birds with highest losses, Reuters reported, are the mottled duck, Allen’s hummingbird, yellow-billed loon, red-faced cormorant, greater sage-grouse, Florida scrub jay, Baird’s sparrow, saltmarsh sparrow, mountain plover, Hawaiian petrel, Bicknell’s thrush, Cassia crossbill, pink-footed shearwater, tricolored blackbird and golden-cheeked warbler. Some of the birds in this “red alert” group are already protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, the news agency said.
“For each species that we’re in danger of losing, it’s like pulling an individual thread out of the complex tapestry of life,” Georgetown University biologist Peter Marra. who was not involved in the new report, told AP. While the outlook may seem dire, it is not without hope, said Marra, who noted the resurgence of the majestic bald eagle.
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