July 5 Trivia, Fun Facts and Pop Culture History
July 5 Observances
July 5 is Bikini Day, Mechanical Pencil Day, National Apple Turnover Day, and National Graham Cracker Day. It is also, notably, the day after the Fourth of July — a holiday with its own distinct character, defined primarily by leftover potato salad, a vague ringing in the ears, and the discovery that 179 days remain in the year.
What Happened on July 5?
July 5 is the day Isaac Newton published the Principia Mathematica, the day SPAM arrived in American grocery stores, the day the bikini debuted in Paris, the day Arthur Ashe became the first Black man to win Wimbledon, and the day Dolly the sheep was born — the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, and technically the product of three mothers simultaneously. It is a day that has contributed, in varying degrees, to physics, processed meat, swimwear, civil rights, and the philosophy of biological identity.
If you were born on July 5, you were likely conceived the week of October 12 of the prior year.
July 5 History Highlights
1687 — Isaac Newton published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica — the Principia — laying out his laws of motion and universal gravitation in a mathematical framework that described the behavior of every object in the known universe. The book was written in Latin, structured as a series of geometric proofs, and is considered one of the most important scientific works ever produced. Edmund Halley paid for its publication out of his own pocket after the Royal Society ran out of funds. Halley also talked Newton into writing it, which may have been the more significant contribution.
1841 — Thomas Cook organized the first package excursion in history, arranging rail transport for approximately 570 temperance movement supporters traveling from Leicester to Loughborough to attend a meeting. Cook charged one shilling per person, which included the fare and a meal. The modern package holiday industry — representing hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue — traces its origin to a temperance rally in the English Midlands.
1865 — William Booth and his wife Catherine established the Christian Mission in Whitechapel, London, providing food, shelter, and religious services to the poor of the East End. The organization was renamed the Salvation Army in 1878, adopted military-style ranks and uniforms, and expanded internationally. It now operates in more than 130 countries.
1935 — President Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act — the Wagner Act — into law, guaranteeing American workers the right to organize, form unions, and engage in collective bargaining. It established the National Labor Relations Board to enforce those rights and is considered the most significant piece of labor legislation in American history.
1937 — Hormel Foods Corporation introduced SPAM — the canned luncheon meat made from pork shoulder and ham — into the American market. The name was the winning entry in a naming contest, submitted by actor Ken Daigneau, who received $100 for it. What the name stood for has been disputed ever since. During World War II, more than 150 million pounds of SPAM were shipped to Allied forces, leading Nikita Khrushchev to say that without SPAM, the Soviet Army would have starved. Monty Python later named something else after it, which is now more famous.
1946 — French designer Louis Réard introduced the bikini at a poolside fashion show at the Piscine Molitor in Paris. He named it after Bikini Atoll, where the United States had conducted nuclear weapons tests four days earlier, predicting the design would cause a comparable explosion. He could not find a professional model willing to wear it and hired Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris, instead. The Vatican condemned the garment. It became the most commercially successful swimwear design in history.
1950 — The Israeli Knesset passed the Law of Return, granting every Jewish person worldwide the right to immigrate to Israel and obtain citizenship. The law has been amended twice to extend the right to certain family members of Jewish immigrants.
1954 — The BBC broadcast its first television news bulletin, moving news from radio to the new medium. The early broadcasts showed only the newsreader’s hands and a clock face, on the theory that seeing the announcer’s face would unduly influence viewers. This policy lasted approximately two years.
1971 — President Nixon formally certified the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, which had been ratified by the required number of states on July 1, lowering the federal voting age from 21 to 18. The amendment had been driven by the argument that young men subject to the draft should have the right to vote — an argument that had been made since World War II and had finally been accepted.
1975 — Arthur Ashe defeated Jimmy Connors 6-1, 6-1, 5-7, 6-4 in the Wimbledon men’s final, becoming the first Black man to win the Wimbledon singles title, the US Open, and the Australian Open. Ashe had been ranked number one in the world and had been a civil rights advocate throughout his career. He was 31 years old at the time of his Wimbledon victory. He died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1993, having contracted HIV through a blood transfusion during heart surgery.
1996 — Dolly the sheep was born at the Roslin Institute in Scotland — the first mammal successfully cloned from an adult somatic cell. She had three mothers: one whose DNA she carried, one who provided the enucleated egg cell, and one who carried her as a surrogate. She was named after Dolly Parton because the cell used to clone her came from a mammary gland. Dolly lived for six years, developed arthritis and lung disease, and was euthanized in 2003. Her preserved remains are on display at the National Museum of Scotland.
2012 — The Shard was inaugurated in London as the tallest building in Europe at 1,017 feet. Designed by Renzo Piano, the 95-story glass skyscraper contains offices, restaurants, a hotel, apartments, and a public viewing gallery. Its irregular tapered form was inspired by the railway lines and church spires of London visible from the site.
Billboard Number One on July 5
1952: Delicado — Percy Faith (July 5–11)
1986: There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry) — Billy Ocean (July 5–11)
2008: I Kissed a Girl — Katy Perry (July 5–August 22) — seven weeks at number one and one of the most-discussed singles of the year, for reasons that were complicated at the time and have remained complicated since
Born on July 5
P.T. Barnum (1810–1891) — American showman, businessman, and entertainer who established the museum, circus, and touring exhibitions that made him one of the most recognized public figures in 19th-century America. He built the American Museum in New York City, which displayed curiosities, freaks, and hoaxes to paying audiences until it burned down in 1865. He co-founded the circus that became Barnum and Bailey in 1881, billed as “The Greatest Show on Earth.” He coined the phrase — or is credited with it — “There’s a sucker born every minute,” which he probably did not actually say but which suits him so well that the attribution has never been successfully dislodged.
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) — French novelist, poet, playwright, filmmaker, and visual artist who moved effortlessly between forms, collaborating with Picasso, Diaghilev, and Édith Piaf and producing work in so many disciplines that critics struggled to categorize him. His films Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orpheus (1950) are considered masterworks. He was elected to the Académie française in 1955. He died of a heart attack on the same day as Édith Piaf, hours after hearing of her death.
Bill Watterson (born 1958) — American cartoonist and creator of Calvin and Hobbes, which ran from 1985 to 1995 and is widely considered the greatest newspaper comic strip in American history. Watterson declined to license the characters for merchandise — a decision that cost him an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars and that preserved the integrity of the work. He retired at 37, has given almost no interviews since, and has been living quietly in Ohio while bootleg Calvin window decals proliferate on pickup trucks across America.
Marc Cohn (born 1959) — American singer-songwriter best known for Walking in Memphis (1991), which won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist and described a genuine pilgrimage to Graceland and the broader musical landscape of Memphis. In 2005, he survived being shot in the head during a carjacking in Denver. He continued performing.
Edie Falco (born 1963) — American actress whose performances as Carmela Soprano in The Sopranos and Nurse Jackie Peyton in Nurse Jackie each won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series — making her one of the most decorated dramatic actresses in American television history. She has said she does not own a television.
RZA (born 1969) — American rapper, record producer, and actor, born Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, who founded the Wu-Tang Clan in 1992 and produced the group’s debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993), one of the most influential hip-hop albums ever recorded. He negotiated a clause in the group’s record contract allowing each member to release solo albums as well — a structural innovation that transformed how hip-hop groups operated commercially.
July 5 Birthday Quotes
“Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.”
— P.T. Barnum
“The noblest art is that of making others happy.”
— P.T. Barnum
“One must not mistake majority for truth.”
— Jean Cocteau
“The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive.”
— Bill Watterson
“We need to have a taste factor in our life. It isn’t about what’s popular; it’s about what’s really good.”
— Robbie Robertson
Random Trivia for July 5
George Bernard Shaw is the only person in history to have won both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 and the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1938 for Pygmalion. He initially refused the Nobel Prize money, relenting only when his wife pointed out that refusing it would draw more attention than accepting it would.
George Burns’s real name was Nathan Birnbaum. He was born in 1896 and performed continuously until shortly before his death in 1996 at age 100, making him one of the few entertainers whose career spanned the vaudeville era, radio, film, television, and the era of sold-out Las Vegas concerts.
A group of buzzards is called a wake, which is also the word for the gathering held after a human death. This is either a grim linguistic coincidence or a reasonable description of what buzzards are typically doing at a gathering.
An ancient megalake once existed beneath what is now the Sahara Desert, covering more than 42,000 square miles — roughly the size of Ohio. Its existence has been confirmed through satellite imaging and geological surveys. The Sahara has been a desert for approximately 5,000 years, a relatively recent period by geological standards.
Canada has more Costco locations per capita than any country in the world except Iceland, which has exactly one Costco. Iceland’s single Costco is in Reykjavik and is reportedly one of the busiest in the world, which says something about the Icelandic relationship with bulk purchasing.
The pencil was invented around 1565 in Switzerland, following the discovery of a large graphite deposit in England. The mechanical pencil — which advances the lead through a mechanism rather than requiring the pencil to be sharpened — was patented in 1822 by Sampson Mordan and John Isaac Hawkins. It goes by approximately twelve other names depending on the country and context, including propelling pencil, clutch pencil, leadholder, and pacer, none of which have achieved the quiet dominance of “mechanical pencil.”
A “ton” of people, in the literal weight sense, is approximately 12 to 15 of them, depending on average mass. This makes phrases like “a ton of people showed up” either a significant understatement or a reasonable description of a very small party.
