July 10 History, Fun Facts, and Trivia

July 10 Observances

July 10 is Nikola Tesla Day, National Kitten Day, National Pina Colada Day, Don’t Step on a Bee Day, Pick Blueberries Day, and Teddy Bear Picnic Day. The combination of Kitten Day, Pina Colada Day, and Teddy Bear Picnic Day in a single calendar slot suggests someone was having a very good afternoon when they planned July 10. Nikola Tesla Day is the serious one. The rest are negotiable.

What Happened on July 10?

July 10 is the day Wyoming became a state, the day the world’s first communications satellite launched, the day Death Valley set the all-time U.S. temperature record, and the birthday of Nikola Tesla, the man who gave the world alternating current and died nearly penniless in a New York hotel room. It is a day that rewards curiosity and punishes people who only remember the famous parts of history.

If you were born on July 10, you were likely conceived the week of October 17 of the prior year.

July 10 History Highlights

1553 — Lady Jane Grey began her reign as Queen of England, one of the shortest in British history. She was placed on the throne by powerful nobles hoping to prevent the Catholic Mary I from taking power. Jane was 15 or 16 years old, reportedly did not want the crown, and held it for nine days before being deposed. She was executed the following year. History has generally been sympathetic.

1890 — Wyoming was admitted to the Union as the 44th state. It had already granted women the right to vote in 1869, making it the first U.S. territory to do so, and it kept that right as a condition of statehood. Wyoming remains the least populous state in the nation. It has more pronghorn antelope than people.

1892 — The first concrete-paved street in the United States was built on Court Avenue around the Logan County Courthouse in Bellefontaine, Ohio. It still exists. You can visit it. Whether you should is a personal decision.

1913 — Death Valley, California, recorded a temperature of 134 degrees Fahrenheit (57 degrees Celsius), the highest reliably recorded air temperature in United States history and one of the highest ever recorded anywhere on Earth. The reading was taken at Furnace Creek. The name was not chosen randomly.

1921 — In Belfast, Northern Ireland, 16 people were killed and 161 houses destroyed during rioting and gun battles in what became known as Bloody Sunday. This event is distinct from the more widely referenced Bloody Sunday of January 30, 1972, in Derry, in which British paratroopers killed 14 unarmed civil rights marchers.

1925 — The Scopes “Monkey Trial” began in Dayton, Tennessee, with high school science teacher John T. Scopes accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act. The trial featured William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense and became a national media spectacle. Scopes was convicted and fined $100. The Butler Act was not repealed until 1967.

1938 — Howard Hughes completed a record-setting 91-hour solo flight around the world, landing at Floyd Bennett Field in New York to a ticker-tape parade. His route covered approximately 14,800 miles. The record stood until 1986, when Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew around the world nonstop without refueling in 9 days.

1962 — Telstar 1, the world’s first active communications satellite, was launched into orbit. Within hours it relayed the first live transatlantic television pictures. A surf-rock instrumental called “Telstar” by the British group The Tornadoes, written to celebrate the launch, reached No. 1 on both the U.S. and U.K. charts, making it the first song by a British group to top the American charts, two years before the Beatles.

1962 — The same year, the patent for the modern three-point seatbelt (Patent No. 3,043,625) was issued to Nils Bohlin, a Volvo engineer. Volvo famously made the patent freely available to all automakers, reasoning that saving lives was more important than competitive advantage. The three-point belt is estimated to save approximately one life per hour worldwide.

1966 — Ultraman debuted on Japanese television, launching one of the longest-running tokusatsu franchises in history. The series has never been off the air for more than a few years since 1966 and has spawned dozens of spin-off series, films, and one of Japan’s most recognized characters globally.

1978 — World News Tonight premiered on ABC, eventually becoming one of the most-watched evening news broadcasts in American television history under anchor Peter Jennings.

1991 — Boris Yeltsin was inaugurated as the first elected President of Russia. He had won the election in June 1991 with 57% of the vote. The Soviet Union dissolved six months later. Yeltsin served until resigning on December 31, 1999, handing power to a relatively unknown former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin.

Nikola Tesla: The Man Who Lit the World

Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856, in Smiljan, in what is now Croatia. He studied mathematics and physics at the Technical University of Graz and philosophy at the University of Prague. In 1882, while walking in a park, he visualized the concept for a brushless AC motor, sketching the rotating magnetic field design in the dirt with a stick. It is one of the great eureka moments in engineering history.

Tesla arrived in New York in 1884 and went to work for Thomas Edison. He spent a year impressing Edison with his persistence and ingenuity. Edison reportedly offered him $50,000 to improve his DC dynamo designs. Tesla delivered. Edison then told him the offer had been a joke and that he did not understand American humor. Tesla quit shortly after.

Following a brief period during which he actually did dig ditches for two dollars a day, Tesla partnered with George Westinghouse, who licensed his AC motor patents and gave him his own laboratory. The resulting “War of the Currents” between AC and DC became one of the most consequential technical and commercial battles in history. Edison, attempting to discredit AC power, staged a series of public electrocutions of animals, including the 1903 electrocution of an elephant named Topsy at Coney Island. Topsy is still more famous than most of Edison’s publicists.

Tesla and Westinghouse lit the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and later installed AC generators at Niagara Falls, establishing the first large-scale modern power station. Tesla also conducted early experiments with X-rays, demonstrated radio communication two years before Marconi received credit for it, and guided a remote-controlled boat around a pool in Madison Square Garden in 1898 before most people knew radio existed.

He held over 300 patents. He died alone in Room 3327 of the Hotel New Yorker on January 7, 1943, with almost no money. The FBI seized his papers immediately after his death. Most were eventually returned and are now held in Belgrade. His name is on an electric car company, a unit of magnetic flux density, and an airport in Serbia.

Trivia: Tesla claimed to have once received signals from outer space through his magnifying transmitter at his Colorado Springs laboratory in 1899. He believed they were coming from Mars. Scientists later theorized he may have picked up radio emissions from Jupiter. Either way, he was decades ahead of anyone else even asking the question.

Billboard Number One on July 10

1961: “Tossin’ and Turnin'” — Bobby Lewis (No. 1: July 10 through August 27, 1961). Seven weeks at the top, making it one of the longest-running No. 1 hits of the early rock era. Bobby Lewis never had another top-40 hit. Sometimes one is enough.
1965: “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” — The Rolling Stones (No. 1: July 10 through August 6, 1965). The guitar riff Keith Richards wrote in his sleep, literally: he woke up, recorded it on a cassette, and went back to sleep. The rest of the tape was him snoring.
1976: “Afternoon Delight” — Starland Vocal Band (No. 1: July 10-23, 1976). Won the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1977. The award is widely cited as evidence that the Grammy voters were not paying close attention that year.
1993: “Weak” — SWV (No. 1: July 10-23, 1993).
2004: “I Believe” — Fantasia (No. 1: July 10-23, 2004). The first American Idol winner’s debut single, released the same night she won the competition. It set a record at the time for first-week sales of a debut single.

Trivia: “Telstar” by The Tornadoes (1962), inspired by the satellite launched July 10 of that year, was the first No. 1 hit in America by a British group, two full years before the Beatles arrived. Nobody talks about this nearly enough.

Born on July 10

Adolphus Busch (1839) — German-born brewer who co-founded Anheuser-Busch with his father-in-law Eberhard Anheuser in St. Louis. He introduced pasteurization to American brewing and developed Budweiser in 1876. He built one of the largest brewing operations in the world and died in 1913, still a German citizen, having never applied for American citizenship.
Nikola Tesla (1856) — Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, and the man who made the modern electrical grid possible. See the full profile above.
Marcel Proust (1871) — French novelist whose seven-volume work In Search of Lost Time is considered one of the greatest novels ever written and, at approximately 1.5 million words, one of the longest. He wrote much of it from a cork-lined bedroom while suffering from asthma. The madeleine-dipped-in-tea scene is the most famous involuntary memory in literature.
Mildred Benson (1905) — American journalist and author who, writing under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, wrote the first 11 Nancy Drew mystery novels. She was a licensed pilot, held a master’s degree at a time when that was unusual for women, and continued writing a weekly newspaper column until the week she died at age 96. The publisher kept her identity secret for decades.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver (1921) — American activist and sister of President John F. Kennedy who founded the Special Olympics in 1968, beginning with a sports camp in her own backyard in 1962. The organization now serves over 5 million athletes in 172 countries. She is arguably the Kennedy family member who changed the most lives.
Jake LaMotta (1922-2017) — American boxer known as the Raging Bull, middleweight champion from 1949 to 1951. His life was depicted in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 film of the same name, with Robert De Niro winning an Academy Award for the role. LaMotta was the first fighter to defeat Sugar Ray Robinson, who had won 40 consecutive bouts before facing him.
Fred Gwynne (1926-1993) — American actor best known as Herman Munster on The Munsters (1964-1966). He was also a Harvard graduate, a serious novelist, and a children’s book author. The man in the Frankenstein makeup contained surprising depths.
Arthur Ashe (1943-1993) — American tennis player and the first Black man to win Wimbledon (1975), the U.S. Open (1968), and the Australian Open (1970). After contracting HIV through a blood transfusion during heart surgery, he became a prominent AIDS activist. Arthur Ashe Stadium at the U.S. Open is named for him.
Arlo Guthrie (1947) — American folk singer and son of Woody Guthrie. His 18-minute talking blues song “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” (1967) became a Thanksgiving radio tradition and was made into a film in 1969. He still performs it.
Neil Tennant (1954) — English singer and co-founder of Pet Shop Boys, one of the best-selling music acts in history with over 100 million records sold. He was working as a journalist for Smash Hits magazine when he met Chris Lowe and formed the duo. He interviewed people like Sting while quietly building one of the defining synth-pop catalogs of the 1980s.
Bela Fleck (1958) — American banjo player who has won Grammy Awards in more categories than any other musician in history, including jazz, country, pop, bluegrass, classical, and spoken word. He set out to prove the banjo was not a limited instrument. The Grammy committee agreed.
Mavis Staples (1939) — American singer and civil rights activist, lead vocalist of the Staple Singers. “I’ll Take You There” (1972) reached No. 1. She has collaborated with everyone from Bob Dylan to Wilco and continues performing into her 80s. Bob Dylan reportedly proposed to her twice. She declined both times.
Sofia Vergara (1972) — Colombian-American actress best known as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on Modern Family (2009-2020), which earned her four Golden Globe nominations. She was the highest-paid actress on American television for seven consecutive years during the show’s run.
Jessica Simpson (1980) — American singer, actress, and entrepreneur. Her fashion and lifestyle brand, the Jessica Simpson Collection, generated over $1 billion in annual retail sales by 2014, making her one of the most successful celebrity entrepreneurs in the industry.
Adam Petty (1980-2000) — American NASCAR driver and grandson of racing legend Richard Petty. He was part of the first four-generation racing family in NASCAR history. He died in a practice crash at New Hampshire Motor Speedway at age 19.

Birthday Quotes from July 10 Birthdays

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.”
— Nikola Tesla

“Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.”
— Nikola Tesla

“Do the best you can, and then to hell with it!”
— Eunice Kennedy Shriver

“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”
— David Brinkley

“Washington, D.C. is a city filled with people who believe they are important.”
— David Brinkley

“I have a lot of friends who get up most mornings and go to jobs they absolutely hate. I don’t think that’s what life is about, and I’m so fortunate that I actually love what I do.”
— Jerry Herman

“I was so good at boxing because I worked hard. I worked harder than anybody. When other boxers used to box in the gym three or four rounds, I used to box 10 to 20 rounds.”
— Jake LaMotta

Random Trivia and Shower Thoughts for July 10

I’m looking at my ceiling. Not saying it’s the greatest ceiling in the world. But it’s up there.
Sitting Bull’s given Lakota name was Tatanka Iyotanka, meaning “buffalo bull who sits down.” The English translation captured roughly half of it.
A character can spot a loved one in a crowd of 20,000 people instantly. #moviecliches
We can’t find happiness. But we can make it.
The original “Most Interesting Man in the World” in the Dos Equis campaign was actor Jonathan Goldsmith, cast in 2006. He was replaced in 2016 by Augustin Legrand. The internet did not take it well.
Many animals probably need glasses and nobody knows it.
To correctly applaud a solo male performer, say “Bravo!” For a woman, “Brava!” For a group, “Bravi!” Opera audiences know this. Everyone else just claps.
The “ZIP” in ZIP Code stands for Zone Improvement Plan. It was introduced by the U.S. Postal Service in 1963. Prior to that, people just… hoped for the best.
A group of trout is called a hover. Nobody who fishes uses this word.
The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy are on a collision course and will merge in approximately 4.5 billion years. The resulting galaxy will need a new name. Suggestions are open.
“You guys on MySpace, or…?” — Francis the Driver, Superbad (2007)
What does this button do? #famouslastwords
Nikola Tesla once told a reporter that he expected to live to 150. He died at 86, broke, in a hotel room. He was still probably the most interesting person in the building.