July 2 History, Fun Facts, and Trivia
July 2 Observances
July 2 is World UFO Day, International Joke Day, Made in the USA Day, National Financial Freedom Day, Freedom From Fear of Speaking Day, National Television Heritage Day, World Sports Journalists Day, Zip Code Day, and I Forgot Day — which exists so that people who forgot about I Forgot Day have a holiday to celebrate anyway.
What Happened on July 2?
July 2 is the day Amelia Earhart disappeared, the day the first Walmart opened, the day the Civil Rights Act was signed, and the day in 1776 when the Continental Congress actually voted for independence — two days before the date Americans celebrate. It is also World UFO Day, which commemorates the approximate date of the Roswell incident in 1947, which was either a weather balloon, a classified military project, or something else entirely, depending on whom you ask and how long they have been talking.
If you were born on July 2, you were likely conceived the week of October 9 of the prior year.
July 2 History Highlights
1698 — Thomas Savery patented the first practical steam engine in England, a device intended to pump water from mines. It was inefficient, occasionally explosive, and the foundation of the Industrial Revolution.
1776 — The Continental Congress voted to adopt a resolution severing ties with Great Britain — the actual vote for independence. The formal wording of the Declaration of Independence was finalized and approved two days later, on July 4, which is why John Adams confidently predicted in a letter to his wife that July 2 would be celebrated as America’s great holiday. He was wrong about the date and right about everything else.
1788 — New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the United States Constitution, providing the three-fourths majority required to bring it into force. The Constitution did not take operational effect until April 30, 1789, when George Washington was inaugurated, but July 2, 1788, was the day the threshold was crossed.
1839 — Fifty-three enslaved Africans, led by Sengbe Pieh (known in American accounts as Joseph Cinqué), took control of the Spanish slave ship Amistad off the coast of Cuba, killing the captain and cook and ordering the surviving crew to sail them back to Africa. The crew sailed east during the day and north at night; the ship was eventually seized by the US Navy off Long Island. The subsequent legal case — argued before the Supreme Court by John Quincy Adams — became one of the defining abolition cases in American legal history.
1890 — The US Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, the first federal legislation designed to limit monopolistic business practices. It was largely unenforced for the first decade of its existence and then became the legal foundation of Theodore Roosevelt’s trust-busting campaigns.
1897 — Guglielmo Marconi received his patent for radio in London, formalizing his claim to an invention that several other scientists were simultaneously developing. The patent fight that followed was one of the more sustained in technology history.
1900 — The first Zeppelin airship made its maiden flight over Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin had been working on the design for years; the flight lasted 17 minutes and reached an altitude of approximately 1,300 feet. The era of lighter-than-air travel had arrived, 39 years before it came to its more famous end.
1937 — Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were last heard from over the central Pacific Ocean, transmitting a position report at approximately 8:43 a.m. They were attempting to locate Howland Island during the longest and most difficult leg of their equatorial around-the-world flight. Neither they nor the aircraft were ever found. The US Navy search was the most extensive in aviation history to that point. What happened to them has been the subject of investigation, theory, and argument ever since.
1937 — The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery has been guarded continuously, every minute of every day, since midnight on July 2, 1937. The sentinels — members of the 3rd US Infantry Regiment — have maintained the watch through every storm, every hurricane threat, and every event that has canceled every other outdoor ceremony in Washington.
1962 — Sam Walton opened the first Walmart Discount City store in Rogers, Arkansas. He had been operating Ben Franklin five-and-dime franchise stores for years; the Walmart concept — deep discount retail in small-town markets — was initially rejected by Ben Franklin’s corporate office as unworkable. The first store had sales of $700,000 in its first year. The company now employs approximately 2.3 million people.
1964 — President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment and public accommodations. The bill passed with significant bipartisan support in both chambers; its primary opposition came from Southern Democrats. Johnson reportedly told an aide after signing it, “We have lost the South for a generation.” He was optimistic about the timeline.
1982 — The week of July 2, 1982, has a reasonable claim to being the greatest week in American cinema history. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Rocky III, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Conan the Barbarian were all playing in theaters simultaneously. You could have seen all seven for $17.50 at 1982 ticket prices.
2002 — Steve Fossett landed in Queensland, Australia, completing the first solo nonstop balloon circumnavigation of the globe. He had departed from Northam, Western Australia, on June 19 and traveled approximately 19,400 miles in just under 15 days. It was his sixth attempt at the record.
2005 — Live 8, a series of benefit concerts organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure ahead of the G8 Summit, was held simultaneously in ten cities worldwide, with more than 1,000 musicians performing before an audience of approximately 3 billion viewers across 182 television networks and 2,000 radio stations. It was the largest broadcast event in history to that point.
World UFO Day and the Roswell Incident
World UFO Day is observed on July 2 to mark the approximate date in 1947 when William Brazel discovered unusual debris on a ranch approximately 30 miles north of Roswell, New Mexico. Brazel described finding rubber strips, strong paper, sticks, and foil. He reported it to the local sheriff, who contacted Roswell Army Air Field. Major Jesse Marcel was sent to investigate.
On July 8, 1947, the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating they had recovered a “flying disc.” The following day, the story was revised: it was a weather balloon. A report sent to the FBI — later obtained through the Freedom of Information Act — described a hexagonal disc connected to a cable, approximately 20 feet in diameter, with metal components that appeared to be radar reflectors. That description is somewhat more substantial than five pounds of foil held together with flower-printed scotch tape, which was the official accounting of the recovered material.
Brazel was held for questioning. A second crash site was reported. The area was restricted by the military. The press was not permitted to examine the evidence. Major Marcel later told associates the debris was “nothing made on this earth.” The accounts of alien bodies did not emerge publicly until the 1980s, by which point 30 years of elapsed time had done its usual work on the reliability of memory.
The most probable explanation remains Project Mogul — a classified program using high-altitude balloons to acoustically monitor Soviet nuclear tests — whose balloon train crashed in the New Mexico desert at approximately the right time and location. The program’s classification would explain both the initial military interest and the subsequent cover story. It does not explain every detail of every eyewitness account, but classified government programs rarely do.
Billboard Number One on July 2
1977: Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky) — Bill Conti (July 2–8) — the piece of music most responsible for the existence of training montages in American cinema
1988: Dirty Diana — Michael Jackson (July 2–8)
2005: Inside Your Heaven — Carrie Underwood (July 2–September 16) — her debut single following her American Idol win, which spent eleven weeks at number one
2022: Jimmy Cooks — Drake featuring 21 Savage (July 2–8)
Born on July 2
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) — German-Swiss novelist and poet whose works Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and The Glass Bead Game explored the tension between individual spiritual development and the demands of society. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. His books were enormously popular among college students in the 1960s and 1970s, which he would probably have found both gratifying and slightly suspicious.
René Lacoste (1904–1996) — French tennis player nicknamed “The Crocodile” who won seven Grand Slam titles in the 1920s and subsequently designed a soft, breathable cotton tennis shirt as an alternative to the stiff dress shirts players wore at the time. He put a small crocodile emblem on it. The shirt became the polo shirt. The crocodile became one of the most recognized fashion logos in history.
Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) — American lawyer who argued and won Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court in 1954 as chief counsel for the NAACP, dismantling the legal foundation of segregated public schools. He was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Johnson in 1967, becoming its first Black Justice, and served until 1991. He is one of perhaps five people in American history who can be said to have personally changed the country’s legal architecture.
Dave Thomas (1932–2002) — American entrepreneur who founded Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers in Columbus, Ohio, on November 15, 1969, naming it after his daughter, Melinda, whose nickname was Wendy. He appeared in more than 800 Wendy’s commercials between 1989 and 2002. He was adopted and later became a prominent advocate for adoption awareness.
Richard Petty (born 1937) — American NASCAR driver known as “The King,” winner of 200 NASCAR Cup Series races — nearly twice as many as any other driver in history — and seven Daytona 500 titles. He wore a cowboy hat and sunglasses at every public appearance for decades, a personal branding decision so consistent it became inseparable from the sport.
Larry David (born 1947) — American comedian, actor, writer, and producer who co-created Seinfeld with Jerry Seinfeld and created, wrote, and starred in Curb Your Enthusiasm. His public persona — a man constitutionally incapable of letting social offenses pass without comment — has been described as both a comedy character and an accurate self-portrait, depending on who is describing it.
José Canseco (born 1964) — Cuban-American baseball player who won the American League MVP Award in 1988, hit 462 career home runs, and wrote Juiced (2005), in which he named fellow players who had used performance-enhancing drugs. Most of his named players subsequently tested positive or admitted to use. His credibility as a witness was complicated by his credibility as a person, but his factual claims proved largely accurate.
Margot Robbie (born 1990) — Australian actress whose performances in The Wolf of Wall Street, I, Tonya, and Barbie have made her one of the most commercially successful and critically recognized actors of her generation. Barbie (2023) grossed over $1.4 billion worldwide, the highest-grossing film ever directed by a woman.
Also born on July 2, in the fictional universe of Joss Whedon’s Firefly: Kaylee Frye, ship’s mechanic of the Serenity, born July 2, 2497. The only person on the crew who genuinely likes people, and the only one the ship actually listens to.
July 2 Birthday Quotes
“Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.”
— Hermann Hesse
“The good Lord doesn’t tell you what His plan is, so all you can do is get up in the morning and see what happens next.”
— Richard Petty
“Sometimes you have to wander a bit, and do what you don’t want to, in order to figure out what it is you’re supposed to do.”
— Larry David
“What’s the secret to success? It’s no secret. You need a winning attitude, honesty and integrity, and a burning desire to succeed.”
— Dave Thomas
“Everyone’s like, ‘overnight sensation.’ It’s not overnight. It’s years of hard work.”
— Margot Robbie
Random Trivia for July 2
PUMA and Adidas were both founded by brothers from the same small town in Bavaria, Germany. Adolf “Adi” Dassler founded Adidas; his brother Rudolf founded Puma. The two companies have been headquartered in Herzogenaurach — population approximately 25,000 — facing each other across the Aurach River since the late 1940s, when the brothers had a falling-out severe enough to divide not just the family business but the entire town into two factions.
The word “dude” is spoken 160 times in The Big Lebowski. The Dude himself accounts for the majority of them. The film runs approximately 117 minutes, meaning “dude” appears on average once every 44 seconds.
James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, is known as the Father of the Constitution, having been its principal author and the primary advocate for its ratification through the Federalist Papers, co-written with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. He stood approximately 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed around 100 pounds, making him the smallest president in American history by both measurements.
Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the United States to earn a medical degree in 1849, graduating from Geneva Medical College in New York. She had been admitted after the all-male student body voted on whether to allow her to enroll, apparently treating it as a joke. She was not joking.
The constitutions of seven US states — Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas — contain provisions barring atheists from holding public office. All seven provisions have been unenforceable since the Supreme Court ruled such requirements unconstitutional in Torcaso v. Watkins in 1961, but none of the states have removed the language.
The large letter on the face of an American dollar bill identifies which Federal Reserve Bank printed it. “B” is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. There are twelve Federal Reserve Banks, identified by letters A through L.
Texas is approximately 10 percent larger than France and roughly twice the size of Germany — a comparison Texans are aware of and find satisfying.
You know every number between one and one billion, in the sense that you could recognize and understand any of them if shown it, even though you have never specifically encountered most of them. This is either a remarkable feature of human numerical cognition or a reasonable definition of knowing something.