July 6 History, Fun Facts, and Trivia
July 6 Observances
July 6 is National Fried Chicken Day, International Kissing Day, National Air Traffic Control Day, Take Your Webmaster to Lunch Day, Umbrella Cover Day, and Virtually Hug a Virtual Assistant Day — the last of which is either a gesture of appreciation for technology or a sign that the holiday naming committee had a very unusual Thursday.
What Happened on July 6?
July 6 is the day Anne Frank’s family entered the Secret Annex, the day John Lennon met Paul McCartney at a church fete in Liverpool, the day Louis Pasteur first successfully used his rabies vaccine on a human being, the day the AK-47 went into production, and the day of the first Major League Baseball All-Star Game. It is also the shared birthday of Sylvester Stallone and George W. Bush, a coincidence that resists analysis and rewards acceptance.
If you were born on July 6, you were likely conceived the week of October 13 of the prior year.
July 6 History Highlights
1189 — Richard I, “the Lionheart,” acceded to the English throne following the death of his father, Henry II. He would spend approximately ten months of his ten-year reign in England, preferring the Crusades and French warfare to the administrative tedium of governing a kingdom. He is remembered as one of England’s great warrior-kings, partly because he spent so little time in England that he had very few domestic failures to account for.
1348 — Pope Clement VI issued a papal bull declaring that Jews were not responsible for the Black Death and ordering that they be protected from the violence and persecution that had been spreading across Europe alongside the plague. The bull was largely ignored in the communities where it was most needed.
1415 — Jan Hus, the Czech theologian and early church reformer who had argued for a Bible accessible to ordinary people and against the corruption of the Catholic Church, was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Constance and burned at the stake. His execution inspired the Hussite movement in Bohemia and is considered a precursor to the Protestant Reformation a century later. Martin Luther later acknowledged Hus as a significant influence.
1483 — Richard III was crowned King of England. He died in battle in 1485, was buried in Leicester, and his grave was lost for the following 528 years. His remains were discovered in 2012 under a car park in Leicester during an archaeological dig and identified through DNA analysis and skeletal evidence. He was reinterred with full royal ceremony in 2015. He is, by most measures, the most successful hide-and-seek player in British royal history.
1535 — Sir Thomas More was executed on Tower Hill for treason against King Henry VIII, having refused to acknowledge Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England or to endorse the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. More was subsequently canonized as a Catholic saint. His last reported words on the scaffold were that he died “the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”
1854 — The first formal convention of the United States Republican Party was held in Jackson, Michigan, drawing together anti-slavery Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The party nominated candidates for statewide office and adopted a platform opposing the extension of slavery. The Republican Party elected its first president six years later.
1885 — Louis Pasteur administered his experimental rabies vaccine for the first time to a human patient — nine-year-old Joseph Meister of Alsace, who had been bitten fourteen times by a rabid dog two days earlier and whose wounds were considered likely to be fatal. Pasteur, a chemist rather than a physician, was uncertain of the ethical and legal implications and proceeded only after consulting with doctors who confirmed the boy would otherwise die. Meister survived. Pasteur’s vaccine became the model for subsequent viral vaccine development.
1919 — The British airship R34 landed on Long Island, New York, completing the first east-to-west transatlantic crossing by an airship — and the first transatlantic airship crossing in either direction. The journey from East Fortune, Scotland, took approximately 108 hours. The R34 then turned around and flew back, completing the first round-trip transatlantic air crossing four days later.
1933 — The first Major League Baseball All-Star Game was played at Comiskey Park in Chicago, with the American League defeating the National League 4-2. Babe Ruth hit the first home run in All-Star Game history, a two-run shot in the third inning. The game had been proposed by sportswriter Arch Ward as a one-time event to coincide with the Chicago World’s Fair. It has been played annually since.
1942 — Anne Frank, her parents Otto and Edith, and her sister Margot entered the Secret Annex — a set of hidden rooms above Otto Frank’s office building at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam — where they would live in concealment for the next two years. Anne Frank had received an autograph book for her 13th birthday on June 12, three weeks earlier, and had begun using it as a diary. She wrote in it until August 1, 1944, three days before the family was discovered and arrested. She died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in early 1945.
1944 — The Hartford Circus Fire killed approximately 168 people and injured more than 700 when fire broke out during a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey performance in Hartford, Connecticut. The canvas tent had been waterproofed with a mixture of gasoline and paraffin wax, making it highly flammable. The fire spread across the tent in minutes. The tragedy prompted sweeping changes in fire safety regulations for public assembly facilities across the United States.
1947 — The AK-47 assault rifle went into production in the Soviet Union, having been designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov following his experience as a wounded tank commander in World War II. The rifle’s combination of reliability, simplicity, and low production cost made it the most widely produced firearm in history — an estimated 100 million have been manufactured. It has been used in more armed conflicts than any other weapon system in the post-war era.
1957 — John Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time at the Woolton Parish Church fete in Liverpool, where Lennon’s skiffle group, the Quarrymen, was performing. McCartney, 15, watched the set, then demonstrated he knew all the words to “Twenty Flight Rock” by Eddie Cochran. Lennon, 16, recognized that McCartney was more musically talented than most of his bandmates and invited him to join the group. The meeting was attended by approximately 250 people, most of whom had no idea why they were there. The Beatles formed three years later.
1985 — The Hartford Whalers’ doctor reported that in the summer of 1985, a hockey player briefly appeared to be growing a third eye. This did not happen. What did happen: Sussudio by Phil Collins was number one.
Billboard Number One on July 6
1963: Easier Said Than Done — The Essex (July 6–19)
1974: Rock the Boat — The Hues Corporation (July 6–12) — one of the songs credited with launching the disco era
1985: Sussudio — Phil Collins (July 6–12) — a song whose title is a nonsense syllable that Phil Collins sang as a placeholder, intending to replace it with real words, then decided he liked it too much to change
Born on July 6
John Paul Jones (1747–1792) — Scottish-born American naval commander who is considered the father of the United States Navy. During the American Revolution, commanding the Bonhomme Richard in a battle against the British warship Serapis, he was asked if he had struck his colors (surrendered) and replied, “I have not yet begun to fight.” He was losing the battle at the time. He eventually won it.
Marc Chagall (1887–1985) — Belarusian-French painter whose dreamlike, color-saturated canvases drew on Jewish folklore, Russian village life, and the Paris art scene to produce a visual language unlike any of his contemporaries. He designed stained glass windows for cathedrals and the United Nations building, illustrated the Bible, and painted ceiling murals for the Paris Opéra. He lived to 97 and was working until near the end.
Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) — Mexican painter whose deeply personal, symbolically rich self-portraits addressed physical pain, identity, and gender with an intensity and honesty that was largely unrecognized during her lifetime. A near-fatal bus accident at 18 left her with permanent injuries that she documented in her painting. She became one of the most recognized artists of the 20th century posthumously, and her face now appears on the 500-peso note — which she would probably have found both gratifying and somewhat ironic.
Bill Haley (1925–1981) — American musician and bandleader whose recording of Rock Around the Clock in 1954 — placed over the opening credits of Blackboard Jungle the following year — introduced rock and roll to mainstream American and international audiences with a commercial force that nothing had previously achieved. He and his Comets were among the first rock and roll acts to tour internationally.
Merv Griffin (1925–2007) — American entertainer, talk show host, and media entrepreneur who created Wheel of Fortune in 1975 and Jeopardy! in 1964 — two game shows that have generated an estimated $2 billion in revenue and are still in production. He reportedly earned more money from those two formats combined than from any other aspect of his entertainment career.
Nancy Reagan (1921–2016) — American actress and the 40th First Lady of the United States as the wife of President Ronald Reagan. Her “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign became the defining public initiative of her tenure as First Lady, with mixed effectiveness but enormous brand recognition. Her devotion to her husband was widely acknowledged as one of the more complete partnerships in the history of the American presidency.
Sylvester Stallone (born 1946) — American actor, director, and screenwriter who wrote and starred in Rocky (1976), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and launched one of the most durable franchises in American cinema. He also created the Rambo franchise. He has been a bankable action star for nearly five decades, which is either a tribute to his persistence or evidence that audiences never tire of watching a determined man overcome apparently insurmountable obstacles — possibly both.
George W. Bush (born 1946) — 43rd President of the United States, who shares his birthday with Sylvester Stallone. He served two terms from 2001 to 2009, presiding over the September 11 attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has spent his post-presidential years painting portraits of veterans and world leaders, an activity that has generated more bipartisan goodwill than most of his presidency did.
Geoffrey Rush (born 1951) — Australian actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Shine (1996) and received three additional Oscar nominations, for Shakespeare in Love, Quills, and The King’s Speech. He is also Captain Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, a casting decision that demonstrates the range a single career can encompass.
50 Cent (born 1975) — American rapper and entrepreneur born Curtis James Jackson III, who survived being shot nine times in 2000 and subsequently released Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2003), which sold 12 million copies worldwide. He later made an estimated $100 million from an early investment in Vitaminwater, establishing a business career that has outlasted many of his musical contemporaries.
Kevin Hart (born 1979) — American comedian and actor whose stand-up specials and film career have made him one of the highest-grossing entertainers in the world. He is 5 feet 2 inches tall, mentions this frequently, and has made it one of the more effective recurring elements in a comedy career built on self-awareness.
July 6 Birthday Quotes
“I have not yet begun to fight!”
— John Paul Jones
“If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.”
— Marc Chagall
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.”
— Frida Kahlo
“My mother was a personal friend of God’s. They had ongoing conversations.”
— Della Reese
“Life is too short to worry about what others say about you. Have fun and give them something to talk about.”
— Kevin Hart
Random Trivia for July 6
France, Britain, and Ireland are home to 15 of the 20 oldest known buildings in the world. The oldest, Barnenez in Brittany, France, dates to approximately 4800 BC — more than 2,000 years older than the oldest pyramid in Egypt. The pyramids receive considerably more tourism.
The Monopoly mascot’s name is Milburn Pennybags. He has appeared on the game’s box and board since 1936 and is often incorrectly called “Rich Uncle Pennybags” or simply “the Monopoly man.” He does not wear a monocle, a detail that the internet has been collectively misremembering for decades in what psychologists have used as a textbook example of the Mandela effect.
A group of parrots is called a pandemonium, which is accurate to anyone who has spent time near a group of parrots and also a reasonable description of a Zoom call with the camera on.
In 1665, the residents of Eyam, a village in Derbyshire, England, discovered that plague had arrived in a delivery of cloth from London. Rather than flee and spread the disease, the village voluntarily quarantined itself for 14 months. Approximately 260 of the village’s 800 residents died. The surrounding communities were largely spared. The story of Eyam is studied in public health education as one of the earliest documented examples of voluntary community quarantine.
MythBusters once discovered a combination of common household materials that produced an unexpectedly powerful explosive. They deleted the footage, declined to broadcast the episode, and contacted DARPA to report the risk. It is one of the few MythBusters experiments whose results have been deliberately kept from the public, which has not stopped people from speculating about them.
The average American woman today weighs approximately the same as the average American man did in the 1960s — a shift that reflects changes in diet, activity levels, and the availability of processed foods over six decades, rather than any change in what constitutes a healthy weight.