July 8 History, Fun Facts, and Trivia

July 8 Observances

July 8 gives you four solid reasons to do absolutely nothing productive: Be a Kid Again Day, Math 2.0 Day, National Milk Chocolate with Almonds Day, and SCUD Day — aka Savor the Comic, Unplug the Drama Day. SCUD Day and Be a Kid Again Day on the same date is either brilliant scheduling or a conspiracy. Either way, compliance is strongly encouraged.

Be a Kid Again Day

Be a Kid Again Day is an opportunity to let your guard down and be silly. As adults, we spend so much energy managing how others perceive us that simple joy gets crowded out. Today’s prescription: go outside, make a ridiculous face at a mirror, eat a Freezer Pop, and stop pretending adulthood is as important as it feels. Your childhood was probably more magical than you give yourself credit for — why not revisit it for one day?

What Happened on July 8?

July 8 is the day the Liberty Bell rang out over Philadelphia, the day the Wall Street Journal hit newsstands for the first time, the day a “flying saucer” made front-page news in New Mexico, and the day America’s most iconic space program flew its final mission. It is also, technically, the birthday of both Dr. Watson and Phil Coulson — which says something about how seriously this date takes itself.

If you were born on July 8, you were likely conceived the week of October 15 of the prior year.

July 8 History Highlights

1775 — Representatives from the American colonies sent the Olive Branch Petition to King George III, making one last attempt to avoid a complete break with England. The King refused to read it and declared the colonies in open rebellion. So that went well.

1776 — The Liberty Bell rang at the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, calling citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. The bell’s famous crack remains a mystery — most historians believe it occurred sometime in the 19th century, possibly while being rung to honor George Washington’s birthday in 1846. Nobody wrote it down at the time, which is very on-brand for the 1800s.

1800 — Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse administered the first smallpox vaccination in the United States — to his own son, Daniel — using cowpox serum. It worked. This laid the groundwork for vaccination programs that would eventually eradicate smallpox entirely by 1980.

1865 — Fictional birthday of Dr. John H. Watson, loyal companion to Sherlock Holmes, as established by Sherlockian scholars. Holmes himself gets June 1854. Neither of them ever confirmed it.

1889 — The first issue of The Wall Street Journal was published. Founded by Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser, it cost two cents. A digital subscription today runs about $35/month. That’s not inflation — that’s a business model. The WSJ has been published without interruption ever since.

1932 — The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit its lowest point of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22. For context, the DJIA today hovers around 40,000. The 1932 bottom represents an 89% drop from the 1929 peak — the worst sustained market collapse in American history.

1947 — Newspapers began reporting that a “flying disc” had crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. The Army Air Force quickly reversed course, calling it a weather balloon. The world has been debating that explanation ever since. See the full section below.

1948 — The United States Air Force accepted its first female recruits into the Women in the Air Force (WAF) program, making official what women had been doing in support roles throughout World War II.

1964 — Fictional birthday of Phil Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel Cinematic Universe. Agent Coulson was originally a character created specifically for the MCU films before being retroactively worked into the comics — a rare case of the movies influencing the source material rather than the other way around.

1994 — Kim Jong-il assumed supreme leadership of North Korea following the death of his father, Kim Il-sung. He ruled until his own death in 2011, when his son Kim Jong-un took over. It remains one of the world’s only hereditary communist states — a dynasty that has outlasted every prediction of its collapse.

1996 — The Spice Girls released their debut single, “Wannabe,” launching one of the best-selling girl groups in music history. The song hit No. 1 in 37 countries. What they really, really wanted — it turned out — was world domination. They got it.

2011 — Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on STS-135, the final mission of NASA’s 30-year Space Shuttle program — the program’s 135th flight. When Atlantis touched down on July 21, 2011, America had no vehicle capable of sending astronauts to orbit. That gap lasted until SpaceX’s Crew Dragon flew in 2020.

The Roswell Incident: The UFO Story That Won’t Land

On July 7–8, 1947, something crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. The Roswell Army Air Field public information officer initially told the press it was a “flying disc.” Within hours, the Army reversed course — just a weather balloon, nothing to see here.

The world didn’t buy it. The Roswell incident became the cornerstone of American UFO mythology. A 1994 government investigation identified the debris as part of Project Mogul, a classified program using high-altitude balloons to monitor Soviet nuclear tests. Most researchers accept this. Many do not.

The story resurfaced dramatically in 2023–2024 when Congressional UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) hearings featured former intelligence officials testifying under oath about programs they claimed had recovered “non-human intelligence.” The conversation, nearly eight decades later, is still very much open.

Trivia: The term “flying saucer” entered the popular vocabulary just two weeks before Roswell, coined after pilot Kenneth Arnold described seeing nine fast-moving objects near Mount Rainier on June 24, 1947. The media already had the perfect headline waiting.

Billboard Number One on July 8

What was playing on the radio around July 8 through the decades:

1972: “Lean on Me” — Bill Withers (No. 1: July 8–28, 1972). One of the most covered songs in history, written in one sitting after Withers thought about the small mining town in West Virginia where he grew up.
1989: “Good Thing” — Fine Young Cannibals (No. 1: July 8–14, 1989). Roland Gift’s falsetto was inescapable that summer.
1995: “Waterfalls” — TLC (No. 1: July 8–August 25, 1995). Seven weeks at the top. One of the defining songs of the decade.
2006: “Promiscuous” — Nelly Furtado featuring Timbaland (No. 1: July 8–August 18, 2006). Marked Timbaland’s emergence as the defining producer of mid-2000s pop.

Trivia: “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers has been covered more than 350 times by artists ranging from Aretha Franklin to Club Nouveau, whose 1987 R&B version also reached No. 1 — making it one of very few songs to top the charts in two completely different versions by different artists.

Born on July 8

Jean de La Fontaine (1621) — French poet and author, best known for his Fables, a collection of 240 verse tales drawn from Aesop and other sources. They remain among the most quoted works in French.
John Pemberton (1831) — American chemist and pharmacist who invented Coca-Cola in 1886, originally marketing it as a patent medicine. He sold the rights before he could fully grasp what he’d created. He died in 1888, never knowing Coke would become the most recognized brand on Earth.
Eli Lilly (1838) — American soldier and chemist who founded Eli Lilly and Company in 1876. The company is now one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturers and the leading producer of insulin.
Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838) — German general and aviation pioneer who developed the rigid airship that bears his name. Zeppelins operated the first commercial transatlantic passenger flights — until the Hindenburg disaster ended the era in 34 seconds of newsreel footage.
John D. Rockefeller (1839) — Founder of Standard Oil and the wealthiest private individual in American history by most estimates. At his peak, Rockefeller controlled roughly 90% of U.S. oil refining. He lived to 97, gave away over half his fortune, and essentially invented the modern philanthropic foundation. His inflation-adjusted net worth is estimated at $340–$400 billion, which makes current billionaires look like they’re still working on it.
Hugo Boss (1885) — German fashion designer who founded the company bearing his name. The brand’s early history is complicated — Boss supplied uniforms to the Nazi regime during WWII, a chapter the company formally acknowledged and apologized for in 2011.
Louis Jordan (1908) — American singer, saxophonist, and bandleader who pioneered the jump blues style that directly bridged swing and rock and roll. His quote says it all: “With my little band, I did everything they did with a big band. I made the blues jump.”
Nelson Rockefeller (1908) — 41st Vice President of the United States (1974–1977) under Gerald Ford, and four-term Governor of New York. John D.’s grandson. The Rockefeller Center in Manhattan is named for the family.
Billy Eckstine (1914) — American jazz singer and trumpet player who led one of the most influential bebop big bands of the 1940s, which at various points included Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Sarah Vaughan. Essentially a one-man jazz talent incubator.
Marty Feldman (1934) — British comedian and writer best known for his role as Igor in Young Frankenstein (1974). His distinctive wide-set eyes — the result of thyroid disease and a botched surgery — became his visual trademark. He was, by all accounts, just as funny offscreen.
Steve Lawrence (1935) — American singer and entertainer, longtime partner (on and off stage) of Eydie Gormé. A fixture on television variety shows from the 1950s through the 1990s.
Jeffrey Tambor (1944) — American actor known for The Larry Sanders Show, Arrested Development, and Transparent, earning Emmy and Golden Globe recognition for each.
Raffi (1948) — Egyptian-Canadian children’s musician and activist whose song “Baby Beluga” (1980) has been lodged in the brains of multiple generations of parents. He is also a serious advocate for child-centered media and screen-time awareness. The man contains multitudes.
Wolfgang Puck (1949) — Austrian-American chef who essentially invented the modern celebrity chef. His restaurant Spago opened in Los Angeles in 1982. He has catered the official Academy Awards Governors Ball every year since 1994.
Anjelica Huston (1951) — Academy Award-winning actress (Prizzi’s Honor, 1985) and daughter of director John Huston. Her filmography spans from The Addams Family to The Royal Tenenbaums — a range very few actors can match.
Toby Keith (1961–2022) — American country singer and songwriter behind some of the genre’s biggest patriotic anthems, including “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.” He passed away in February 2022 after a battle with stomach cancer.
Beck (1970) — American musician and producer known for genre-blending work across folk, hip-hop, funk, and psychedelia. Odelay (1996) and Sea Change (2002) are considered landmark albums. Born Beck Hansen in Los Angeles.
Milo Ventimiglia (1977) — American actor best known as Jack Pearson on This Is Us (2016–2022) and as Peter Petrelli on Heroes. Has made a career out of playing characters the audience is not ready to lose.
Jaden Smith (1998) — Actor, rapper, and son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. Debuted alongside his father in The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) at age seven. Also the source of some of the most philosophically ambitious tweets in social media history.

Birthday Quotes from July 8 Birthdays

“With my little band, I did everything they did with a big band. I made the blues jump.”
— Louis Jordan

“I like it when you read a script and there’s the part that you show to the other characters and then there’s the part that only the audience knows.”
— Anjelica Huston

“A man should make all he can, and give all he can.”
— Nelson Rockefeller

“I won’t eat anything that has intelligent life, but I’d gladly eat a network executive or a politician.”
— Marty Feldman

“They want you to believe the Sun is hot. I urge you to ask yourself: have they ever touched it? Think about it.”
— Jaden Smith

“Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems.”
— Nelson Rockefeller

Random Trivia and Shower Thoughts for July 8

There’s very little difference between perspective and opinion.
John Denver’s real name: Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. “Rocky Mountain High” is considerably easier to put on a marquee.
Shakespeare’s wife’s name was Anne Hathaway. Not our Anne Hathaway.
The coach in Air Bud would have looked really stupid if putting the dog in the game hadn’t worked.
The world premiere of Blazing Saddles took place at the Pickwick Drive-In theater in Burbank, CA, where 200 guests watched the film on horseback.
It is illegal to possess a U.S. $100,000 bill — a Gold Certificate — due to Executive Order 6102. The bills exist; you just can’t own one.
The monster that attacked Luke in the trash compactor in Star Wars was called a dianoga. It has a name. It was never properly thanked for not finishing the job.
The person who invented the tire reinvented the wheel.
Natural disasters only occur where they can cause the most damage and casualties. #moviecliches
Rudolph Valentino’s real name: Rodolfo d’Antonguolla. The studio made the right call.
“Never purchase beauty products in a hardware store.” — Miss Piggy
“If you’re bored, you’re boring.” — Barbara “Cutie” Cooper
“There are many ways to roll with the punches. Still, it’s probably best to avoid people who punch you.” — Alex Bosworth
A group of wild horses is called a herd. A group of domesticated horses is also called a herd. Horses did not negotiate great naming rights.
The Wall Street Journal launched July 8, 1889, at two cents a copy. John D. Rockefeller was born the same date 50 years earlier. He could have bought every copy ever printed and not noticed the expense.