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There is so much happening in the natural world during the month of July as animals take advantage of the abundance of food, and everything luxuriates in the long, warm summer days. July is a time of growing maturity within the plant and animal world here in New England. And while some animals are still laying eggs and having babies, many baby animals have already begun to fly, find their own food, and have begun to venture out on their own. Plants are flowering and many insects have matured and starting the cycle of the life again by having babies. Whereas fish, amphibians and reptiles are seemingly “hardwired” and are quickly able to find their own food and fend for themselves, birds and mammals often depend on instruction and guidance from their parents. Dependence, independence and interdependence mean different things for plants, animals and people. Because human beings are somewhat free, what it means to grow and mature means different things in different cultures, communities, families and individuals. But it is safe to say that encountering and living with other forms of life, and learning about how they grow and mature, can provide a thought provoking and rich context for how we, as human beings, can mature, learn and continue to grow throughout our whole lives.  

July 1st

Canada Day

Silly Putty trademarked in 1952

Emily Arnold McCully, illustrator, children’s book author, writer of Mirette on the Highwire, b. 1939

Mary Calderone , physician and first medical director of Planned Parenthood, b. 1904

 

The Walkman, a portable audio cassette player makes its first appearance in stores in Japan

Missy Elliot, rapper, songwriter, producer, b. 1971

Milkweed flowering

July 2nd

Patrice Lumumba, Congo Independence activist, b. 1925

Jean Craighead George, children’s author, naturalist, and write of many books including, My Side of the Mountain and Julie with the Wolves

Sylvia Rivera, feminist, community worker, drag queen, fought tirelessly for gender/queer equality, b.1951

Vermont officially abolished slavery in its constitution in 1777

Africans on the Cuban ship Amistad rose up against their captors and seized control of the ship that was transporting them to slavery, in 1839

 

Alligator falls out of the sky in Charlestown, South Carolina during thunderstorm in 1843

July 3rd

Franz Kafka, writer of the suffering, alienation, and confusions of modern life, b. 1925

 

Dave Barry, humorist and young adult children’s writer, b. In 1947

The USS Vincennes mistakenly shoots down a civilian airplane  from Iran killing all 290 people aboard in 1988

Sac Spider builds a nursery for her  young, dies, and as a corpse provides the first food for her babies

July 4th

United States Independence Day

Booker T. Washington  founds The Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in 1881

Rube Goldberg, inventor , engineer and political cartoonist, famous for the Rube Goldberg machine, which uses a series of moving parts to perform simple tasks. 

Freedom of Information Act in the US is signed into Law providing for the disclosure of government information to the public, in 1966

Alice In Wonderland published for the first time, 1865

 

July 5th

Andrew Ellicott Douglas invented the dendrochronology method that is used for tree ring dating, b. 1867

 

National Labor Relations Act was signed into Law in 1935

Dolly the Sheep first live cloned mammal is “born” in 1966

P.T. Barnum, American businessman founded Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus, in 1810

July 6th 

US backed  militia force King of Hawaii to sign constitution  stripping native people of rights in 1887

Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter and communist, b. 1907

 

14th Dalai Lama, current Tibetan spiritual leader since 1950, b. 1935

July 7th

James Baldwin’s, author of “Talk to Teachers,” The Fire Next Time tops the bestseller list in 1963

 

Nikki Giovanni, African American poet, children’s writer, activist, author of  “I Am Loved” and “Racism 101”, b. 1943

Marc Chagall,  Russian-French, early modernist painter, b. 1877

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones began the “March of the Mill Children to protest child labor and exploitation

Sandra Day O’Connor is the first woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court of the US, 1981

July 8th

National Congress of American Indians wins a court battle to prevent states having jurisdiction over tribes, in 1954

Kathe Kollwitz, German painter, printmaker, sculptor, who used her art to depict the devastating effects of of war, poverty, and hunger on people, b. 1867

 

Hawaii was annexed to the U.S. in 1898

Ernst Bloch, Marxist utopian theorist, philosopher of radical hope, b. 1875

July 9th

Sculpture of King George in Bowling Green NY melted down to make bullets for  the revolution in 1776

Nikola Tesla, Croation electrical engineer who invented the radio, X-rays, vacuum tube amplifiers alternating current, and much more, reshaped the world of electrical engineering, b. 1856

Nancy Farmer, former chemist an insect pathology technician writes futuristic, fantastical adventures like House of the Scorpion for young peoples in 1941

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees “equal protection” under the law, was adopted in 1868

July 10th

Mildred Wirt Benson, journalist and author of many of the earliest Nancy Drew novels, b. in 1901

Nicolas Guillen, leader of the Afro-Cuban poetry movement, b. 1902

Paper Wasps exchange food; adults capture insects, feed them to their larvae that can eat them and then the larvae release a nutrient rich saliva that the adults in turn eat

Greenpeace ship ,the Rainbow Warrior, bombed and sunk by French government operatives, killing photographer Fernando Pereira, 1985

 

July 11th

American Indian Movement (AIM) established in 1968

Patricia Pollaco, renowned children’s author, who blends folk tales, emotional realism, and family stories, b. 1944

E.B. White, children’s author of Stuart  Little, Charlotte’s Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan, b. 1899

July 12th

Henry David Thoreau, naturalist, essayist, poet, philosopher, proponent of civil disobedience, b.  1817

 

Johanna Spyri, author of Heidi, b.1897

Buckminster Fuller, American architect, futurist, invented the geodesic dome, b. 1895

Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet who explored love politics and everyday life, b. 1904

July  13th

 Full Buck Moon

 

Marcia Brown, author and illustrator of beautiful retellings of traditional folktales and fairytales,      b. 1913 

Erno Rubik, Hungarian inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, b. 1944

Indian Pipe plants are flowering, and since they lack chlorophyll they get energy from fungi through their roots

July 14th 

Bastille Day ( France)  celebrates the fall of the despised Bastille State Prison in 1789

Unidentified federal cops force protestors into unmarked vans in Portland Oregon, in 2020

Peggy Parish, author of the Amelia Bedilia books, b. 1927

Gustav Klimt, Austrian symbolist painter, primarily known for his lush, erotic portraits of the female body, b. 1862

Woody Guthrie, folksinger, advocate for the pro and the downtrodden, chronicler of the lives and the land of the peoples of North America, b. 1912

 

Shark Awareness Day

July 15th

2010 BP Oil spill contained after leaking 4.9 million barrels for three months into the Gulf of Mexico and killing 11 people

Aldus  Page Maker, the first desktop publishing program, shipped to consumers in 1985

The Longest Walk, a transcontinental walk for native American justice ended in 1978

The Rosetta Stone, an ancient Egyptian rock inscribed with a decree by King Ptolemy V in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek languages, discovered in 1799

Jacques Derrida, important literary, cultural critic who founded the movement of critical deconstruction, b. 1930

July 16th

First Atomic explosion at , Alamogordo, NM, 1945

J.D. Salinger publishes Catcher in the Rye, in 1951

Amazon sells its first book in 1995

Ida B. Wells, Journalist, writer, African American Civill Rights Activist, b. 1862

World Snake Day

July 17 

Eric Garnier says “I can’t breathe” before he is choked to death during an arrest by police in NYC, 2014

 

Disneyland opens its doors for the first time in 1955

Young skunks are able to defend themselves with their musk filled anal glands but they only have a few teaspoons of spray at this time so they must use it wisely

July 18th 

8,000 low-caste Indians  in Mumbai riot after funeral for 10 children  killed by police in 1997

July 19th 

Victory for the Sandinista led revolution in Nicaragua in 1979  ( arriba los pobres del mundo—raise up the poor of the world)

Nelson Mandela, South African politician, fought to end apartheid, and succeeded, b. 1918

Robert Hooke, English physicist, and the first person to see micrographia by using a microscope

Seneca Falls Convention, one of the first women’s rights conventions to be held in American history  began in 1848

July 20th

Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind and the Willows, b. 1859

Martin Provenson, husband of Alice Provenson, wrote and illustrated over 40 children’s books together, while crafting a unique artistic style that was true combination of their individual talents, b. 1916

 

Frantz Fanon, psychiatrist, cultural theorist, political philosopher, who wrote The Wretched of the Earth, and Black Skin White Masks and who explored the psychopathology of colonization and cultural efforts at decolonization

International Chess Day

Juvenile Bald Eagles are learning to fly

July 21st

Rail workers burn yards, drive troops from city after city cops kill 26 striking workers in Pittsburg, PA, in 1877

The first robot-related fatality in the United States occurred when a factory robot in Jackson, Michigan crushed a 34 year old worker

Elizabeth Key became the first woman of African descent to sue for her freedom and win, in 1656

Marshall McLuhan, Canadian author, theorist, semiotician, who came up with the slogan “the  medium is the message,”  b. 1911

Red Fox kits are growing up

 

July 22

Alexander Calder, sculptor, primarily known for his mobiles, , b. 1898

Monarch Butterfly eggs are hatching into caterpillars

July 23

Start of seven day riot in Detroit, after police raided an illegal after hours drinking club that was the site of a welcome home party for two, returning, African American Vietnam war veterans, that resulted in 43 dead, 467 wounded, and 388 homeless.

International Whaling Commission bans commercial whale hunting after 1986, in 1982 (Iceland, Norway and Japan still actively engage in whaling

First public swimming pool opens in Boston, in 1827

 

Common Loon Chicks are learning to catch prey

July 24

Amelia Earhart, American aviator, was the first woman to pilot across the Atlantic, b. 1898

 

Twelve year old Santos Rodriguez was killed by police when an officer forced the boy and his friend to play Russian Roulette to try and get him to confess to a crime in 1973

July 25

Svetlana  Savitskaya becomes the first woman to walk in space, 1984

Louise Joy Brown was the world’s first test-tube baby, through in-vitro fertilization, to be conceived, in 1968 

Juvenile Green Herons are becoming independent

 

July 26

Americans with Disabilities Act passed into law in 1990

 

Carl Jung, Swiss psychologist, invented “Jungian psychology” (comprised of the ego, the individual unconscious, and the collective unconscious, which is made up of “universal” archetypes), instrumental in the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous, b. 1875

Aldous Huxley, English sci-fi writer, author of Brave New World, b. 1894

James Lovelock, English scientist and futurist known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis that understands the Earth as a kind of super-organism, b. 1919

The country of Liberia was founded primarily by freed enslaved Africans from the United States in 1847

Jean Luc Nancy, political philosopher, who explored the ground of different communities, and in the “Inoperative Community” theorized community as neither a collection of individuals, nor a single thing, but a being-with, b. 1940 

July 27th

Paul Janeczko, writer and anthologist of poems for children and guides to teachers on how to help children read and write poetry, b. 1945

Canadian scientists Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated insulin, and within a year, the first human sufferers of diabetes were receiving insulin treatments 

Gary Gygax, American game designer, who co-invented the “Dungeons and Dragons” roleplaying game, b. 1938

 

Bugs Bunny makes his debut in “A Wild Hare,” in 1940

July 28th

New Moon

Beatrix Potter, children’s author and illustrator, conservationist, naturalist, farmer, who wrote Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin and many other wonderful stories, b. 1866

 

W.E. B. Dubois and the NAACP organized a silent march down 5th Avenue in New York tp the massacres and lynching of African Americans in 1917

Dragonflies mating

July  29th

Kathleen Krull, writes biographies about very interesting people like Jim Henson and Harry Houdini for young people, b. 1952

Jenny Holzer, neo-conceptual artist, primarily interested in the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces, b. 1950

 

July 30th

Marcus Pfister is a Swedish author who writes the immensely popular Rainbow Fish books, b. 1960

The Monopoly board game was copyright registered in 1933 and Charles Darrow was the first millionaire game designer when he sold the patent to Parker Brothers

 

Jean Baudrilliard, French cultural and media theorist, who theorized post modern society as the age of the simulacrum, b. 1929

July 31

J.K. Rowling author of the Harry Potter series of books , b. 1965

Spring Peepers metamorphosing from tadpoles into their “adult” bodies