183 Fun Facts About Summer

Which three whole calendar months make up meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere?

June, July and August make up meteorological summer because whole months keep the records tidy; astronomical summer, from the solstice to the equinox, starts about three weeks later.

In Australia and New Zealand, on what date does summer officially begin?

Australians spend Christmas Day at the beach for the same reason: their summer runs 1 December to the end of February.

The Northern Hemisphere summer solstice, the longest day of the year, usually falls on which two June dates?

The 20th or 21st catches it almost every year, because the calendar and the tropical year do not match exactly; the solstice can land on the 22nd only very rarely.

In the Julian calendar of the Roman Empire, on what date did the summer solstice fall?

The Romans reckoned the summer solstice on 24 June (Pliny gives VIII Kal. Iul.), which is why European Midsummer and St John's Day festivals cluster on 23-24 June rather than on the astronomical solstice.

The 'dog days' of summer are named after the heliacal rising of which star?

Sirius, the Dog Star in Canis Major, rises with the Sun in late July; the Romans blamed it for the heat and lethargy of the season and called the period dies caniculares.

On the June solstice, the noon Sun stands directly overhead along which line of latitude?

The Tropic of Cancer, at about 23.4 degrees north, is the northernmost latitude where the Sun is directly overhead at noon, which happens once a year on the June solstice.

Earth reaches aphelion, its farthest point from the Sun, in which month?

Aphelion falls in early July, about two weeks after the June solstice, when Earth is roughly 152 million km from the Sun against 147 million km at perihelion in January.

The midnight sun, when the Sun never sets in summer, can be seen north of which line of latitude?

The Arctic Circle, at about 66.5 degrees north, is the edge: in Svalbard, Norway, the Sun does not set from roughly 19 April to 23 August.

The Perseid meteor shower, which peaks every August, is debris from which comet?

Comet Swift–Tuttle, which orbits the Sun about every 133 years, sheds the debris stream Earth crosses each August; the Perseids are also called the 'tears of Saint Lawrence' after the feast on 10 August.

What is the statistical peak date of the Atlantic hurricane season?

NOAA's climatology puts the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season on 10 September; the season officially runs 1 June to 30 November, and early September brings the warmest water and the most storms.

The highest air temperature ever recorded, 134 °F, was measured in 1913 at Furnace Creek in which place?

Death Valley, California, recorded 134 °F (56.7 °C) at Furnace Creek on 10 July 1913, the highest air temperature accepted by the WMO; the same valley holds Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level.

Which researcher developed the heat index in 1979?

Steadman's tables assume you are in the shade; in direct sun the perceived temperature can be up to 15 °F higher.

Which year is the 'Year Without a Summer', when snow fell in New England in June after a volcanic eruption?

1816 was the Year Without a Summer: ash from Tambora's eruption chilled the globe, and the wet, gloomy weather kept Mary Shelley indoors at Lake Geneva, where she began writing Frankenstein.

Which country, with Austria-Hungary, first adopted daylight saving time nationally in 1916?

The idea had been floated decades earlier by New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, who wanted more evening light to collect insects.

In the Finnish Midsummer celebration Juhannus, what is traditionally burned at lakesides and by the sea?

Bonfires (kokko) are lit on Juhannus Eve beside lakes and the sea across Finland; the holiday took its name from John the Baptist (Johannes Kastaja) when the older pagan midsummer feast was Christianised.

Which date did John Adams predict would be 'the most memorable epoch in the history of America'?

Congress voted for independence on 2 July 1776 but adopted the Declaration's text on the 4th, and the 4th is the date that stuck.

Which two Founding Fathers both died on 4 July 1826, the Declaration's 50th anniversary?

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on 4 July 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration; James Monroe would also die on a 4 July, five years later.

The Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest is held in which New York neighbourhood?

The contest is held every 4 July outside Nathan's original stand at Coney Island, Brooklyn, where Joey Chestnut ate a record 76 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes in 2021.

Bastille Day, France's national day on 14 July, marks the storming of the Paris prison in which year?

The Bastille fell on 14 July 1789 holding just seven prisoners; the Champs-Élysées parade is the oldest and largest regular military parade in Europe.

Obon, the Japanese summer festival honouring ancestors' spirits, is most commonly held around which August date?

Small lanterns are floated down rivers to light the spirits' way back to the world of the dead.

La Tomatina, the tomato-throwing festival held in Buñol each August, takes place in which country?

Spain's Buñol, near Valencia, now trucks in more than 100 tonnes of tomatoes; the fight began by accident in 1945 when young people at a parade started pelting each other.

Which author's writing helped make Pamplona's running of the bulls famous worldwide?

Ernest Hemingway described the encierro in The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Death in the Afternoon; each morning run covers about 875 metres and averages around two and a half minutes.

At which Bay Area location did Burning Man begin in 1986?

Larry Harvey and Jerry James burned a wooden effigy on San Francisco's Baker Beach at the 1986 summer solstice; since 1990 the event has been held in Black Rock City, about 100 miles north of Reno.

The very first Labor Day celebration, in 1882, was held in which US city?

The Central Labor Union staged the first Labor Day parade in New York City on 5 September 1882; it became a federal holiday in 1894 and marks the unofficial end of the American summer.

In which city's 1904 World's Fair did the ice cream cone go mainstream, per legend, when a vendor ran out of paper cups?

Syrian concessionaire Ernest Hamwi rolled a waffle cookie into a cup, though New Yorker Italo Marchiony had patented a cone mould a year earlier.

In which city did 11-year-old Frank Epperson accidentally invent the Popsicle in 1905?

By the Popsicle company's own account, Frank Epperson left a cup of soda powder and water with a stirring stick outside overnight in Oakland, California; he called the frozen treat the Epsicle and patented it in 1924.

Roughly what percentage of a watermelon is water?

Watermelon is about 91% water by weight in USDA nutrient tables; botanically the fruit is a pepo, a kind of modified berry, in the same family as cucumbers and pumpkins.

A 2021 genome study traced the domesticated watermelon's closest wild relative to which country?

The Kordofan melon of Sudan, sequenced in a 2021 PNAS study, is the closest wild relative of domesticated watermelon; watermelon seeds and paintings appear in Egyptian tombs more than 4,000 years old.

Which city chartered a lemonade sellers' guild in 1676, its vendors carrying tanks on their backs?

Paris granted the Compagnie de Limonadiers its charter in 1676, with vendors dispensing lemonade from tanks strapped to their backs; an earlier lemon-drink recipe appears in a 12th-century Egyptian treatise, On Lemon, Its Drinking and Use.

In the United States, 10 August is designated as the national day of which campfire treat?

National S'mores Day falls on 10 August; the name is a contraction of 'some more', and the earliest known recipe appeared in the 1927 Girl Scouts handbook Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts.

Which company bought the rights to the flying disc in 1957 and later branded it the Frisbee?

Wham-O bought Fred Morrison's Pluto Platter in 1957 and renamed it the Frisbee the next year, after the Frisbie Pie Company whose empty tins Yale students had been tossing around campus.

Which upholsterer invented the Slip 'N Slide after watching his son slide on wet painted concrete?

Robert Carrier, a California upholsterer, built the first Slip 'N Slide from Naugahyde upholstery vinyl in 1961 and sold it to Wham-O, which switched to cheaper plastic.

In which New York borough did Willis Carrier install the first modern air conditioning in 1902?

Carrier's 1902 system cooled and dehumidified the Sackett-Wilhelms printing plant in Brooklyn so its inks would register properly; the phrase 'air conditioning' was coined in 1906 by textile engineer Stuart Cramer.

Sunscreen's SPF number measures how much of which kind of sunburn-causing radiation reaches your skin?

UV is the target: SPF 30 lets through only about one-thirtieth of the burning ultraviolet, and 'broad spectrum' on the label means the lotion also blocks the deeper-penetrating rays that age skin.

For sea turtles, what decides whether a hatchling is male or female?

Warmer sand produces females and cooler sand males, which is why warming beaches worry conservationists.

On which predictable cycles do North America's periodical Magicicada cicadas emerge?

Periodical cicada broods emerge every 13 or 17 years; both are prime numbers, which biologists think helps the broods avoid syncing up with predators' population cycles.

Dolbear's law, from the 1897 article 'The Cricket as a Thermometer', links air temperature to what?

Later researchers assumed Dolbear was listening to the snowy tree cricket, though he never named the species.

Which 1975 Spielberg film set on Amity Island is regarded as the prototypical summer blockbuster?

Jaws (1975) opened on more than 400 screens with heavy TV advertising, setting the summer-blockbuster template; its malfunctioning mechanical sharks were nicknamed Bruce, after Spielberg's lawyer Bruce Ramer.

In Grease, Danny and Sandy fall in love at the beach during the summer of which year?

The film's opening beach romance is the summer of 1958, before the 1958-59 school year at Rydell High; Danny and Sandy recount it in 'Summer Nights', with the T-Birds and Pink Ladies demanding very different details.

Who directed Independence Day, the alien-invasion film that topped the 1996 box office?

Roland Emmerich directed and co-wrote it with Dean Devlin; it opened in US cinemas on 3 July 1996, timed so the White House explosion landed on the holiday weekend, and grossed over $800 million worldwide.

George Gershwin's 'Summertime', one of the most recorded songs ever, was written for which 1935 opera?

Gershwin wrote 'Summertime' as the opening lullaby of Porgy and Bess, his 1935 'folk opera' set in Charleston's Catfish Row, with lyrics by DuBose Heyward; thousands of cover versions have followed.

DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince's 'Summertime' samples 'Summer Madness' by which band?

Kool & the Gang's 1974 instrumental 'Summer Madness' supplies the laid-back groove; the track won the 1992 Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group and reached number four on the Hot 100.

'Cruel Summer' hit No. 1 in 2023, four years after appearing on which Taylor Swift album?

'Cruel Summer' appeared on Lover in August 2019 and, after the Eras Tour made it a fan favourite, was finally sent to radio and topped the Hot 100 in October 2023.

The 1967 Summer of Love drew up to 100,000 young people to Haight-Ashbury in which city?

Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco became the hippie capital in 1967; the Monterey Pop Festival that June, about 100 miles down the coast, is often called the Summer of Love's opening act.

The Woodstock festival of August 1969 was held on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in which New York town?

Jimi Hendrix closed the festival at 8:30 on the Monday morning, playing to a fraction of the 460,000 who had come.

The Beach Boys formed in 1961 in which California city?

The Wilson brothers, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine formed the band in Hawthorne, an inland Los Angeles suburb, in 1961; their first single, 'Surfin'', came out on the local Candix label that December.

Which tennis major, played in late June and early July, is contested on grass?

Wimbledon has been played since 1877 and keeps the grass, the all-white dress code and the strawberries and cream; the US and Australian Opens both abandoned grass decades ago.

In the Tour de France, raced mostly through July, what colour jersey marks the rider leading the overall race?

Yellow was chosen in 1919 to match the paper of L'Auto, the newspaper that ran the race; green goes to the sprinters' points leader and polka dots to the best climber.

The first modern Summer Olympics, held in Athens in 1896, attracted roughly how many competitors?

About 245 athletes competed (the IOC now counts 241), all men, from 14 nations; Greece alone supplied roughly 170 of them, and most events were held in the rebuilt Panathenaic Stadium.

Which city was awarded the 2032 Summer Olympics by the IOC in 2021?

Brisbane was confirmed at the IOC session in Tokyo on 21 July 2021 under the new targeted-dialogue process; Los Angeles hosts 2028 first, and like Sydney 2000 and Rio 2016 the Games will fall in the host's cooler season.

The Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics were the first Games in history to be what?

Postponed is the word: the 1916, 1940 and 1944 Games were cancelled outright for the world wars and never rescheduled, so Tokyo's one-year delay was a first.

How do historians describe the claim that US summer vacation exists so children could help with planting and harvesting?

Historians call the farming explanation inaccurate: farm children were needed most at spring planting and autumn harvest, and the long summer break grew out of 19th-century urban schools, summer heat and reformers' push for a standard calendar.

What actually causes summer to be warmer than winter?

Earth's axis is tilted toward the Sun by about 23.4 degrees in summer, so sunlight hits more directly and days run longer; distance from the Sun plays no part.

What is the delay between the solstice and the hottest weeks of summer called?

Seasonal lag happens because oceans and land take weeks to soak up the extra sunshine and release it, so the temperature peak can come up to seven weeks after the longest day.

According to many almanacs, the dog days run from 3 July to which date?

The Old Farmer's Almanac fixes the dog days at 3 July to 11 August, the 40 days bracketing Sirius's rising with the Sun; the Romans blamed the Dog Star for the season's heat and lethargy.

Which First Lady served ice cream at her husband's 1813 inaugural ball, making it fashionable?

Dolley Madison served ice cream at James Madison's second inaugural ball in March 1813, helping make it fashionable; Washington and Jefferson were already fans, and Jefferson left a handwritten vanilla ice cream recipe.

The Weber kettle barbecue was created in 1951 by a Chicago metalworker who cut what in half?

George Stephen worked at a shop that made buoys, and his 'George's Barbecue Kettle' sold so well he eventually bought the company.

The word 'barbecue' comes from a Caribbean Taíno word meaning what?

Taíno barbacoa meant a framework of sticks set on posts, used for sleeping or for cooking meat over a fire; it reached English through Spanish, and the 'barbe à queue' (beard to tail) story is a folk etymology.

France's national day marks the storming of the Bastille and which event held exactly one year later, in 1790?

The 1880 law creating the holiday deliberately embraced both the storming of the Bastille and the Fête de la Fédération of 14 July 1790, when delegates from across France swore loyalty to the nation on the Champ de Mars.

In which country is Midsummer so important that people have proposed making it the national day?

The celebration involves raising a flower-covered pole, dancing around it and eating pickled herring and new potatoes. Rain is traditional too.

Which composer's operas alone are staged at the Bayreuth Festival each summer?

The Bayreuth Festival, founded by Richard Wagner in 1876 in a theatre he designed for his own music dramas, stages only Wagner's operas every July and August.

The 1975 shark thriller that invented the summer blockbuster was filmed mainly on which island?

Amity Island's beaches, ferry and town hall are all real Martha's Vineyard locations; Spielberg chose the island because its sandy shallows let the mechanical shark work close to shore, and the shoot overran to 159 days.

'Summer Nights', the duet from Grease, was a UK number one for Travolta and which co-star?

Olivia Newton-John, as Sandy, and Travolta took 'Summer Nights' to number one in the UK for seven weeks in 1978, after 'You're the One That I Want' had spent nine weeks there.

Which Beach Boy was the only real surfer in the group?

Dennis Wilson, the drummer, was the only member who surfed and suggested the band write about the sport and its Southern California lifestyle; their debut single 'Surfin'' peaked at number 75 early in 1962.

The modern bikini, unveiled in France in July 1946, was named after what?

The US had tested an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll four days earlier.

The sunscreen brand Piz Buin is named after what?

Chemist Franz Greiter developed his 'Gletscher Crème' after a bad burn on an Alpine climb, and later introduced the SPF rating system in 1974.

Which type of ultraviolet light does most of the work in giving you a sunburn?

UVB, the shorter-wavelength band, causes most sunburn; UVA penetrates deeper and mainly ages skin. The Sun's rays are strongest between about 10 am and 4 pm, and clouds only partly block them.

Which mosquitoes bite people?

Only the females bite, because they need a blood meal to develop eggs; males live on nectar, and the females find you by the carbon dioxide you breathe out.

The word 'mosquito' comes from Spanish and means what?

'Mosquito' is Spanish for 'little fly': mosca (fly) plus the diminutive -ito. There are around 3,600 species, and roughly 700 million people catch a mosquito-borne illness every year.

Much of the white sand on tropical beaches was produced by which animal?

They chew coral and excrete the ground-up rock. A single humphead parrotfish can put out about 90 kilograms of sand a year.

Frederick Gunn founded the first organised American summer camp in 1861 in which state?

Gunn, headmaster of the Gunnery school in Washington, Connecticut, marched his pupils to Milford on Long Island Sound for two weeks of hiking and camping in 1861, the model for later summer camps.

In which country do pupils get a summer break of about three months?

German and Japanese pupils get about six weeks. The long US break actually grew out of wealthy families fleeing hot cities and reformers who thought too much summer study was unhealthy.

The oldest continuous Fourth of July celebration in the US, held since 1785, takes place in which state?

Bristol, Rhode Island, has marked the Fourth every year since 1785, when Rev. Henry Wight held the first 'Patriotic Exercises'; the town's main street has a red, white and blue centre line painted year-round.

Which rockabilly star originally recorded 'Summertime Blues' (1958), later covered by The Who and Blue Cheer?

Cochran sang both the lead and the deep 'boss' voice himself; Brian Setzer later played him in La Bamba and cut his own version.

Which British band's 1970 debut single 'In the Summertime' spent seven weeks at number one in the UK?

Mungo Jerry's debut single spent seven weeks at number one in the summer of 1970; frontman Ray Dorset wrote it in about ten minutes while working at a Timex lab.

Which Heartbreaker composed the music for Don Henley's 'The Boys of Summer'?

Mike Campbell wrote the track on a LinnDrum demo; Petty passed because it didn't fit Southern Accents, so producer Jimmy Iovine suggested playing it for Henley, who wrote the lyrics and took it to number five.

Bananarama's 'Cruel Summer' became a US top-ten hit after appearing in which 1984 film?

The 1983 UK hit reached the US top ten only after featuring in The Karate Kid in 1984; the band said it was about the misery of missing their summer holiday for promotional duties.

Which band released 'Hot Fun in the Summertime' in 1969, the summer of their Woodstock set?

Sly and the Family Stone's single stalled at number 2 behind the Temptations' 'I Can't Get Next to You' and is unusual for the group in featuring strings.

'Summer Breeze', a 1972 soft-rock hit later covered by the Isley Brothers, was recorded by which duo?

Jim Seals and Dash Crofts, both former members of the Champs, took 'Summer Breeze' to number six in the US in 1972; the Isley Brothers' 1974 cover made the UK top twenty.

'Surfin' U.S.A.' borrows its melody so closely from which Chuck Berry song that Berry shares the writing credit?

Brian Wilson set new surf lyrics to Berry's 1958 'Sweet Little Sixteen', and Berry's publisher later won him the credit; Billboard ranked it the number one song of 1963, with the surf-spot list coming from his girlfriend's brother.

Bryan Adams' 'Summer of '69' was released as a single in 1985 from which album?

Reckless (1984) yielded six US top-twenty singles including 'Summer of '69'; Adams was only nine in 1969, and he and co-writer Jim Vallance drew on the era's culture and their own early garage-band days.

Which band, later Eurovision winners, had their first US top-40 hit with 'Walking on Sunshine' in 1985?

Katrina and the Waves reached number nine in the US with it in 1985 and won Eurovision twelve years later with 'Love Shine a Light'; writer Kimberley Rew called it 'just a piece of simple fun'.

Which Katy Perry track was the first winner of Billboard's Songs of the Summer chart in 2010?

'California Gurls', with a Snoop Dogg guest verse, spent six weeks at number one in summer 2010 and topped Billboard's first Songs of the Summer ranking; the chart was later back-filled to 1985.

The Ramones' 1977 single 'Rockaway Beach' celebrates a beach in which New York borough?

Rockaway Beach lies on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens; Dee Dee Ramone wrote the surf-style tribute, which became the Ramones' highest-charting US single at number 66.

Who wrote 'Summer Nights', Danny and Sandy's duet, for the original stage musical Grease?

Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey wrote the whole score for Grease, which opened in a Chicago trolley barn in 1971 before Broadway; the 1978 film soundtrack made 'Summer Nights' a worldwide hit.

Stonehenge is aligned toward what on the summer solstice?

The sunrise on the summer solstice lines up with the monument's axis; seen from the centre, the sun comes up over the Heel Stone, and the opposite alignment marks the winter solstice sunset.

Pamplona's running of the bulls is the centrepiece of which festival?

The festival of San Fermín runs 6-14 July in Pamplona, Navarre, opening with the chupinazo rocket fired from the town hall balcony at noon on the 6th; the bulls run each morning at eight.

Which sprite fetches the 'love-in-idleness' flower in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Puck, also called Robin Goodfellow, fetches the flower for Oberon; its juice makes Titania fall for Bottom, who has been given an ass's head.

Vivaldi's Four Seasons concertos were published in 1725 in which city?

Michel-Charles Le Cène of Amsterdam published them in 1725 as the first four of Vivaldi's Op. 8, each with a sonnet describing its season; 'Summer' is in G minor.

Whose 2013 remix of Lana Del Rey's 'Summertime Sadness' won a Grammy?

Cedric Gervais's club remix won Best Remixed Recording at the 2014 Grammys and took the song to number 6 on the Hot 100, Del Rey's first US top ten.

How many weeks did Alice Cooper's 'School's Out' spend at number one in the UK in 1972?

'School's Out' spent three weeks at number one in the UK in August 1972, Alice Cooper's only British chart-topper, while peaking at number seven in the US.

Which sound effects were added to the Lovin' Spoonful's 'Summer in the City'?

The instrumental break mixes in car horns and a pneumatic drill to evoke a sweltering city; it was the band's only US number one, in August 1966.

Dirty Dancing's Kellerman's resort is set in which mountain region?

Kellerman's is a Catskills resort in the summer of 1963, modelled on the Borscht Belt hotels; filming actually took place at Mountain Lake Lodge in Virginia and Lake Lure, North Carolina.

Which Dirty Dancing song, the one behind the famous lift, won the Oscar for Best Original Song?

'(I've Had) The Time of My Life' was sung by Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers and Jennifer Warnes, and it also took the Golden Globe and a Grammy.

In The Sandlot, whose autograph is on the ball Smalls loses to 'the Beast'?

Smalls borrows his stepfather's ball signed by Babe Ruth, not knowing who Ruth was, and hits it over the fence to the Beast; the film is set in the summer of 1962.

Which actor made his film debut in Wet Hot American Summer (2001)?

Bradley Cooper played counsellor Ben in the 2001 Camp Firewood spoof, set on the last day of camp in 1981, a year after finishing his Actors Studio training.

What is the name of the oversized car the Griswolds drive in National Lampoon's Vacation?

The Wagon Queen Family Truckster, a customised Ford LTD Country Squire in 'metallic pea', was built for the film; John Hughes based the story on his 'Vacation '58' piece for National Lampoon.

Who directed (500) Days of Summer in his feature debut?

Marc Webb, previously a music-video director, made (500) Days of Summer (2009) his first feature and went on to direct the two Amazing Spider-Man films.

Which two towns wage the 'Sundae War' over inventing the ice cream sundae?

Two Rivers claims 1881; Ithaca has an 1892 newspaper ad.

A flat tire in Hartsdale, New York, over Memorial Day 1934 led Tom Carvel to what?

He opened his first store on the site of the broken-down truck in 1936.

Which tune do ice cream vans traditionally play in the UK, Ireland and Australia?

Greensleeves is the classic chime in the UK, Ireland and Australia, while US trucks favour 'Turkey in the Straw'; the UK code of practice limits chimes to 80 decibels and twelve seconds.

On which boardwalk did Sam Foster start selling cheap celluloid sunglasses in 1929?

Foster sold them from a Woolworth's on the Atlantic City boardwalk in 1929 under the Foster Grant name, making sunglasses a mass-market fashion item.

Surfing popularizer Duke Kahanamoku won Olympic gold in which event in 1912?

Kahanamoku won the 100-meter freestyle in Stockholm in 1912 and again in Antwerp in 1920, part of five Olympic medals across 1912, 1920 and 1924.

The Little League World Series is held every August in which Pennsylvania town?

South Williamsport, across the river from Williamsport where Little League began in 1939, has hosted the series since 1959; teams from Taiwan won 15 of the 23 series between 1969 and 1991.

Which three stars form the Summer Triangle?

Altair, Deneb and Vega are the brightest stars of Aquila, Cygnus and Lyra; Vega is the triangle's brightest corner, while Altair, about 17 light-years away, is the nearest.

Fireflies are actually what kind of insect?

Their 'cold light' contains no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies.

The sunflower is the state flower of which US state?

Kansas, nicknamed the Sunflower State, adopted the wild native sunflower as its state flower in 1903; a young sunflower's head tracks the Sun from east to west while it is growing.

Male cicadas produce their loud summer call with which body part?

Male cicadas click ribbed membranes called tymbals on the abdomen hundreds of times a second, and a hollow body cavity amplifies the sound past 100 decibels in the loudest species.

What did a ticket to the first Glastonbury festival at Worthy Farm cost in 1970?

Michael Eavis charged £1, with free milk from the farm, and about 1,500 people came to his Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival on 19 September 1970.

How did the Edinburgh Festival Fringe begin in 1947?

It is now the world's largest performing arts festival, held every August.

Roughly how many people attend London's Notting Hill Carnival each August?

Around two million people pack the streets of Notting Hill over the August Bank Holiday weekend, making it Europe's largest street festival; it has run since 1966.

On which two summer dates is the Palio di Siena horse race run?

The Palio is run on 2 July (Provenzano) and 16 August (Assunta); jockeys ride bareback for three laps of the Piazza del Campo for ten of the city's 17 contrade.

Which July event bills itself as 'The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth'?

The Calgary Stampede, a ten-day rodeo and exhibition held each July, was first organised in 1912 by American trick roper Guy Weadick.

In what year did Juneteenth become a US federal holiday?

President Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act on 17 June 2021; the holiday marks 19 June 1865, when Union troops in Galveston announced emancipation in Texas.

The July 1 national holiday of Canadians was known by what name until 1982?

Dominion Day was renamed Canada Day in October 1982; it marks the 1 July 1867 confederation of the Province of Canada (today's Ontario and Quebec), Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Which French culture minister launched the Fête de la Musique on the 1982 solstice?

Jack Lang, François Mitterrand's culture minister, launched the free-concert day on 21 June 1982 on Maurice Fleuret's principle that 'the music will be everywhere and the concert nowhere'; it spread to well over 100 countries.

Which country was the first to issue official next-day UV index forecasts, in 1992?

Environment Canada began issuing next-day UV index forecasts in 1992, the first national service to do so; the WHO and WMO adopted a standardised global scale in 1994.

Sunburn symptoms typically peak how long after exposure?

Redness and pain typically peak 24 to 36 hours after exposure, as the inflammatory response to UV-damaged skin cells builds; symptoms usually begin improving after three to five days.

Beach volleyball became an Olympic sport at which Games?

The modern two-player game originated in Santa Monica, California.

Sweet corn results from a natural mutation affecting the conversion of sugar into what?

A recessive mutation in the su gene stops kernel sugar being converted into starch, so sweet corn stays sugary; the Iroquois passed the first recorded variety to European settlers in 1779.

Roughly how many people attend US summer camps each year?

The American Camp Association puts annual attendance at more than 11 million children and adults, spread across more than 12,000 day and overnight camps.

Which two artists feature on Megan Thee Stallion's 2019 hit 'Hot Girl Summer'?

Nicki Minaj and Ty Dolla Sign feature on the August 2019 single, which samples City Girls' 'Act Up'; the 'hot girl summer' phrase had already gone viral as a meme.

Calvin Harris's 'Summer' (2014) came from which album?

'Summer' was the second single from Motion, released in 2014; it debuted at number one in the UK, his sixth chart-topper there.

Where was baseball's first All-Star Game played, on July 6, 1933?

Comiskey Park hosted it alongside Chicago's Century of Progress exposition; Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward dreamed up the 'Midsummer Classic', and Babe Ruth hit its first home run.

Which US president declared July National Ice Cream Month in 1984?

Ronald Reagan's July 1984 proclamation also set the third Sunday of July as National Ice Cream Day, calling the treat 'a nutritious and wholesome food'.

Richard Hollingshead opened the world's first drive-in theater on June 6, 1933, in which US state?

Hollingshead opened it in Camden, New Jersey, charging 25 cents a car and 25 cents a person; his slogan promised 'the whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are.'

At their peak in 1958, roughly how many drive-in theaters were operating across the United States?

Drive-ins peaked at just over 4,000 in 1958, booming in rural areas because they were cheaper to build and run than indoor cinemas; fewer than 400 survived into the 2010s.

The 'Great Bath' at Mohenjo-Daro, likely the first swimming pool, is in which modern country?

Mohenjo-Daro lies in Sindh province, Pakistan; the Great Bath, dug in the 3rd millennium BC, was lined with fine bricks and sealed with natural tar (bitumen).

San Alfonso del Mar's kilometre-long seawater pool, once the world's largest, is in which country?

The pool at Algarrobo, Chile, stretches just over a kilometre and covers eight hectares, yet is only 3.5 metres at its deepest; a larger lagoon at Sharm El Sheikh took its Guinness title in 2015.

The Spanish word for summer, verano, descends from the Latin word for which season?

Verano descends from Latin veranum tempus, 'springtime', built on ver, the Latin for spring; Spanish later shifted the word to the hotter season, keeping estío as a literary word for summer.

Which company introduced the aviator sunglasses design in 1936 for US military pilots?

Bausch & Lomb developed the teardrop lenses in 1936 to cut glare for Army Air Corps pilots and sold them under the Ray-Ban name from 1937; the style went mainstream after Douglas MacArthur was photographed in a pair in 1944.

A 1995 heat wave caused roughly 739 deaths in five days in which US city?

Chicago's July 1995 heat wave, with heat indices near 120 °F, killed about 739 people, many of them elderly residents living alone; it prompted the city's heat emergency plan and cooling centres.

Which country's Sankt Hans bonfires on 23 June traditionally burn a straw witch?

Denmark's Sankt Hans Aften bonfires are often topped with a straw witch, a custom from around 1900 that symbolically sends her off to the Brocken mountain.

Which Frozen character sings 'In Summer', a daydream of beaches and hot tubs voiced by Josh Gad?

Olaf is a snowman, so every pleasure he pictures, from sunbathing to a steaming hot tub, would only melt him faster.

Which water toy did NASA engineer Lonnie Johnson invent after an experiment shot a powerful stream across his bathroom?

Super Soaker first reached shops in 1990 under the name Power Drencher. Johnson had been testing a new kind of refrigeration system, and his side project went on to sell more than $1 billion.

Which theme park's televised opening in the summer of 1955 went so badly it was nicknamed 'Black Sunday'?

Disneyland planned an invitation-only preview, but 28,000 people turned up, about half of them holding counterfeit tickets or climbing over the fence.

Which novel did Mary Shelley conceive one rainy summer when Lord Byron challenged his guests to write ghost stories?

Frankenstein was not the contest's only legacy: Byron's own abandoned fragment led his doctor, John Polidori, to write The Vampyre, which launched the romantic vampire genre.

Which Beatle wrote 'Here Comes the Sun' at Eric Clapton's country house while skipping an Apple business meeting?

George Harrison said Apple had become 'like school', all signing papers, and that after an English winter that 'goes on forever' the sunshine felt deserved.

Which golfer gave his name to a drink that mixes iced tea with lemonade, his regular clubhouse order?

Arnold Palmer said the name spread in the late 1960s, after a woman at a Palm Springs lunch heard his order and asked for 'that Arnold Palmer drink'. He liked his heavy on the tea, not half and half.

According to a proverb traced back to Aristotle, one of which bird 'does not a summer make'?

Swallow arrivals do signal warm weather in Europe, but Aristotle was making a point about happiness: one fine day, like one bird, does not make a whole life happy.

In which swimming-pool game does a player with closed eyes call a name that the others must answer?

Marco Polo has no known link to the Venetian explorer it is named after. It is essentially blind man's buff moved into the water, a land game that dates back to at least the 16th century.

Neapolitan ice cream, named for the city of Naples, usually sets vanilla and chocolate beside which third flavour?

Strawberry, vanilla and chocolate likely became the standard trio because they were America's favourite flavours when the dessert arrived. Despite its name, it was first recorded in Prussia in 1839.

Which holiday, founded at a Spokane YMCA in 1910, falls on the third Sunday of June in the US?

Father's Day founder Sonora Smart Dodd wanted 5 June, her own father's birthday, but Spokane's pastors needed more time to write their sermons, so it slipped later in the month.

Which rum cocktail, claimed by a San Juan hotel bartender in 1954, is Puerto Rico's official drink?

Piña colada literally means 'strained pineapple', after the freshly pressed juice that goes into it. Puerto Rico gave the drink its official status in 1978.

Copacabana and Ipanema, the beach of the bossa nova 'Girl', are neighbouring districts of which Brazilian city?

Rio de Janeiro fills Copacabana's sand with millions of revellers every New Year's Eve. The city's beaches also gave the world footvolley, a blend of football and volleyball.

Which stinging sea animals, a hazard for summer swimmers, are made up of about 95 percent water?

Jellyfish are only about five percent solid matter, which is why one lifted out of the sea collapses into a shapeless blob.

Which David Hasselhoff beach drama was cancelled after one season before becoming the world's most-watched TV series?

Baywatch was dropped by NBC after ranking 73rd of 103 shows, then survived in syndication to reach a weekly audience of more than 1.1 billion viewers worldwide.

Which Australian city is home to Bondi Beach, where a surf lifesaving club claims to be the world's first?

Sydney bathers staged protests in 1907 against a council plan to make men at Bondi swim in a skirt-like tunic, and the idea was quietly dropped.

Which actress made her film debut in The Parent Trap (1998), playing both twins who meet at summer camp?

Lindsay Lohan's double act needed careful compositing in post-production to put both sisters in one shot. The film remade a 1961 hit based on Erich Kästner's novel Lisa and Lottie.

Which ice cream brand opened its first parlour in 1978 in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont?

Ben & Jerry's founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield learned their trade from a correspondence course run by Penn State's creamery, then opened with a $12,000 investment.

Which July birthstone is a variety of corundum, the same mineral that forms sapphire?

Ruby is simply red corundum. Every other colour of the same gem-quality mineral is sold as sapphire, which is why rubies are sometimes called 'red sapphires'.

Which singer built his 1977 hit 'Margaritaville' into a chain of restaurants, hotels and retirement communities?

Jimmy Buffett's devoted fans call themselves Parrotheads, and the 'island escapism' of his songs became a brand that stretched to casinos and liquor as well.

Which snack is requested alongside peanuts in 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game', sung in the seventh-inning stretch?

Cracker Jack owes its most famous plug to two songwriters who had never attended a baseball game. Jack Norworth took the idea from a sign he saw while riding the subway.

Which poet's sonnet beginning 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day' is addressed to a 'Fair Youth'?

William Shakespeare ends the poem boasting that its lines will keep the young man alive forever, yet it never describes him, only the summer he is said to outshine.

Which guitarist closed Woodstock on a Monday morning with a feedback-drenched version of 'The Star-Spangled Banner'?

Jimi Hendrix faced a crowd shrunk to about 30,000 by the time rain delays let him play, and bent the anthem with feedback and sustain to imitate the sound of rockets and bombs.

Which toy became a late-1950s summer craze in America, selling 25 million in less than four months?

Hula hoop sales passed 100 million within two years. The plastic toy was inspired by hoops that Australian children played with, and its name borrows a Hawaiian dance.

Which author's novella The Body became Stand by Me, a film about four boys over Labor Day weekend 1959?

Stephen King's story kept its name until 1986, when Columbia Pictures feared The Body sounded misleading and borrowed the title of Ben E. King's 1961 song instead.

Which Disney cartoon series about two inventive stepbrothers opens with a song about '104 days of summer vacation'?

Phineas and Ferb build a grand project every day of the holiday while their pet platypus, Perry, works as a secret agent. The theme song earned an Emmy nomination in 2008.

Which sundae is credited to David Strickler, a pharmacy student who first sold it in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1904?

Banana split sundaes cost 10 cents at Strickler's counter, twice the price of the others, and caught on with students from nearby Saint Vincent College.

Which cable network has aired Shark Week every summer since 1988, cable TV's longest-running programming event?

Discovery Channel opened the very first Shark Week with a programme called Caged in Fear. The block was originally meant to promote conservation and correct misconceptions about sharks.

Coleslaw, a staple of summer barbecues, takes its name from a Dutch term meaning what?

Cabbage salad is the literal sense of the Dutch koolsla, which English borrowed in the 18th century. Its first printed English form was already 'cold slaw', a slip repeated ever since.

The word 'solstice' comes from Latin words describing the Sun doing what at midsummer and midwinter?

Stands still is the sense of the Latin sistere, joined to sol, 'sun'. For a few days the Sun's daily path seems to stop shifting north or south before it reverses direction.

Which director's 1989 film Do the Right Thing builds to tragedy on one hot summer's day at a pizzeria?

Spike Lee shot the entire film on a single block of Stuyvesant Avenue, which was renamed Do the Right Thing Way in 2015.

Which Alfred Hitchcock thriller has a photographer in a leg cast spying on his neighbours during a heat wave?

Rear Window was shot entirely on one enormous indoor set of a Greenwich Village courtyard, reaching from the studio's basement storeroom up to its lighting grid.

In National Lampoon's Vacation, the Griswolds drive across the country to which theme park, only to find it closed?

Walley World replaced a real park named in John Hughes's original short story. The names were swapped for sound-alikes to avoid legal trouble, and scenes were filmed at Magic Mountain.

The Great Stink of summer 1858, which drove Parliament to fund vast new sewers, rose from which river?

Thames fumes were so foul that Parliament soaked its riverside curtains in chloride of lime. Joseph Bazalgette's sewers, begun in 1859, also ended the capital's cholera outbreaks.

Live Aid's famine-relief concerts of July 1985 were staged at Wembley Stadium and at JFK Stadium in which US city?

Philadelphia and London shared one performer that day: Phil Collins played Wembley, then flew to America on Concorde to take the stage again.

Which touring summer festival did Perry Farrell launch in 1991 as a farewell for his band Jane's Addiction?

Lollapalooza is an antiquated word that Farrell liked the sound of. He claimed he had heard it in a Three Stooges short, though a search of their films turned up nothing.

Which country's summer dessert halo-halo piles shaved ice with evaporated milk, sweet beans and purple yam?

Philippines halo-halo is often translated as 'mix-mix'. The dish descends from kakigōri, the iced treat that Japanese migrants sold there before the Second World War.

Which Motown group sang 'Summer's here and the time is right' on the 1964 hit 'Dancing in the Street'?

Martha and the Vandellas reached No. 2 with it. The Rolling Stones later twisted the opening line into a call for 'fighting in the street' on 'Street Fighting Man'.

Juneteenth marks the 1865 day when General Gordon Granger arrived to enforce emancipation at which Texas port?

Galveston was where Granger landed to take command of more than 2,000 federal troops. The holiday's name, a blend of 'June' and 'nineteenth', only appeared in the 1890s.

Which summer month of the French Republican calendar gave its name to a rich lobster dish and to Robespierre's fall?

Thermidor comes from the Greek for heat. The lobster recipe is said to honour Victorien Sardou's 1891 play about the month, which the authorities closed as too controversial.

Which brand's chocolate-coated ice cream bars were first sold in 1920 from Youngstown trucks fitted with bobsled bells?

Good Humor founder Harry Burt fitted twelve vending trucks with basic freezers, and took their first set of bells from his son's old bobsled.

Which US president, sworn in by lamplight at his family's Vermont farmhouse, was born on the Fourth of July?

Calvin Coolidge took the oath by kerosene lamp at 2:47 a.m., with his father, a notary public, presiding in the family parlour. The new president then went back to bed.

Which playwright wrote Suddenly Last Summer, filmed in 1959 with Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn?

Tennessee Williams wrote it in 1957 as half of a double bill called Garden District, staged together with his shorter play Something Unspoken.

Which director's Smiles of a Summer Night, about couples swapping partners, inspired the musical A Little Night Music?

Ingmar Bergman's 1955 comedy reached Broadway in 1973 with a Sondheim score, and Woody Allen reworked it again as A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy.

Which comedian's 1963 novelty hit 'Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh' is a homesick letter from the fictional Camp Granada?

Allan Sherman set his camper's complaints to Ponchielli's ballet music Dance of the Hours, and the parody climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Which Himalayan hill town, linked to Kalka by a narrow-gauge mountain railway, was British India's summer capital?

Shimla was declared the hot-season seat of the Raj in 1864. The railway that climbs to it, opened in 1903 with more than 800 bridges, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Which orchestra leader's instrumental 'Theme from A Summer Place' spent nine weeks at number one in 1960?

Percy Faith's recording was the first instrumental and the first film theme to win the Grammy for Record of the Year, and its run at the top stayed unbeaten until 1977.

Which estate in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home since 1937?

Tanglewood takes its name from the writing of Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of Tanglewood Tales and The Scarlet Letter, who rented a small cottage on the estate in 1850.

Which vocal group recorded 'Under the Boardwalk' in 1964, the day after their lead singer Rudy Lewis died?

The Drifters kept their studio booking rather than reschedule, handing the lead to Johnny Moore, the group's other lead vocalist, who had rejoined the year before.

Freedom Summer, the 1964 campaign to register as many Black voters as possible, focused on which Southern state?

Mississippi was the target because it had the lowest share of registered African American voters of any state. Volunteers also set up dozens of Freedom Schools in its small towns.

At Tanabata, the star festival held in Japan each 7 July, wishes written on paper strips are hung from which plant?

Bamboo carries the paper strips, called tanzaku. Girls traditionally wished for better sewing and craftsmanship, and boys for neater handwriting.