179 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.

Which three months make up summer in Australia?

December, January and February are Australia's summer because its weather bureau counts the seasons in whole calendar months, so summer begins on 1 December rather than at the solstice.

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.

The Romans' summer solstice date became the feast of which saint, born six months before Jesus?

John the Baptist's feast falls on 24 June, the old Roman solstice date, because Luke's Gospel makes him six months older than Jesus, whose birth the church kept on the Roman winter solstice, 25 December.

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

Sirius, the Dog Star in Canis Major, returned to the dawn sky in the hottest weeks of the Roman year, so the Romans blamed it for the heat and lethargy 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 was named in antiquity, when the Sun stood in the constellation Cancer at the June solstice; Earth's slow wobble has since carried the solstice Sun out of Cancer altogether.

What is the point in Earth's orbit, reached each July, where the planet is farthest from the Sun?

Aphelion comes in early July, about two weeks after the June solstice, when Earth is some 5 million km farther from the Sun than in January, which is why distance cannot explain the seasons.

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, and the effect grows the farther north you go: in Svalbard, Norway, the Sun does not set from late April to late August.

Debris from comet Swift–Tuttle causes which meteor shower, seen every August?

The Perseids are named for the constellation Perseus, the point in the sky they seem to streak from; the comet that sheds them takes 133 years to orbit the Sun, yet Earth crosses its trail every August.

The Atlantic hurricane season lasts half the year and reaches its peak in which month?

September is the peak, around the 10th: by then a whole summer of sun has warmed the tropical ocean, and the wind shear that tears young storms apart has died away.

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

Death Valley, California, only got the record back in 2012, when the World Meteorological Organization threw out a 1922 reading of 136 °F from El Azizia, Libya, as unreliable.

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 first adopted daylight saving time nationally in 1916?

Germany and its ally Austria-Hungary put their clocks forward on 30 April 1916 to save fuel for the war effort; within weeks their enemies, the United Kingdom and France among them, had done the same.

Juhannus, when 'kokko' fires are lit beside lakes through the nightless night, is which country's Midsummer festival?

Finland's Juhannus was once Ukon juhla, the feast of the sky god Ukko, until the church gave it a saint's name; many Finns still leave town for lakeside cottages, where the Sun barely sets.

Which Founding Father predicted Americans would forever celebrate 2 July, the day Congress voted for independence?

John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that 2 July would be marked for ever with 'Pomp and Parade'; instead Americans chose the 4th, the date on the Declaration that Congress adopted two days later.

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

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died hours apart: Adams's family recalled his last words as 'Thomas Jefferson survives', not knowing Jefferson had died at Monticello earlier that day.

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

Coney Island's contest is held each 4 July outside the original Nathan's stand; its famous origin story, a 1916 eating duel between immigrants over who was most patriotic, was invented by a publicist in the 1970s.

France's Bastille Day military parade marches down which famous avenue each 14 July?

The Champs-Élysées has hosted the parade since the First World War, yet the fortress whose fall the day recalls was nearly empty: the Bastille held just seven prisoners when it was stormed in 1789.

Obon, a mid-August festival when families welcome their ancestors' spirits home, is celebrated in which country?

Japan's Obon ends with floating lanterns set on rivers, lakes and the sea to guide the spirits back to their world, after days of grave visits and bon odori dances.

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

Spain's Buñol, near Valencia, trucks in well over 100 tonnes of tomatoes; the fight is said to have begun in 1945, when a scuffle at a parade of giant-headed figures spilled onto a market vegetable stall.

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

Ernest Hemingway turned his own 1925 trip to the fiesta into The Sun Also Rises, basing its characters on the friends he travelled with; Pamplona later put up a monument to him outside its bullring.

Burning Man began on Baker Beach before moving to the Black Rock Desert in which state?

Nevada's Black Rock Desert took over in 1990, after park police refused to let the wooden figure burn on Baker Beach, where Larry Harvey and Jerry James had first lit one on the 1986 summer solstice.

Which holiday, first celebrated with a New York parade in 1882, became the unofficial end of the American summer?

Labor Day began as a Central Labor Union parade through New York in 1882; states took it up one by one, and President Grover Cleveland signed it into national law in 1894.

Which city's 1904 World's Fair made the ice cream cone famous, by legend when a vendor ran out of dishes?

St. Louis's fair made the cone famous: in the best-known telling, Syrian concessionaire Ernest Hamwi rolled one of his waffle pastries into a cone for the ice cream seller next door, who had run out of dishes.

Frank Epperson first sold his accidental frozen invention as the 'Epsicle'; by which name did it become famous?

The Popsicle got its name, the story goes, when Epperson's children kept calling it 'Pop's sicle'; he was 11 when he left a cup of soda powder and water with a stirring stick outside on a freezing night in 1905.

The watermelon belongs to the same plant family as which of these?

Cucumber, pumpkin and watermelon all belong to the gourd family; to a botanist the watermelon is a berry, of the thick-rinded kind called a pepo.

Genome studies trace the watermelon's wild ancestors to which continent?

Africa is home: a 2021 genome study found the watermelon's closest wild relative is Sudan's Kordofan melon, overturning the prevailing view that the fruit's roots lay in South Africa.

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

Paris gave its Compagnie de Limonadiers a monopoly in 1676; one of the city's limonadiers, Procopio, went on to add coffee to the ices and lemonade he sold and opened the Café Procope.

Which organisation's 1927 camping handbook printed one of the first known recipes for s'mores?

The Girl Scouts' guide Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts called the treat 'Some Mores'; the name, a plea for seconds, had been squeezed into 's'more' by the 1930s.

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, after the Frisbie bakery whose empty pie tins college students had been tossing around for years.

Which invention did Willis Carrier design in 1902 to stop paper swelling at a printing plant?

Air conditioning began as a factory fix: paper at the Sackett-Wilhelms plant swelled and shrank with the damp, throwing its colour printing out of line, so Carrier's machine was built to steady the air, not to cool people.

On a sunscreen bottle, what do the letters SPF stand for?

Sun Protection Factor compares how much solar energy it takes to burn protected and bare skin; despite the popular belief, it says nothing about how long you can safely stay out.

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

The temperature of the sand decides it: warmer nests hatch females and cooler ones males, which is why steadily 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?

The rate at which crickets chirp climbs with the heat because the cold-blooded insects' muscles work faster when warm; count the chirps in about 15 seconds, add 40, and you have a rough Fahrenheit reading.

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 meet again after their summer beach romance at which high school?

Rydell High was named after the teen idol Bobby Rydell; the fling is set in 1958, and back at school Danny and Sandy each give their friends a very different account of it.

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

Roland Emmerich got the idea while promoting Stargate, when he was asked whether he believed in aliens; the film he wrote with Dean Devlin took over $800 million worldwide.

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

George Gershwin wrote 'Summertime' as the lullaby that opens Porgy and Bess; it returns in the last act, when Bess sings it to the same baby, orphaned after both parents are lost in a hurricane.

Which future film star rapped on 'Summertime', the 1991 hit built on Kool & the Gang's 'Summer Madness'?

Will Smith, then the Fresh Prince, cut the song when a delayed flight sent him back to the studio, and years later told Rakim to his face that he had been copying the rapper's style on it.

'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?

San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury was so overrun that on 6 October 1967 those who had stayed held a mock funeral, 'The Death of the Hippie', to mark the end of the Summer of Love.

The 1969 Woodstock festival took place miles from Woodstock, in Bethel, on what kind of property?

A dairy farm owned by Max Yasgur took the festival in after the town of Wallkill turned its organisers away.

How was Beach Boys singer Mike Love related to the band's three Wilson brothers?

Cousin: the family tie did not keep the peace, for in the 1990s Love sued Brian Wilson and won a co-writing credit on 35 of the band's songs.

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 arrived in 1919, most likely to match the yellow newsprint of L'Auto, the paper that ran the race; the rival story is that it was the only colour a supplier could offer at short notice.

The first modern Summer Olympics, contested only by men, opened in April 1896 in which city?

Athens staged the Games in a rebuilt ancient stadium; there were no gold medals yet, so each winner received a silver medal and the runner-up a copper one.

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

Brisbane was approved in Tokyo on 21 July 2021; its 'Summer' Games are due to open on 23 July 2032, which falls in the Australian winter.

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.

In 19th-century rural America, farm children mostly attended school during which two seasons?

Summer and winter were the rural school terms, because children were needed for spring planting and the autumn harvest; the long summer break came later, from city schools and reformers who wanted one calendar.

What actually causes summer to be warmer than winter?

Earth's axis is tilted toward the Sun in summer, so sunlight strikes more directly and days run longer; distance cannot be the cause, because the Northern Hemisphere has its winter when Earth is closest to the Sun.

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

Seasonal lag happens because land and especially oceans take time to soak up the extra sunshine and release it, so the hottest weeks trail the longest day, and trail it longest beside the sea.

Which long-running American publication dates the dog days of summer from 3 July to 11 August?

The Old Farmer's Almanac, published every year since 1792, counts 40 dog days; its founder began drilling the hole in its corner so that readers could hang it from a nail.

Which First Lady is said to have served ice cream at her husband's second inauguration in 1813?

Dolley Madison is credited with a strawberry ice cream dish at James Madison's 1813 inaugural banquet, but Thomas Jefferson had already served it at the President's House and left a recipe in his own hand.

Which grill brand's first kettle barbecue was made from the two metal halves of a marine buoy?

Weber's kettle was built by George Stephen from the metal half-spheres his shop, Weber Brothers Metal Works, normally turned into buoys; he sold it as 'George's Barbecue Kettle' and demand took off.

The word 'barbecue' comes from 'barbacoa', a word of the Taíno people of which region?

The Caribbean's Taíno used barbacoa for a framework of sticks set on posts, for sleeping on or for curing meat; the tale that it comes from French 'barbe à queue', beard to tail, is a myth.

France's national day marks the storming of the Bastille and which event held exactly a year later?

The Fête de la Fédération of 14 July 1790 was a vast festival of national unity, with oaths sworn at an altar on the Champ de Mars; the 1880 law named only the date, so the holiday honours both anniversaries.

In which country do Midsummer revellers dance around a flower-clad maypole to a song about small frogs?

Sweden all but empties its cities for Midsummer: families head to the countryside to raise the maypole, hop through 'Små grodorna' and eat pickled herring with new potatoes and strawberry cake.

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

Richard Wagner opened the Bayreuth Festival in 1876 in a theatre he had built specially for his own music dramas, and its summer seasons still stage nothing but his operas.

Which island stood in for Amity in Steven Spielberg's 1975 summer blockbuster?

Martha's Vineyard won the part because its sandy seabed stays under 35 feet deep for miles offshore, letting the crew's mechanical props work in open water; the 55-day shoot still ran to 159.

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

Olivia Newton-John hesitated over playing Sandy: already in her late twenties, she feared she was too old to pass for a schoolgirl.

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.

Which sunscreen brand, created by chemist Franz Greiter in 1946, takes its name from an Alpine peak?

Piz Buin is a peak on the Swiss-Austrian border; Greiter is said to have been badly sunburned climbing it in 1938 as a chemistry student, which set him to work on his protective 'glacier cream'.

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

UVB does most of the burning, while UVA reaches deeper into the skin; UVC would be the most damaging of the three, but the atmosphere filters all of it out before it reaches the ground.

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?

'Little fly' is the literal sense: Spanish mosca, 'fly', plus the diminutive -ito. The name undersells an insect that spreads malaria and dengue.

Much of the white sand on tropical beaches is ground-up coral excreted by which fish?

Parrotfish scrape algae off rock and dead coral with beak-like teeth, grind up the bits of reef they swallow and excrete them as sand; a single fish can produce hundreds of pounds of it a year.

In which 1961 Disney film do twin sisters raised apart first meet at summer camp?

The Parent Trap sends Sharon and Susan to the same camp, where they swap places to reunite their divorced parents; Hayley Mills played both girls, with split-screen shots and a body double creating the twins.

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

Italy's schools close from early June to mid-September, about three months, while pupils in Germany, Japan and the UK get around six weeks; in Japan the break falls mid-year, because school starts in April.

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

Rhode Island's Bristol has marked the Fourth every year since 1785, when Revolutionary War veteran Rev. Henry Wight led the first 'Patriotic Exercises'; its famous parade is thought to have grown out of the walk to them.

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

Eddie Cochran wrote it in under an hour with his manager Jerry Capehart, and it was meant to be only a B-side; Brian Setzer later played Cochran in La Bamba and sang it on screen.

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

Mungo Jerry's singer Ray Dorset wrote it while holding down a day job at Timex, and by his own account it came to him very quickly.

Which singer turned a demo Tom Petty had passed on into 'The Boys of Summer'?

Don Henley wrote the words after Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell played him the track; Petty felt it didn't fit the album he was making, so producer Jimmy Iovine pointed Campbell to Henley.

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 came out that summer but peaked at number two only in mid-October, behind the Temptations' 'I Can't Get Next to You', so the summer anthem was really an autumn hit.

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

Seals & Crofts were Jim Seals and Dash Crofts, who joined the band behind 'Tequila' after it had topped the chart; Jim's younger brother Dan found fame too, as the 'England Dan' of another soft-rock duo.

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

'Sweet Little Sixteen' was fitted with new surf lyrics; under pressure from Berry's side, the Beach Boys' camp gave up its claim to the song, and later pressings name Berry as a writer.

Which rocker had a 1985 hit with 'Summer of '69', though he was only nine that summer?

Bryan Adams has said the title is less about the year than a cheeky nod to the number; he wrote the song with his longtime collaborator Jim Vallance.

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

Katrina and the Waves broke through in America with it; writer Kimberley Rew called it 'just a piece of simple fun' from a band he remembered as insecure and pessimistic, and said it was just another song until it hit.

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 chart; Perry wrote it as a West Coast answer to Jay-Z's 'Empire State of Mind'.

Which punk band released the surf-style single 'Rockaway Beach' in 1977?

Ramones bassist Dee Dee wrote it about the Queens beach where he liked to spend time; bandmate Johnny called him the group's only real beachgoer, and it became their 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 'Summer' concerto ends by depicting what?

A thunderstorm tears through the final Presto of 'Summer'; Vivaldi published each concerto with a sonnet, possibly his own, that spelled out the scenes the music paints.

Whose 'Summertime Sadness' became her first US top-ten hit after a 2013 club remix by Cedric Gervais?

Lana Del Rey's brooding ballad was reworked for the dance floor by French DJ Cedric Gervais, who said he did the remix as a labour of love; it gave her a first Hot 100 top ten.

Whose end-of-term anthem 'School's Out' topped the UK singles chart for three weeks in August 1972?

Alice Cooper's single was helped along by campaigner Mary Whitehouse, whose protests against it only brought more publicity; Cooper sent her flowers to say thank you.

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

Car horns and a pneumatic drill were picked from tapes that a radio sound-effects man brought to the studio, once the band decided the song needed real city noise.

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' paired Bill Medley with Jennifer Warnes; Medley kept turning it down because his wife was about to give birth, then took the Oscar-winning song to number one.

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; he skipped his own drama-school graduation ceremony to film it.

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

The Wagon Queen Family Truckster was built for the film from a Ford LTD Country Squire, with 'metallic pea' paint, fake wood panelling and eight headlights; Clark is stuck with it after the dealer crushes his trade-in.

Which actress plays Summer, the woman Tom falls for, in (500) Days of Summer?

Zooey Deschanel plays Summer opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt; the film replays their 500 days out of order after she dumps him, and its co-writer has said he based the story on a real romance of his own.

The towns of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and Ithaca both claim to be the birthplace of which ice cream treat?

The sundae is the prize in a good-natured 'Sundae War': Two Rivers says druggist Ed Berners first poured chocolate syrup over ice cream in 1881, while Ithaca points to an 1892 newspaper advert for one.

Which soft-serve chain began after its founder's ice cream truck got a flat tire over Memorial Day weekend in 1934?

Carvel grew from Tom Carvel's breakdown in Hartsdale: he sold his melting stock from the roadside, found that customers liked it soft, and two years later opened a permanent stand on the same spot.

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

Greensleeves, a Tudor-era ballad tune, found a second life as the traditional chime of ice cream vans in Britain, Ireland and Australia; American trucks favour tunes such as 'Turkey in the Straw'.

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 Antwerp in 1920, then took silver in 1924 behind Johnny Weissmuller, the future screen Tarzan, with his own brother Sam third.

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

South Williamsport has hosted the series since 1959, across the river from Little League's birthplace; Taiwan's teams won 15 of the 23 titles from 1969 to 1991, even though non-US teams were barred in 1975.

Which three stars form the Summer Triangle?

Altair, Deneb and Vega are the brightest stars of Aquila, Cygnus and Lyra; in East Asian legend Vega and Altair are a weaver and a herdsman parted by the Milky Way, allowed to meet once a year at the Tanabata and Qixi festivals.

Fireflies are actually what kind of insect?

Beetles, not flies: fireflies are soft-bodied beetles that flash to attract mates, and females of the genus Photuris copy another species' signal to lure its males and eat them.

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?

Tymbals on the abdomen, ribbed membranes that the male buckles in and out at speed, make the sound; the largely hollow abdomen then works as a resonating chamber, pushing the loudest species past 100 decibels.

What came free with the £1 ticket to the first Glastonbury festival in 1970?

Milk from host Michael Eavis's own cows was included in the £1 ticket; about 1,500 people came, and Marc Bolan stepped in at the last minute for the Kinks, who had been booked to top the bill.

In 1947, eight theatre companies turned up uninvited at which city's new arts festival, starting its Fringe?

Edinburgh's gatecrashers staged their shows in small venues around the official festival; a year later critic Robert Kemp wrote of the drama 'round the fringe' of it, and he is credited with giving the Fringe its name.

The Palio, a bareback horse race run every 2 July and 16 August, circles the main square of which city?

Siena packs its Piazza del Campo with earth for three frantic laps between ten of the city's wards, and a horse can win even if it crosses the line without its jockey.

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

The Calgary Stampede began as a one-off: American trick roper Guy Weadick staged it in 1912, came back for a 'Victory Stampede' in 1919, and saw it become annual only in 1923, when it merged with the city's exhibition.

Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when slavery's end was announced in which state?

Texas heard the news on 19 June 1865, when General Gordon Granger issued his order in Galveston, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation; the day became a federal holiday in 2021.

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

Dominion Day was renamed in 1982 after a private member's bill passed a thinly attended House of Commons in five minutes, without debate; it met stiffer resistance in the Senate before becoming law.

Which Spike Lee film unfolds over a single sweltering summer day on one city block?

Do the Right Thing follows a Bedford-Stuyvesant block as the heat and racial tension build towards violence around Sal's pizzeria, where Mookie, played by Lee himself, delivers the pies.

Which country, better known for its winters, was first to issue 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.

Human skin makes which vitamin when it is exposed to sunlight?

Vitamin D is made when direct sunlight falls on bare skin outdoors; window glass blocks the rays that do the work, so basking in a sunny room does not count.

Beach volleyball became a full Olympic medal sport in the 1990s at which city's Games?

Atlanta staged the first Olympic beach volleyball tournament in 1996, in a 10,000-seat stadium at a venue named Atlanta Beach, far from any coast; the two-a-side game itself grew up on the sands of Santa Monica.

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

Starch is what the kernels' sugar normally turns into; a recessive mutation slows the switch, so sweet corn stays sugary, though traditional varieties start turning starchy again soon after picking.

Which 1980 horror film is set at the ill-fated summer camp on Crystal Lake?

Friday the 13th has counsellors reopening Camp Crystal Lake despite local warnings; the twist is that the killer is not Jason but his mother, avenging the son who drowned there.

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.

Which DJ sang the lead vocal himself on his 2014 UK number one 'Summer'?

Calvin Harris had been handing his biggest hits to guest stars such as Rihanna, but he went back to the microphone for 'Summer', which entered the UK chart at number one.

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

Comiskey Park, Chicago, staged it as a one-off 'Game of the Century' tied to that summer's World's Fair; sports editor Arch Ward's idea proved so popular it became the annual 'Midsummer Classic'.

Which US president proclaimed July to be National Ice Cream Month?

Ronald Reagan's 1984 proclamation praised ice cream as 'a nutritious and wholesome food' enjoyed by over ninety percent of Americans, and it also named a Sunday in July as National Ice Cream Day.

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

New Jersey saw it first, just outside Camden: Hollingshead, reportedly moved by his mother's discomfort in cinema seats, tested the idea in his driveway, then charged 25 cents a car and 25 cents a person.

Which 1973 film follows California teenagers cruising on their last night of summer in 1962?

American Graffiti was George Lucas's look back at the cruising culture of his own teenage years in Modesto; shot for well under a million dollars, it became one of the most profitable films on record.

The 'Great Bath' of Mohenjo-Daro, a brick pool from the third millennium BC, lies in which modern country?

Pakistan's Sindh province holds Mohenjo-Daro, whose Great Bath was sealed with fitted bricks and a layer of natural tar; most scholars think it was built for ritual bathing rather than a swim.

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

Chile's resort at Algarrobo fills the pool with filtered water pumped from the Pacific next door; just over a kilometre long and about eight hectares in area, it entered the Guinness book as the largest pool when it opened in 2006.

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 created the Ray-Ban Aviator in the 1930s to cut glare for US military pilots?

Bausch & Lomb built the anti-glare glasses for Army Air Corps pilots and later sold them to the public as Ray-Bans; the look took off after General MacArthur was photographed in a pair landing in the Philippines.

A July 1995 heat wave killed more than 700 people in a single week in which US city?

Chicago recorded 739 more deaths than in a normal week, most of them elderly and poor and many living alone; the city had a heat emergency plan but declared an emergency only after hundreds had already died.

Which country's Sankt Hans celebrations on 23 June traditionally burn a witch figure?

Denmark's Sankt Hans Aften custom of setting a witch figure on top of the fire is only about a century old; she is said to fly off to the Brocken, the mountain of witches' sabbaths.

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.