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20 July: what is celebrated today
There are days that seem designed to remind us that intelligence can also be play, and that emotion—when shared—becomes a form of knowledge. On 20 July, celebrations range from a black-and-white board to the distant light of the Moon, and then to the table where someone toasts friendship or unwraps the paper from a sweet. Everything fits on the same date: strategy, wonder, affection and a small childhood joy.
World Chess Day
World Chess Day has been celebrated every 20 July since 2019, at the initiative of the United Nations General Assembly, to honour the founding of FIDE in 1924, in Paris. And it makes sense: few activities combine patience with audacity, logic with imagination, so elegantly. Chess teaches us to think several moves ahead, but also to accept error as part of learning.
In that silent dialogue between two people, the world becomes a system of possibilities. It is no coincidence that it is associated with education, inclusion and cooperation: on a board everyone starts with the same army, and what determines the course is the reading of the moment. Perhaps that is why it continues to fascinate: because it turns concentration into an adventure and calculation into a form of character.
International Moon Day
International Moon Day also falls on 20 July, and its date is no whim: it recalls the Moon landing of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, when humanity first set foot on its satellite. This day, proclaimed by the UN, looks upwards to celebrate space exploration, but also to ask what we do with that drive to go further.
The Moon has been science, yes, but also metaphor: a nocturnal mirror that contains curiosity and nostalgia. Celebrating it is recognising the value of research, technology and international cooperation; and, at the same time, keeping intact that childlike feeling of looking at the sky and sensing that the universe still has secrets in store.
Friendship Day
In many places, Friendship Day is celebrated on 20 July for a luminous reason: the arrival of human beings on the Moon inspired the Argentine Enrique Ernesto Febbraro to propose a date dedicated to friendship, as though that technological leap also demonstrated something intimate: that the world becomes larger when we join hands. The idea caught on because it named a real, simple and profound need.
Friendship is not only companionship; it is a kind of refuge. Sometimes it is built through grand plans, but it is almost always sustained by small gestures: a timely message, an unhurried conversation, a presence that asks for no explanations. This day serves as a gentle reminder that relationships are not “had”: they are cared for.
World Lollipop Day
And, as a sweet counterpoint, World Lollipop Day brings a smile to the 20 July calendar. The lollipop —with its many names depending on the country— is a tiny object with enormous power: the power to trigger memory. The crunch of the sweet or the bright colour is enough for an old scene, a fair, a school break, a summer afternoon to return.
Celebrating them is not an invitation to excess, but to a wink: to remember that we also need lightness. In times when everything seems urgent, a sweet on a stick can be a form of truce, a small rest for the spirit, proof that joy fits into simple things.