July 14 Holidays

Bastille Day marks July 14, 1789, when Parisian revolutionaries stormed the Bastille prison — a largely symbolic act that freed only seven prisoners but became the defining moment of the French Revolution and the founding myth of the French Republic. National Mac and Cheese Day celebrates the pasta baked in cheese sauce that Thomas Jefferson encountered in France and Italy, brought a pasta machine home, and reportedly served at a White House dinner in 1802 — though the Kraft mac and cheese box of 1937 is what made it an American staple. International Non-Binary Peoples Day was established to celebrate people whose gender identity exists outside or beyond the binary of male and female — observed on the day between International Men’s Day (November 19) and International Women’s Day (March 8). National Nude Day was created to celebrate the human body and to normalize nudity as a natural, non-sexual state. A prison siege, a pasta machine, a spectrum of identity, and a very light packing list.