May 7 is celebrated as International Planetarium Day, World AIDS Orphan Day, and World Password Day. This day has left its mark on world history over the years through wars, cultural events, scientific achievements, political decisions, and events that have subsequently influenced the development of entire states and societies.
International Planetarium Day
This day is dedicated to institutions that help people understand the starry sky, the movement of planets, the structure of the Universe, and the Earth’s place in space. Planetariums combine science, education, and visual technologies, making astronomy accessible to schoolchildren, students, and anyone interested in the sky.
The main goal of this day is to remind people of the importance of scientific education. Planetariums offer a place to see phenomena that are difficult to observe in person: eclipses, the movement of constellations, spacecraft flights, and the birth of stars and galaxies. Such spaces foster interest in science and help explain complex things in simple language.
Interesting facts
The oldest “planetarium” is often called the Antikythera mechanism — an ancient Greek device from the 2nd–1st century BC that modeled the movement of the Sun, Moon, eclipses, and calendar cycles. It did not have a dome, but it fulfilled the main idea of a planetarium: it showed celestial mechanics in miniature.
In the 18th century, orreries — mechanical models of the Solar System with gears — were popular in Europe. They showed how the planets move around the Sun and became an important predecessor to modern planetariums.
The first projection planetarium opened on May 7, 1925, at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. It was created with the participation of the Carl Zeiss company, and the device could project about 4,500 stars onto the dome. It did not just show stars, but recreated the movement of the night sky as if the viewer were sitting under the open sky at any time of the year.
The Adler Planetarium in Chicago, opened in 1930, was the first major planetarium in the Western Hemisphere. Its appearance made planetariums a part of mass urban culture, and not just a museum or university rarity.
During World War II, stargazing skills remained practically important for aviation and the navy. Planetariums were used not only for education, but also for teaching navigation, because they allowed training without the real night sky.
In New York, the Hayden Planetarium became one of the most famous in the world thanks to the combination of science, architecture and mass education. Its new building with a huge sphere inside a glass cube became a recognizable symbol of the popularization of astronomy.
In Japan, planetariums are especially popular as a cultural format. There they are visited not only by schoolchildren, but also by adults, and some programs are more like calm star shows with music, seasonal plots and a detailed story about the sky over a particular city.
The most modern planetariums are no longer limited to simulating the starry sky. They can “transport” the viewer inside a nebula, to the surface of Mars, to a black hole, or beyond the Milky Way, using scientific data from telescopes and space missions.
One of the largest planetary complexes in the world operates in Nagoya, Japan. Its dome has a diameter of about 35 meters, and the hall itself is designed to create the feeling of a real sky above your head, and not a regular movie screen.
The Kyiv Planetarium is considered the oldest in Ukraine. It has been operating since 1952 and has one of the largest domes in Europe, the area of the projection screen is about 830 square meters.
The Kharkiv Planetarium was opened in 1957 on the initiative of astronomer Mykola Barabashov. It operated not only a star hall, but also a museum, which stores meteorites, models of spacecraft, and materials on the study of the Moon.
World AIDS Orphans Day
This day is dedicated to children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS. It was launched in 2002 on the initiative of the charity FBX International to draw attention to the problems of children who have been left without family support due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In many countries, such children face poverty, discrimination, psychological trauma and limited access to education and medicine.
According to international organizations, the largest number of AIDS orphans live in sub-Saharan Africa, where the HIV epidemic has claimed millions of lives for decades. Thanks to the development of antiretroviral therapy, mortality has gradually decreased, but the problem remains relevant for many regions of the world. This day reminds us of the need for medical care, social support and protection of the rights of children who have lost their families due to the disease.
Interesting facts
In the early 2000s, there were more than 15 million children in the world who had lost one or both parents to AIDS. Most of them were under the age of 18.
In some African countries, the scale of the epidemic led to entire villages where children lived without adult guardians. Older siblings took care of the younger ones, worked, and tried to provide food for the family.
In South Africa and Botswana, schools changed their curricula in some years due to the huge number of children who had lost their parents. Teachers often played the role of psychologists and social workers.
At the beginning of the epidemic, many orphaned children were not accepted into schools or orphanages for fear of infection, although HIV is not transmitted through household means. In some regions, such discrimination lasted for years.
Thanks to modern antiretroviral therapy, HIV has in many cases turned from a fatal disease into a chronic condition. This significantly reduced the number of children orphaned by AIDS compared to the 1990s.
In Ukraine, the problem of children who lost their parents to HIV/AIDS became especially acute in the 1990s and early 2000s. The largest number of cases was recorded in industrial regions and large cities, where the epidemic spread faster.
After the start of a full-scale war, Ukrainian HIV patients were at risk of treatment interruption due to the occupation of certain territories, shelling, and problems with the logistics of medicines. Medical services and volunteers organized urgent transportation of drugs to frontline regions to prevent a sharp increase in mortality.
In some African countries, grandparents became the primary caregivers for millions of children after a generation of their adult children died of AIDS. This even gave rise to a separate social term – the “grandmother generation”.
World Password Day
This day is dedicated to digital security and personal data protection on the Internet. It is celebrated on the first Thursday of May at the initiative of Intel, and the idea was supported by large IT companies and cybersecurity experts. The day is designed to remind users of the importance of strong passwords, two-factor authentication and protecting accounts from hacking.
With the development of online services, passwords have become the key to bank accounts, email, social networks and work systems. Due to massive data leaks and cyberattacks, experts advise against using simple combinations, repeated passwords and personal information such as dates of birth. Today, more and more services are switching to passwordless login systems, but regular passwords still remain the main method of protection for most users.
Interesting facts
The most popular passwords in the world for years have been “123456”, “password” and “qwerty”. Despite constant warnings about the dangers, millions of people continue to use them.
The first computer password appeared at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960s. The Compatible Time-Sharing System allowed multiple people to use a single computer and required that access be segregated between users.
One of the first known cases of password theft also occurred at MIT. A researcher printed out a list of other people’s passwords in order to get more computer time on a university machine.
The average person has dozens or even hundreds of online accounts, but many users repeat the same password across multiple sites. As a result, a hack of one service often opens up access to other accounts.
In 2012, LinkedIn suffered one of the most notorious password leaks: more than 100 million accounts were exposed online. Some of the passwords were so weak that they could be cracked in a matter of hours.
Modern password managers can automatically generate combinations of more than 20–30 characters long, which are practically impossible for a person to remember, but very difficult even for powerful computers to pick up.
In North Korea, only certain categories of citizens have access to the global Internet, and the majority of the population uses an internal network. Because of this, the digital security system there is built completely differently than in most countries in the world.
After the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine, the number of phishing attacks and attempts to hack the accounts of military personnel, volunteers, journalists, and government institutions increased sharply. Ukrainian cybersecurity experts regularly called on citizens to urgently change their passwords and enable two-factor authentication.
In 2022, Russian hacker groups actively used fake pages of Ukrainian government services to steal passwords. Some of the attacks were stopped thanks to the quick response of Ukrainian cyber experts and international support.
Some modern systems already allow you to log in without a password — using a fingerprint, Face ID, or a special cryptographic key. Large technology companies are gradually promoting passkeys as a replacement for traditional passwords.
Historical events on this day
1104 — The Crusaders suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Harran from the Seljuks. This failure was one of the first serious blows to the Crusader positions in the Middle East and showed that holding the captured territories would be much more difficult than expected after the First Crusade.
1253 — French monk Guillaume de Rubruck set off from Constantinople for the capital of the Mongol Empire, Karakorum. His journey became one of the most detailed European descriptions of life in the Mongols, Central Asia, and the Khan’s court long before the travels of Marco Polo.
1663 — The Theatre Royal on Drury Lane opened in central London. The building burned down and was rebuilt several times, but the theatre retained its historical role and is considered one of the most famous theatre venues in Great Britain.
1785 — Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries became the first people in history to fly across the English Channel in a hot air balloon. During the flight, they had to throw their belongings and some of their clothes overboard so that the balloon would not fall into the water due to loss of altitude.
1824 — The premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony took place in Vienna. The composer had almost completely lost his hearing and did not hear the applause after the work was finished, so the musicians specially turned him to face the hall so that he could see the audience’s reaction.
1832 — Greece officially became an independent state after a long war against the Ottoman Empire. This was one of the most important events in the formation of modern Greek statehood.
1861 — Tennessee decided to secede from the United States and join the Confederation. The country was already rapidly moving towards a large-scale civil war between the North and the South.
1875 — The Russian Empire and Japan signed a treaty on the exchange of territories: Japan received the Kuril Islands, and Russia – full control over Sakhalin. In the future, these territories were the cause of long-standing disputes between the states.
1887 — American Thomas Stevens completed the first round-the-world trip on a bicycle. He had to overcome deserts, off-road areas and areas where people had never seen bicycles.
1890 — Labor laws for children and adolescents were tightened in the Russian Empire. Minors were allowed to work up to nine hours a day, and adolescents were officially allowed to work at night in factories and plants.
1915 — The German submarine U-20 sank the British liner Lusitania. The death of almost 1,200 people caused international shock and significantly influenced the US attitude towards Germany during World War I.
1920 — The troops of the UNR Army, together with their Polish allies, entered Kyiv after the retreat of the Bolshevik forces. For the Ukrainian military, this was one of the most important moments in the campaign to restore independence.
1934 — The Jewish Autonomous Oblast was created in Birobidzhan. The Soviet authorities tried to make the region the center of Jewish life in the USSR, but the project never became a massive success.
1937 — Germany and Italy announced the creation of the Rome-Berlin Axis. This alliance later became the basis of the military-political bloc of the Axis powers during World War II.
1941 — Glenn Miller’s orchestra recorded the composition “Chattanooga Choo Choo”, which became one of the most famous musical symbols of the American jazz era.
1945 — in Reims, France, representatives of Nazi Germany signed an act of unconditional surrender to the Allies. The document effectively meant the end of hostilities in Europe during World War II.
1946 — Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was founded in Tokyo, which later became known as Sony. The future tech giant began with a small team of engineers in war-torn Japan.
1954 — The French garrison in Dien Bien Phu capitulated after a long siege. France’s defeat was a turning point in the First Indochina War and accelerated the collapse of the French colonial system in the region.
1984 — Soviet intelligence services detained academician Andrei Sakharov and forcibly took him to a psychiatric hospital. The USSR authorities systematically used punitive psychiatry against dissidents and critics of the regime.
1985 — The USSR leadership launched a large-scale anti-alcohol campaign. Wine shops were closed en masse in the country, vineyards were cut down, and alcohol sales were restricted, which caused huge queues and the development of a shadow market.
1995 — The National Bank of Ukraine issued a coin with a face value of 200 thousand rubles. This was a period of hyperinflation and economic instability before the introduction of the hryvnia.
1996 — Luc Besson’s film The Fifth Element premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The film quickly became a cult classic thanks to its unusual visual style, Jean-Paul Gaultier’s design, and its combination of fantasy and comedy.
1999 — Pope John Paul II visited Romania. This was the first time since the church schism of 1054 that the head of the Catholic Church had arrived in an Orthodox country on an official visit.
2008 — an earthquake with a magnitude of about three occurred in the Black Sea near Zmiiniy Island. The tremors were felt by residents of Odessa and some coastal areas.
2016 — The first monument to Hetman Ivan Mazepa was unveiled in Poltava. Its installation was blocked for years due to political disputes and the influence of Russian historical narratives.
