July 2024: 23 business days and one famous Friday
On Friday 19 July 2024, a single bad security update brought a fair share of the working world to a halt. Around 8.5 million Windows machines went down together; flights waited on the tarmac and hospital and bank systems fell offline. The month around that failure was tidier than its news. July ran 31 days, from Monday 1 July to Wednesday 31 July, with 23 business days and only eight weekend days, inside ISO weeks 27 to 31.
The count, kept honestly
July 2024 held 31 days in total, of which 23 were business days and eight weekend ones. Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays each turned up five times; the rest managed four appearances apiece. The month opened on Monday 1 July and closed on Wednesday 31 July, its first and last days both among the five-time weekdays.
The moon kept a tidy ledger as well: new on Friday 5 July, first quarter on Saturday 13 July, full on Sunday 21 July and last quarter on Sunday 28 July. One phase a week, nothing out of turn.
The CrowdStrike morning
The faulty CrowdStrike update rolled out overnight and knocked about 8.5 million Windows machines flat. Thousands of flights were cancelled, broadcasters fell off air and hospitals and banks lost systems. By most assessments it was the largest IT outage on record.
For one morning the most dependable machine in many offices was the kettle, it never having taken an update. Fixes spread through the days that followed, and the date became a case study in single points of failure.
A general election and a Sunday of finals
Britain voted on Thursday 4 July. Labour won 412 seats, 14 years of Conservative government ended, and Keir Starmer became prime minister the next day. A Thursday poll is a British habit, and the month kept it.
Sunday 14 July stacked the finals. England lost the Euro 2024 final 2-1 to Spain in Berlin, Spain's record fourth title, sealed by an 86th-minute winner. Argentina took the Copa America in Miami later that evening. At Wimbledon, the singles trophies went to Carlos Alcaraz and Barbora Krejcikova.
On Friday 26 July the Paris Olympics began, with about 10,500 athletes carried along the Seine aboard some 90 boats for the first opening ceremony held away from a stadium. Rain fell on the parade; the parade carried on regardless.
The heavy news
July carried grief as well. A wildfire swept into the Alberta town of Jasper on Wednesday 24 July and burned about a third of it; around 25,000 people left the national park. Early on Tuesday 30 July, monsoon landslides buried villages in the Wayanad district of Kerala, and more than 300 people died.
The planet set its own mark on Monday 22 July: the hottest day ever measured on Earth to that point, a global average of 17.16 degrees Celsius. The record and the losses belong in the same column.
Twenty-three business days, five Mondays and one famous Friday: July 2024 did its arithmetic, then made the news anyway.