Invite an Alien to Live with You Day

About

Invite an Alien to Live with You Day, observed on **July 21**, is a playful celebration of curiosity, imagination, and the possibility of life beyond Earth. It invites us to picture what it might be like to welcome an extraterrestrial visitor into our homes—and to consider how we would share our customs, learn about another world, and make a new friend from the stars.

Celebrate by watching a science-fiction film, reading about space exploration, drawing your ideal alien houseguest, or imagining the rules for a peaceful interstellar roommate. Whether you picture a tiny creature with glowing eyes or a highly advanced traveler from a distant galaxy, July 21 is a fun reminder to stay open-minded about the unknown.

History

**Invite an Alien to Live with You Day**, observed annually on **July 21**, is a lighthearted observance centered on the idea of welcoming extraterrestrial life into human society. Its exact creator and founding year are not clearly documented, and available holiday references do not identify an official organization responsible for establishing it. Rather than emerging from a traditional religious, civic, or scientific institution, it appears to belong to the modern group of informal themed days promoted through online calendars and popular-culture websites.

The observance draws on the long history of public fascination with life beyond Earth. Stories about visitors from other worlds have appeared in literature, film, television, and comic books for more than a century, while developments in astronomy and space exploration have made questions about extraterrestrial life part of mainstream scientific discussion. The wording of the day turns that fascination into a humorous domestic scenario: instead of fearing an alien visitor, people are invited to imagine offering one a home.

Its placement on **July 21** also fits the wider cultural association between late July and the history of lunar exploration. In 1969, the Apollo 11 mission achieved the first crewed Moon landing, with Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin walking on the lunar surface during the mission’s July 20–21 timeline, depending on time zone. However, there is no well-established historical evidence that the observance was formally created to commemorate Apollo 11, so that connection is best understood as thematic rather than confirmed.

Over time, Invite an Alien to Live with You Day has functioned primarily as an imaginative and social-media-friendly occasion. People may mark it by discussing science-fiction stories, watching space-themed films, learning about the search for extraterrestrial life, creating alien-themed artwork, or joking about the practicalities of hosting a visitor from another planet. Its cultural significance lies less in a documented historical tradition than in its use of humor to encourage curiosity, hospitality, and reflection on humanity’s place in the universe.

Timeline

1938
Orson Welles's radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds was broadcast on CBS, dramatizing an imagined Martian invasion and becoming a landmark work of alien-themed popular culture.
1947
Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release saying it had recovered a "flying disc" near Roswell, New Mexico; the military subsequently identified the debris as a weather balloon. The incident became a central episode in UFO and extraterrestrial-life lore.
1960
Astronomer Frank Drake conducted Project Ozma at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, using a radio telescope to search nearby stars for possible extraterrestrial signals.
1977
NASA launched the Voyager spacecraft carrying the Voyager Golden Record, a collection of sounds, images, and greetings intended to communicate information about Earth to any extraterrestrial finders.

Upcoming dates

Sources

Same day

Related