Ernő Rubik's Birthday
Next: July 13, 2027
One cube, endless twists.
The story
Where it comes from
Ernő Rubik was born in Budapest on 13 July 1944, and this Story marks his birthday. The son of a poet and a glider manufacturer, he studied sculpture and architecture and became a professor of design in Budapest, where his hobby was building geometric models. One of them was a cube of 27 wooden blocks that could twist on a central axis. It proved a useful tool for teaching algebra, and in late 1977 Hungary's state trading company began selling it. By 1980 Rubik's Cube was on sale around the world.
How it's celebrated
There is no formal observance, but it is a fine day to find an old cube in a drawer and try again, or to teach a child how to finish the first layer. Speedcubers meet at official competitions held around the world under the World Cube Association, where the best solve the classic cube in a few seconds.
Did you know
- A scrambled cube can be in any one of about 43 quintillion arrangements, and only one of them is solved.
- It took Rubik himself about a month to work out how to solve his first cube.
- At the 2025 World Championship of the World Cube Association, Chinese speedcubers Yiheng Wang and Xuanyi Geng took first and second place in the classic 3x3 event.
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