April 18 is Champions’ Day

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In 1936, Michigan governor Frank Fitzgerald and Detroit mayor Frank Couzens declared April 18th would henceforth be known as Champions’ Day, to honor an outstanding sports season.

The Lions wonchampions' day their first NFL championship, the Tigers won their first World Series and the Red Wings won their first NHL championship. In addition, Detroit’s own Joe Louis dominated boxing and several Olympic athletes including gold medalist Richard Degener hailed from the city.

Six hundred fans paid $3 per ticket to attend the banquet at the Detroit Masonic Temple. Players from every team sport spoke at the dinner, which was broadcast live on the WXYZ-AM radio station. Joe Louis attended but didn’t speak. Many in the media nicknamed Detroit the “City of Champions.”

Three months later, on July 16, 1936, a plaque with the signatures of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and every state governor was presented to the city.

The wooden plaque had five figures carved across the bottom. In the original plan, the images were to depict a boxer, a power boat racer, a baseball player, football kicker and hockey player.

On June 19, 1936, less than a month before the presentation, Joe Louis suffered the first defeat of his career to Max Schmeling. As a result, the boxer carved onto the plaque was replaced with a diver. Twenty-four wins mattered less than one loss.

champions' day

Could this be one of the reasons Champions’ Day quickly disappeared? After a few losses, did it become an unwelcome reminder of what had been? According to sports historian Charles Avison, World War II was a major factor in the day being forgotten.

In 2014, sports fan Will McDowell happened upon the story of Champions’ Day while doing research for an app he was designing. He has revived the celebration with help from the Detroit Drunken Historical Society.

Champions’ Day festivities begin with an event at the Detroit Historical Museum, where the 1936 plaque is on display. Charles Avison will speak and the museum staff will show memorabilia from its archives that are not exhibited to the public. Discussion will continue at a local bar. Tipplers and teetotalers are welcome.

Thank you, Will McDowell, for bringing this holiday back to life. (Any chance we could Scotch-tape a certain prize fighter’s image on the bottom of that plaque?) Happy Champions’ Day, everybody!

Copyright © 2017 Worldwide Weird Holidays

 

April 16 is National Stress Awareness Day

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national stress awareness dayToday is National Stress Awareness Day. It was created in 1992 by Dr. Morton Orman of the Health Resource Network, a nonprofit health education organization.

We’re all aware of stress. Many of us are steeped in it right now. Acute stress can be a positive thing, allowing us to react to upsetting or dangerous situations. But when our lives are filled with seemingly endless problems and anxieties, stress becomes chronic, putting us on constant high alert and exhausting our bodies and minds over time.

Sometimes the most stressful—and inadvertently hilarious—advice doctors, friends and strangers can give is that we must reduce stress. Life is undeniably chaotic. If you can drop everything and move to Bora Bora, by all means, do that.

The rest of us can breathe deeply, look at the sky, take a walk, eat a cookie, hug somebody, draw a bubble bath, watch YouTube clips of kittens. It may not be a permanent fix, but we know what calms us down and makes us happy in the moment.

By the way, if you prefer kale to cookies, be our guest. One thing we don’t recommend right now is picking up a book on stress relief. Maybe tomorrow. Today, have a happy National Stress Awareness Day. Unless you don’t feel like it. No pressure.

Copyright © 2017 Worldwide Weird Holidays

April 15 is McDonald’s Day

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Today is McDonald’s Day. It commemorates the day in 1955 when Ray Kroc put his stamp on a fast-food chain and made it into one of the most successful franchises on Earth.

In 1940, brothers Dick and Mac McDonald opened a barbeque joint in San Bernadino, CA. Eight years later, they introduced the “Speedee Service System,” which used assembly-line principles to deliver customer orders as quickly as possible.

They placed restaurants along major roadways so travelers would be able to make quick stops, knowing the burgers would taste the same at every location. The melding of “fast food” with “comfort food” proved enormously popular.

By 1955, the brothers had eight locations and claimed to have sold more than 15 million hamburgers. (McDonald’s signs with tote boards stopped adding after reaching 99 billion in 1993 because there were only two spaces for numbers.)

Kroc opened his first McDonald’s in Des Plaines, Illinois, using the ad below. The first day’s sales totaled $366.12.

mcdonald's day

 

Kroc wanted to aggressively expand the chain across the U.S. The brothers had more modest plans for their family business. He forced them out, buying the franchise for $2.7 million in 1961.

The McDonald’s lost the right to use their own name, even on their original burger stand, and left the business soon afterward. Kroc went on to make scads of money and was notorious for his tight-fisted micromanagement.

A recent biopic starring Michael Keaton let its title, The Founder, hint at the irony of Kroc’s role as usurper even as it soft-pedaled his story, perhaps in deference to the famously litigious corporation.

Like the Steve Jobs of fast food, Ray Kroc’s dickish ways still haunt us from beyond the grave. Remember how you used to be able to reach into the bag and find napkins and condiments, even a little extra of whatever that corn syrup/sludge McNugget dipping sauce is?

Now you have to go begging like Oliver Twist: “Please, sir, may I have a packet of ketchup?” Thank Kroc and his imitators for that. God forbid they lose a tiny bit of their 5,000% markup on soda. (We don’t know if that number is right but it feels true.)

So, if you choose to eat at McDonald’s today, raise a burger to Speedee, the cute mascot Kroc replaced with a creepy clown in 1967, and thank (or curse) the brothers who started it all. And ask for an extra packet of ketchup, just because.

Happy McDonald’s Day!

Copyright © 2017 Worldwide Weird Holidays

April 13 is Scrabble Day

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Today is Scrabble Day. It celebrates the birth in 1899 of Alfred Mosher Butts, inventor of the game the world knows as Scrabble.

scrabble day

Butts lost his job in the early 1930s; there wasn’t much call for an architect during the Great Depression. He worked to develop a board game that would emulate games of chance with its random choice of letters while testing the skill of its players with its elements of anagrams and crossword puzzles.

He called the game Lexiko and attempted to find a buyer, but was rejected by every company he visited. He later changed the name to Criss Cross Words and tried again but still had no luck. It seemed the game would remain a pastime for Butts, his wife—who he admitted was a better player than he—and their friends.

In 1948, he sold the rights to friend James Brunot in exchange for a small royalty on each set sold. Brunot made a couple of minor changes, tweaking the design and simplifying the rules. He renamed it Scrabble, trademarked it and set up a factory in an old schoolhouse.

He lost money until 1952 when, according to legend, a Macy’s executive played the game while on vacation and decided to sell it in the department store. Soon the orders grew too large for Brunot to fill and he sold the game to Selchow & Righter, a company that had passed on it years earlier.

Butts continued to receive royalties of about three cents per set for many years, telling a reporter, “One-third went to taxes. I gave one-third away, and the other third enabled me to have an enjoyable life.” He died on April 4, 1993, at the age of 93.

Happy Scrabble Day!

Copyright © 2017 Worldwide Weird Holidays