Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
Air Day
Take a deep breath. Air keeps us alive. With the notable exception of anaerobic bacteria, living things need oxygen to survive. Not pure oxygen, mind you. That would be too much of a good thing. Air (usually) has just the right mix of gases and, for that, we owe it a debt of gratitude. If […]
International Accounting Day
What’s so exciting about International Accounting Day? On November 10, 1494, Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli published “Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita” (Everything About Arithmetic, Geometry and Proportion). It included a detailed description of double-entry bookkeeping, called the Method of Venice. Although this technique had been practiced for centuries, Pacioli’s treatise was the […]
Chaos Never Dies Day
Today is Chaos Never Dies Day. At least, I think it is. When I first wrote about this unofficial holiday a decade ago, I had no idea I’d get tangled up in that chaos thanks to the Internet and a Florida man’s radio talk show. (More on that later.) Why this holiday? Since no one has […]
International Tongue Twister Day
Today is International Tongue Twister Day. Celebrate with these doozies chosen for their fun and difficulty. Will they leave you speechless? Read aloud and repeat, if you dare. In 2013, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) tripped up volunteers with the following word combination, which they declared the most difficult tongue twister in […]
National Nachos Day
Today is National Nachos Day and should not be confused with International Day of the Nacho (October 21) or with the International Nacho Festival (October 13-15). To be honest, we’re a bit confused ourselves. To get to the bottom of this delicious mystery, let’s dig in (sorry). Although we’re not sure why it’s celebrated on […]
Plan Your Epitaph Day
Depending on how you view it, a tombstone is your last chance to say goodbye, crack a joke, be profound, or otherwise make cemetery visitors imagine you were cool and wish they’d known you before they move on to visit their Nana’s weed-covered resting place. Plan Your Epitaph Day was created by Lance Hardie in […]
National Author’s Day
Today is National Author’s Day. In 1928, teacher Nellie Verne Burt McPherson suggested the creation of a holiday dedicated to American authors at a meeting of the Bement, Illinois, Women’s Club. McPherson was inspired by an experience she’d had more than a decade earlier while lying in a hospital recuperating from an illness. She’d written […]
National Magic Day
Everybody knows today is Halloween. But it’s also National Magic Day, when members of the Society of American Magicians (SAM) and many other groups celebrate by offering free magic performances for kids, the ill, the elderly, and shut-ins. Why is this holiday celebrated today? In 1938, a Chicago member of SAM proposed a holiday to honor Harry […]
Create a Great Funeral Day
“Funerals are the party no one wants to plan.” So says Gail Rubin, a death services planner, radio host, and leader of the Albuquerque chapter of Death Café. She’s been called the Doyenne of Death and liked it so much, she trademarked it. She runs a site called A Good Goodbye – Funeral Planning for Those Who […]
National Cat Day (and International Internet Day)
Today is International Internet National Cat Day because I said so! Hell, yeah, it’s National Cat Day! Sure, it’s International Internet Day, too. On October 29, 1969, a few months after Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, the first message was sent across the Internet. The system crashed after the first two letters of the word “login” […]