Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
Saint Swithin’s Day
Today is Saint Swithin’s Day, a Roman Catholic feast day dedicated to the ninth-century Saxon Bishop of Winchester. (Spellings of his surname have varied. Swithin is correct in modern English, while Swithun was the spelling of choice in Old English. In the original Saxon language, according to Butler’s The Lives of the Saints, it was spelled Swithum.) […]
Beans ‘n’ Franks Day
Today is Beans ‘n’ Franks Day. July is National Hot Dog Month. July 14 is National Hot Dog Day. We’ve no idea when hot dogs and baked beans were first combined. The 500th birthday of the frankfurter was celebrated in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1987. Citizens of Vienna (Wien), Austria, dispute Frankfurt’s claim, citing their city’s name as […]
National Simplicity Day
July 12, 2025, is the 208th anniversary of author and consummate liar Henry David Thoreau’s birth. His name is held in high regard, and his work evokes a fondness and nostalgia in readers and inspirational-quote-mongers. Thoreau’s account of his retreat into nature and the wisdom it brought him is largely fictional. At Worldwide Weird Holidays, […]
July 11 is Cheer Up the Lonely Day
Today is Cheer Up the Lonely Day, created by Francis Pesek of Detroit, Michigan. His daughter L.J. Pesek described him as “a quiet, kind, wonderful man who had a heart of gold.” “He got the idea as a way of promoting kindness toward others who were lonely or forgotten as shut-ins or in nursing homes with […]
July 10 is Clerihew Day
Today is Clerihew Day, a holiday that celebrates the birthday of British author and journalist Edmund Clerihew Bentley (July 10, 1875 – March 30, 1956), who invented the purposefully silly type of rhyming verse that bears his middle name. A clerihew consists of four lines in AA, BB rhyming couplets. (The first and second lines […]
Leap Year Only Flitch Day
July 9, 2025: Flitch Day awards a side of bacon to a couple still in love after a year and a day of marriage. It is only celebrated every leap year, so the next one will take place in 2028. Here’s the post for last year, which was a momentous occasion. July 9, 2024: Today […]
July 8 is the Soapy Smith Wake
Today is the 43rd annual Soapy Smith Wake. Since 1974, descendants of con man Jefferson “Soapy” Smith have held an annual wake for him on the anniversary of his murder in Skagway, Alaska, on July 8, 1898. Jefferson Smith lived to prove the axiom, “A fool and his money are soon parted.” He gained his […]
Nettie Stevens Day
Nettie Stevens Day celebrates the scientist who discovered XX and XY chromosomes determine sex. But few know of her contributions because the credit went to a man — who got it wrong. Nettie Stevens studied mealworms and found that a male’s sperm carried both X and Y chromosomes, while a female’s eggs contained only X […]
July 6 is Umbrella Cover Day
Today is Umbrella Cover Day. Although the holiday got its start in 2014, its roots reach back to 1996, when Maine native Nancy 3. Hoffman founded the Umbrella Cover Museum, with the motto “Celebrate the Mundane,” dedicating it to “finding wonder and beauty in the simplest of things.” Hoffman changed her middle name from Arlene […]
Ducktona 500
Today marks the 36th annual Ducktona 500 in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, which is always held on the first Sunday in July. Hundreds of numbered rubber duckies will be dumped into the Sheboygan River and race downstream to win $1,000 for the lucky holder of the corresponding raffle ticket. For 26 of those years, the races were illegal. In 2013, […]