Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
January 22 is National Hot Sauce Day
Today is National Hot Sauce Day. It celebrates the birthday in 1865 of Wilbur Scoville, who created a method to determine a pepper’s spiciness that is still in use today. Scoville, an American chemist, devised the system in 1912. It measures the concentration of capsaicin, the active component that gives chilies their spicy taste, using […]
October 14 is national lowercase day
While English majors past, present, and future may grind their teeth in frustration, freewheeling texters will love today’s holiday: national lowercase day! This is the day to turn your back on the rules of capitalization if you were ever facing them at all. This fun, unofficial holiday has no clear author or point of origin. We […]
April 23 is Talk Like Shakespeare Day
Did you miss Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day on January 24th? Do you need to recapture the fun you had on International Talk Like William Shatner Day on March 22nd? Rejoice! Today is Talk Like Shakespeare Day, begun in 2009 by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater to celebrate the Bard’s birthday. Church records confirm that William […]
2019 FWDEqual Pay Day 2019
Equal Pay Day was established in 1996 to illustrate how far into the new year a woman must work to earn the same wages that a man, by dint of having been born with a penis, earned in the previous year. Because Census data isn’t released until later in the year, Equal Pay Day has long […]
Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day
Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, also known as BWAD, is celebrated on the last Monday in January. It was created in 2001 by Jim Webster of Spirit 95.1 FM in Bloomington, IN. In the past, the radio station has sponsored sports, sculpture and fashion design contests. Sealed Air Corporation’s Bubble Wrap Competition for Young Inventors awarded top […]
December 14 is Monkey Day
Monkey Day was started in 2000 when Michigan State University art student Casey Sorrow scribbled “Monkey Day” on a friend’s calendar. When the day (December 14) arrived, Sorrow and his buddies were inspired to don costumes, mimic baboon cries and otherwise imitate a bunch of monkeys. That day a tradition was born. What may have begun as […]
November 23 is TARDIS Day
On November 23, 1963, the BBC aired the first episode of its new science fiction series about a mysterious man and his time machine. (Why did it look like a British police box? Because its chameleon circuit jammed after it landed in 1960s England, of course.) No one could have predicted that Doctor Who would go […]
November 13 is Sadie Hawkins Day
Today is Sadie Hawkins Day, an American rite-of-passage for generations of teenagers. Misogynistic, antiquated and awkward for all involved, the Sadie Hawkins Dance supposedly empowers girls to switch gender roles and ask out the boys. Did we mention it’s misogynistic and antiquated? The true origin is much, much worse. Sadie Hawkins was a character created […]
November 9 is Chaos Never Dies Day
Today is Chaos Never Dies Day. That much is certain. But should it be called National Chaos Never Dies Day? It seems like there’s enough chaos to call for an international celebration. No reason to have Chaos Awareness Month, though: we are in touch with it on a daily basis. Why today? No one has claimed […]
September 4 is Eat an Extra Dessert Day
Today is Eat an Extra Dessert Day, always celebrated on September 4th. We don’t know who started it or when, but we sincerely hope it will go on forever because, let’s face it, the only thing better than one dessert is two. We’re neither mathematicians nor philosophers, but we wonder: Is there such a thing […]