fun, strange holidays grouped by month

Start Your Own Country Day

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Today is Start Your Own Country Day. According to legend, it was introduced at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City to honor “those free-spirited souls who dared to hope and believe in a better world where they too could declare any land their own.”

start your own country

We’ve been unable to confirm that account. No matter its origin, Start Your Own Country Day promotes awareness that, within certain parameters, it is possible to form a micronation.

That might sound appealing to anyone who is unhappy about the outcome of, say, a recent election, but doesn’t want to move to Canada because it’s too cold up there, and packing is a miserable task.

But there is more involved than not paying taxes and designing a fun yet meaningful flag. The new nation must provide and maintain roads, power, emergency services, sewage treatment, waterworks, telecommunications infrastructure, and Internet service.

The 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States declared that a nation requires four things to exist: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Let’s take a look at two people who’ve pursued their dreams of telling the whole world, “You’re not the boss of me!”

The Republic of Kugelmugel

start your own country day

The lack of building permits for the construction of a spherical house turned Edwin Lipburger from an artist into a dissident and the president of his one-person nation, bordered on all sides by Vienna, Austria, yet independent of it. The house itself contained the country of Kugelmugel and its sole inhabitant.

Lipburger was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison for refusing to pay taxes and, among other things, for printing his own stamps. Public sympathy for the artist persuaded the Austrian president to pardon him and halt the demolition of his house.

Lipburger now lives in exile in Vienna, while his structure has been relocated to the nearby Wiener Prater amusement park, where it has become a tourist attraction. Though barbed wire surrounds the Republic of Kugelmugel, it is still possible to get a glimpse of the spherical nation by looking through the fence.

The Principality of Hutt River

start your own country

Prince Leonard Casley seceded from Australia on April 21st, 1970, founding the Principality of Hutt River as part of an agricultural protest. The sovereign state claimed to pay no taxes but donated an equivalent sum to the Australian government each year, which apparently didn’t care what Leonard wrote in the memo line as long as it got the check. The kingdom lasted 50 years.

Like the Republic of Kugelmugel, the Principality of Hutt River issued its own stamps. It also minted coins, printed banknotes, and sold commemorative teaspoons, cufflinks, postcards, magnets, tie clips, letter openers, and other items, many of which can still be found online on eBay and CoinsNB.

What this nation had going for it was its size. Situated 595 kilometers north of Perth, it covered about 75 square kilometers — 18,500 acres — of land, roughly the size of Hong Kong. Even if the UN didn’t recognize the country’s presence, Google did. The Principality of Hutt River was one of the few micronations to appear on Google Maps. (As of this writing, it still does. Shh, don’t tell Google!)

Visitors paid a small fee and had their passports stamped upon arrival. Prince Leonard said he hosted thousands of tourists each year. Reviewers described Hutt River’s campground accommodations as “rustic.” Despite its closure, TripAdvisor still rates it “#620 of 2,913 things to do in Western Australia,” which doesn’t seem like a ringing endorsement for tourism in the area. Luckily, nearby Kalbarri offers river cruises and whale watching as a balm for adventurers who’ve driven 30 kilometers on a dusty road in search of a micronation only to arrive at a locked gate and dirt as far as the eye can see.

The story of the realm’s end is a sad one. Leonard abdicated the throne in favor of his son Graeme in 2017 and passed away in 2019 at the age of 93. Eighteen months later, Graeme dissolved the principality. Per its official website:

In June 2017, the West Australian Supreme Court ruled against Prince Leonard following litigation initiated by the Australian Taxation Office, which asserted that Prince Leonard owed a substantial sum. After Prince Leonard’s passing, it became evident that the ATO intended to foreclose and sell the land to recover the claimed debt.

In August 2020, HRH Prince Graeme declared that, after consulting with the Casley Royal Family, due to the prevailing circumstances all Principality staff and assets would be relocated, and the land returned to agricultural use in Western Australia.

Kugelmugel and Hutt River aside, many micronations still exist. Before you pack your bags, check out Wikivoyage, Atlas Obscura, or NomadMania, but be warned: these sites will take you down an hours-long rabbit hole if you let them. Still married to ink on paper? Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations is the only printed travel guide of its kind. It was published in 2006, so it pays to call ahead for current travel information before you trek to a country like Molossia, which has been at war with East Germany since 1983 and pegs its currency to the value of Pillsbury cookie dough.

If you’re feeling inspired, check out this handy online guide to starting a micronation, complete with Model Constitutional Code. Whether you choose to celebrate today by creating a new country, traveling to one, or just relaxing at home, have a happy Start Your Own Country Day!

Update: A year after we first posted about this holiday in 2017, we were cited as a source in The Times Herald [paywall-free link here]. We know a “micromention” isn’t as cool as a micronation, but we’ll take it!

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World Hello Day

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world hello day

November 21st is World Hello Day, also known as Greet Ten People for Peace. It was founded in 1973 by brothers Brian and Michael McCormack, university students at the time,  in response to the Yom Kippur War.

“We wanted to do something to celebrate the importance of personal communication to preserving peace,” Michael McCormack later explained. They wrote to world leaders, asking them to support the new holiday. To date, they have received 83 letters of support from world leaders, Nobel Prize winners, authors and entertainers. Citizens in 180 countries have taken part in World Hello Day.

world hello day

Kofi Annan

Anyone can participate in World Hello Day. The McCormack brothers’ goal was that everyone say hello to ten strangers to encourage dialogue, understanding and friendship between people of diverse backgrounds.

world hello day

Gene Roddenberry

Around the globe, people use World Hello Day as an opportunity to express their desire for unity and peace.  With a simple greeting, they send a message to leaders, encouraging them to use diplomacy rather than force to settle conflicts. The occasion helps each person realize he or she is an instrument of change and can contribute to creating a more inclusive society.

Each time you say hello to a stranger, your heart acknowledges over and over again that we are all family. — Suzy Kassem

Happy World Hello Day! Get out there and say hi to some friends you haven’t met yet.

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Pushbutton Phone Day

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On November 18, 1963, the first pushbutton telephone went on sale to the public. It may seem quaint now in the age of mobile phones, when many of us don’t even have landlines anymore. But this was cutting-edge technology in its day and remains an integral part of telecommunications history.

Industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, working under contract to Bell Systems, devised the form of the Touch Tone™ Model 1500 telephone with the help of wooden models like this one.

pushbutton phone day

Tone dialing had been in use within Bell Systems’ switching network for several years. With the introduction of the Model 1500, tone dialing was made available to the general public. It featured the same footprint and handset as its predecessor but replaced the rotary dial with a 10-button keypad. (It had no # and * buttons; those keys were added in 1968 with the Model 2500.)

Bell set the stage for the rotary dial phone’s replacement when it showcased the new pushbutton phone’s speed and convenience at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, Washington.

The Model 1500 was a natural evolution of the rotary dial telephone, which had represented a transformational piece of technology when it supplanted the old switchboard method of placing calls 44 years earlier. Prior to 1919, operators at centrally-located switchboards manually connected calls by inserting a pair of phone plugs into the appropriate jacks.

pushbutton phone day

A phone subscriber lifted the receiver off the hook and asked the operator to place a call. If the requested number was located on the operator’s switchboard, she would connect the call by plugging the ringing cord into the jack corresponding to the called customer’s line. If that line was on a different switchboard or in a different central office, the operator plugged into the trunk for the destination switchboard or office and asked the operator who answered (known as the “B” operator) to connect the call.

Operators were in the perfect position to listen in on conversations. Their assistance was required for anything other than calling telephones across a common party line. Back then, “party line” did not refer to one of the infamous 900 numbers that pegged credit card limits in the 1980s. (Here’s a fun compilation of ads for those.) Party lines were shared by residents, especially in rural areas, where demand outstripped supply, and were notorious for neighbors monitoring each others’ conversations for gossip fodder.

pushbutton phone day

First dial phone–1919

Rotary dial service eliminated the need for human switchboard operators. An “off-hook condition” was immediately detected when a caller lifted the handset. The sound of the dial tone signaled that the automatic exchange was ready to receive dialed digits. Pulse tones defined by the length of each rotation of the dial were processed, and a connection was established to the destination telephone.

Pushbutton Phone Day

The touch-tone system introduced in 1963 greatly improved upon the speed of the rotary dial’s pulse method of routing calls. It also entertained teenagers who enjoyed keying songs into their parents’ phones using its musical notes. This sometimes resulted in huge phone bills when one of those tunes happened to begin with a 1 or a number within a local area code that incurred long-distance charges.

The Pushbutton Telephone Songbook was published in 1971 to address the problem of how to safely play songs without incurring long-distance charges. The book sold more than 500,000 copies.PushButton Phone Day

Today’s cellular phones don’t need a dial tone because they parse and send whole phone numbers at once. Some include a simulated dial tone as a familiar aural cue to the owner that a “line” is available. Jitterbug phones, marketed directly to seniors, incorporate this comforting feature.

For the most part, these technologies are rapidly fading from memory. The phone is more ubiquitous than ever, having made the leap from our homes into our pockets. Many young people have never touched a rotary phone or heard a dial tone. So today, we salute the innovations that brought us to this moment in time.

Happy Pushbutton Phone Day!

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George Spelvin Day

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George Spelvin DayToday is George Spelvin Day. Who is he, and why does he have his own day? He was “born” on November 15, 1886, and is still going strong. How is that possible?

George Spelvin began as a pseudonym used in theatrical playbills to hide the fact that a performer was “doubling“—playing two roles in a play or musical. Actors changed costumes and makeup, sometimes adding a second, disguised photo to the program, all to (hopefully) fool theatergoers. Listing a player’s name twice would ruin the effect.

Sometimes, a playwright or director added a fictitious actor and role to the cast list to trick audience members into thinking the character would appear. This misdirection could make a plot twist or other device harder to figure out, thus making it more effective and entertaining.

George Spelvin first appeared on a Broadway Playbill on November 15, 1886, opening night of Karl the Peddler, a play by Charles A. Gardiner. In 1906, Winchell Smith “cast” him in Brewster’s Millions. After the show’s success, Smith considered Spelvin a good luck charm and added him to many other shows.

Spelvin appeared in the credits of films such as D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) and the Academy Award-winning From Here to Eternity (1953). He appeared on television and in soap operas, including The Guiding Light and Edge of Night. He called himself George Spelvinsky, Georges Spelvinet, Giorgio Spelvino, or Gregor Spelvanovich for European roles.

Over time, the Spelvin family expanded. George Spelvin, Jr. shared billing with his “father” in the 1929 play Kibitzer. Georgette Spelvin debuted in the short-lived Broadway production of Love Girl (1922). The clan had a “black sheep” as well: Georgina Spelvin, used by porn actress Chele Welsh as her screen name in adult films such as The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) and mainstream fare like Police Academy (1984).

Although doubling has lost its stigma, pseudonyms remain popular. Actors’ Equity Association members wishing to work under a non-union contract may use alternate names to avoid fines and possible revocation of union membership. Performers who become unhappy while shooting a movie may try to substitute a false name in the credits to disassociate themselves from a potential box office bomb.

The Spelvin name has grown so well-known that it has become an in-joke for sophisticated audiences. (Alan Smithee, used by disgruntled directors, enjoys a similar status among moviegoers.) Spelvin’s British counterparts are Mr. F. Anney, Mr. Bart, and Walter Plinge, who has his own holiday on December 2nd.

Have a happy George Spelvin Day!

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