fun, strange holidays grouped by month

May 21 is Sister Maria Hummel Day

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sister maria hummel day

Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel

Today is Sister Maria Hummel Day, which celebrates the birth in 1909 of Berta Hummel, a German girl whose family recognized and encouraged her developing artistic talent from early childhood.

She entered Munich’s Academy of Applied Arts in 1927, when few German women could pursue higher education. After graduating in 1931 with top honors, she chose to become a nun in the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Siessen and assumed the name of Sister Maria Innocentia.

She taught art at a school run by the convent and painted in her spare time. When the sisters noticed her portraits of children, they convinced her to let a religious publishing company print and sell them as postcards. Hummel later drew angels with gowns covered in slightly askew Stars of David and designed a symbol for the convent chapel in 1938 that united the Old and New Testaments by placing a cross behind a menorah.

In 1934, Franz Goebel, the owner of W. Goebel Porcelain Works, saw some of the postcards and was struck with the idea of rendering them in three dimensions. He approached Hummel, who didn’t want her work mass-produced as knick-knacks. She acquiesced at the insistence of the convent, which gave Goebel sole rights to manufacture the figurines. Royalties from sales would help finance its good works for 80 years.

Goebel displayed them at the 1935 Leipzig Trade Fair, an international trade show. Goebel had rightly surmised that sweet and innocent figurines of boys, girls, and angels would attract people weary of poverty and war. Ten years later, American soldiers carried them home after World War II, making them popular in the United States.

One person who was most definitely not a fan of Hummel: Adolf Hitler. In 1937, she released a painting titled “The Volunteers,” which depicted two young, disheveled goose-stepping brownshirts with laceless boots, one of whom carried a rifle upside down. Under them, she wrote the caption, “Dear Fatherland, let there be peace!”

Nazi newspaper Der SA-Mann declared that the children Hummel painted looked like “wasserköpfige und klumpfüßige Dreckspatzen,” which loosely translates to  “hydrocephalic, club-footed goblins.” Although a more literal translation would be “water-headed,
club-footed mudlarks,” we think you get the idea.

sister maria hummel day

Volunteers, 1990

The sale of Hummel figurines was banned within Germany, but export was permitted to generate profits from foreign markets. Her publishers were denied paper supplies; galleries were forbidden to exhibit her paintings. In 1940, the sisters were kicked out of the convent so a troop of Nazi soldiers could quarter there.

Forty of the 250 nuns were allowed to remain in a confined area with no heat. After three months at her childhood home, Hummel decided to return, with the blessing of the Mother Superior. Money earned from the sale of her artwork was the convent’s sole source of income.

In 1944, she contracted tuberculosis and went to a sanatorium for several months. Shortly after she returned, French troops liberated the convent. But her health worsened, and she died on November 6, 1946, at the age of 37. She was buried on the convent grounds.

Although we can find no surviving print of “The Volunteers,” the story of Sister Hummel’s most provocative artwork did not end after her death. In 1990, the rifle was righted, the shirt color changed, and her sad boys were cast, without irony, as cheerful patriots for a United States Desert Storm Edition.

We’re pretty sure Sister Maria Hummel would disapprove of that knick-knack.

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May Ray Day

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May Ray DayToday is May Ray Day. Its goal is simple. If you look out the window and it’s sunny, go outside and enjoy it. (Common sense tip: If you’re in the middle of a business meeting, driving a car, or standing anywhere above the first floor, wait for a more appropriate time and place to step outside.)

I have been unable to determine the creator of May Ray Day. It could be someone who sells sunscreen or solar panels or who worships the sun and wants to indoctrinate others to believe in Ra, Helios, Sol, Utu, or the lesser-known gods of Melanoma, Squamous, and Basal Cell.

May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month. About 86 percent of melanomas and 90 percent of other skin cancers are associated with exposure to UV radiation. Before you head out, read these myth-busting facts from the Skin Cancer Foundation. We’ve thrown in one about tanning beds for good measure.

Myth: UVB radiation is a good source of vitamin D.

Fact: We can produce only a limited amount of vitamin D from UVB radiation. For Caucasians, that limit is reached after just five to 10 minutes of midday sun exposure. After reaching the limit, further exposure will not increase the amount of vitamin D in the body. Rather, it has the opposite effect: the vitamin D stored in the body begins to break down, leading to lower vitamin D levels. 

Myth: Sun exposure is the only source of vitamin D.

Fact: Vitamin D can be obtained from oily fish (like salmon, fresh tuna, trout and sardines) and cod liver oil, as well as from fortified orange juice and milk, yogurts, and some cereals. Supplements are readily available and inexpensive.

Myth: Tanning beds are a healthy option for boosting vitamin D levels.

Fact: The indoor tanning industry often makes the false claim that indoor tanning is helpful for vitamin D production. In reality, vitamin D is received through exposure to UVB rays; the bulbs used in tanning beds mainly emit UVA rays. Tanning beds are a known carcinogen. Just one indoor UV tanning session increases users’ chances of developing melanoma by 20 percent, and each additional session during the same year boosts the risk almost another two percent. 

So apply a liberal amount of broad-spectrum sunblock, put on your sunglasses, and don a wide-brimmed hat before venturing outside. (If it’s raining, don’t worry. There are plenty of days left in May. One of them will surely be sunny.)

Sun responsibly and have a happy May Ray Day!

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May 17 is National Walnut Day

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national walnut dayToday is National Walnut Day, created in 1949 by the Walnut Marketing Board, now known as the California Walnut Board. Supposedly, in March of 1958, Senator William Knowland proposed the holiday, which President Dwight D. Eisenhower later affirmed.

I spent an hour trying to confirm that. I found no such proclamation or proposal beyond publication in the Congressional Record of remarks Knowland gave on March 21, 1958. It has nothing to do with walnuts. (You could check it out for yourself, but I don’t recommend it.)

It looks like a feat of marketing by the Board that has paid dividends in the pages of Google results that parrot the story as truth. But it gets better: the California Walnut Board cites a holiday blog as the source of its information. It’s the circle of life online: an ourobouros of unreliable sources forever (happily) eating its own tail. But I digress.

Most walnuts come from the Persian or English tree, Juglans regia, originally grown in Asia and now cultivated around the world. The lesser-known eastern black walnut tree, Juglans nigra, and butternut or white walnut tree, Juglans cinerea, are native to eastern North America.

According to A Latin Dictionary, the genus gets its name from the Latin word for walnut tree,  jūglans, which is a contraction of  Jōvis glans, which translates to “nut of [the god] Jupiter.” Perhaps that explains why many sites claim the arginine found in walnuts dilates blood vessels and increases blood flow, causing erections. (Don’t munch a handful before a business meeting.)

Black walnut has been hailed by some as a miracle cure because of its alleged ability to kill a parasite that is supposedly responsible for cancer. No word on whether it works: We can’t get anyone who used it to answer our calls.

In China, walnuts are prized for a different reason. In 2012, Reuters reported that a secondary market in “cultural playthings” had emerged as a result of weak or negative returns in the traditional stock market.

Once the toys of China’s imperial court, walnuts have become popular among the wealthy, who see them as a status symbol as well as an investment. They are collected in pairs and rotated in one’s hand to improve circulation.

Collector Kou Baojun in Beijing told Reuters that the larger, older, and more symmetrical the walnuts are, the more highly they are valued and can cost tens of thousands of dollars. He owns more than 30 pairs, most of which are over a century old and have become burnished from years of being polished in the palm.

“Look how well these have aged,” Kou said. “Playing with these kinds of walnuts isn’t for ordinary people.”

Grab a pair and have a happy National Walnut Day!

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National Sea Monkey Day

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Today is National Sea Monkey Day, also known as Sea-Monkey Day. In 1957, entrepreneur Harold von Braunhut noticed that desiccated brine shrimp were able to survive for extended periods of time in a suspended state known as cryptobiosis.

The result was a novelty item called Instant Life that could be reconstituted and grown in water. It was a neat, slightly creepy trick which caused many children to wonder if spontaneous generation was possible, and, if so, what might be swimming around in their bathwater at any given time. The product required a rethink.

With the assistance of marine biologist Anthony D’Agostino, von Braunhut developed a type of brine shrimp that could more easily withstand shipping and hatch more successfully. He engaged cartoonist Joe Orlando to illustrate comic book advertisements and rebranded the shrimp as “Amazing Sea-Monkeys.”

National Sea Monkey Day

Expectation…

national sea monkeys day

…meets reality.

It may not surprise you to hear that sea-monkeys are not, in fact, monkeys. These tiny crustaceans don’t need the packet of “Mating Powder” included in kits because they can reproduce asexually when necessary. (That may help explain why they’ve been around for 100 million years.) They start life with one eye and grow two more. A female’s uterus can hold up to 200 eggs — don’t ask us who counted — and the male has two reproductive organs.

This was von Braunhut’s most financially successful invention, but not his only one. He held nearly 200 patents and was the creator of X-Ray Specs, Crazy Crabs, Amazing Hair-Raising Monsters, and the Invisible Goldfish, an empty bowl accompanied by the “100% guarantee” that no fish will ever appear. (The scope of the grift is breathtaking.)

He also designed the Kiyoga Agent M5 “Steel Cobra,” a pen-sized weapon that telescoped into a metal baton, marketing it as the most effective self-defense tool available without a license. Burt Reynolds used it to whip some bad guys in his 1981 movie, “Sharkey’s Machine.”

It soon attracted the kind of publicity its inventor preferred to avoid. In 1987, Richard Girnt Butler, chief of the Aryan Nations, then considered the country’s most dangerous white supremacist group, faced charges of plotting to murder federal officials and overthrow the U.S. government. He enclosed a Kiyoga brochure in a fundraising letter, stating that the “manufacturer has made a pledge of $25 to my defense fund for each one sold to Aryan Nations supporters.”

It was an outrageous claim that drew attention to von Braunhut. Butler soon confirmed to a reporter at the Spokane, Washington-based Spokesman-Review that the inventor was an old pal and “member of the Aryan race who has supported us quite a few years.”

The following year, The Washington Post revealed von Braunhut had helped purchase firearms for members of a Ku Klux Klan group in Ohio. It also reported that “the 62-year-old supporter of neo-Nazi groups was born and raised in New York City as Harold Nathan Braunhut, a Jew,” going so far as to track down a cousin who said he probably attended his bar mitzvah. Harold Nathan Braunhut added von to his name as an adult in order to sound more Germanic.

According to the Los Angeles Times, rumors had swirled about von Braunhut’s ethnicity for years. Floyd Cochran, former spokesman for the Aryan Nations, called him a misfit with “a rather large nose for a person of the Aryan Nations,” adding, “He’d give long speeches about numerology and he’d make references to the pyramids. It just didn’t play very well.” No doubt his donations kept him in good stead. Cochran wasn’t informed how much von Braunhut contributed, but said Butler called upon him often.

Al Davis of Larami Limited, which held the Sea Monkeys license in 1988, stated he called von Braunhut after receiving calls from retailers and distributors worried that profits were funding racist groups. “When I called Harold on this,” Davis said, “he said something to me I find hard to believe to this day. ‘Al,’ he said, ‘Hitler wasn’t a bad guy. He just received bad press.'”

News clippings show von Braunhut attended the annual Aryan Nations Congress held in Idaho until at least 1995. He was often a featured speaker and was sometimes given the honor of lighting the ceremonial cross. In December 1995, von Braunhut, who claimed to be an ordained priest and often wore a clerical collar to Aryan Nations meetings, presided over the funeral of Betty Butler, the chief’s wife. Although he denied writing or distributing them, the return address for National Anti-Zionist Institute (NAZI) newsletters was the same P.O. box used to receive orders for Sea-Monkey kits.

Von Braunhut died in 2003 at the age of 77. His Sea-Monkeys remain a multimillion-dollar brand and have attracted headlines again. On April 15, 2016, the New York Times published an article about the protracted legal battle between his widow, Yolanda Signorelli, an actress best known for her role in the 1967 bondage film Venus in Furs, and Big Time, the company to whom she licensed certain rights a few years after her husband’s death.

The contract had specified that Big Time would buy the packets of critters from her in exchange for the right to package and distribute the product and supplies, such as aquariums and other add-ons. There was a provision that would allow it to buy her company, including the secret formula, for a one-time fee of $5 million upfront and $5 million more to be paid in installments.

In 2013, Big Time informed Signorelli that it considered its payments for the packets to have been a layaway plan, concluded that it owned the Sea-Monkeys franchise, and began importing knockoff brine shrimp from China. She sued for breach of contract. The case dragged on for many years, ending in an undisclosed settlement. We’ll never see the result — much like an invisible goldfish. Likewise, Instant Life, a three-part documentary series shown at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, is unavailable to stream at this time.

And that, boys and girls, is the true story of how a bigot and his brine shrimp contributed to race hatred and the scourge of child labor in Asia.

Sources:

The Sea Monkeys and the White Supremacist, Los Angeles Times
The Battle over the Sea-Monkey Fortune, New York Times
Hitler and the Sea-Monkeys, Southern Poverty Law Center
Instant Life, Sundance Festival Blog
Contrasts of a Private Persona, Washington Post

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