fun, strange holidays grouped by month

Purple Heart Day

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Today is Purple Heart Day. On August 7, 1782, at his headquarters in Newburgh, NY, General George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army, ordered the creation of a Badge of Military Merit.

purple heart day

Replica of the original badge

The badge consisted of a purple, heart-shaped piece of cloth with the word MERIT embroidered in silver across the front. It was awarded to soldiers who showed “not only instances of unusual gallantry in battle, but also extraordinary fidelity and services in any way.”

Only three soldiers who fought in the American Revolutionary War received the decoration: Elijah Churchill, William Brown, and Daniel Bissell, Jr. Afterward, it was largely forgotten until General Douglas MacArthur lobbied to revive it.

On February 22, 1932, the 200th anniversary of Washington’s birth, the U.S. War Department announced the creation of the “Order of the Purple Heart.”
purple heart day
The medal bears the image of Washington and his coat of arms. It’s presented to members of the military who have been “wounded or killed in any action against an enemy of the United States or as a result of an act of any such enemy or opposing armed forces.”

The Purple Heart has been a symbol of bravery and sacrifice since the founding of the United States. Today’s holiday serves as a reminder to honor our veterans.

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Corporate Baby Name Day

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corporate baby name dayToday is Corporate Baby Name Day. On August 6, 2001, AmericanBaby.com, a (now defunct) online resource for pregnancy and parenting advice, announced the results of a survey it had recently conducted. The poll asked six hundred respondents if they would sell the right to name their baby to a corporation for $500,000.

We’ve learned about many odd baby names over the years and tried our hand at tongue-in-cheek baby name generators here and here, but we’ve never seen anything like this.

Twenty-one percent stated they were willing to allow a conglomerate to brand their child “Pepsi,” “Friskies,” “Mop’n’Glo,” “Kleenex,” “Budweiser,” “Jeep,” “Windex,” “Tropicana,” or any product featured on the shelves at eye-level in the supermarket. Twenty-eight percent indicated they weren’t sure but would consider it.

The site created the study because of a couple in New York State who tried to auction off the name of their newborn boy on eBay. The bidding started at $500,000; there were no takers. They finally named him Zane on August 6, 2001, the deadline to add the first name to his birth certificate.

We wonder how many companies would pass up that opportunity today. No one would have it worse than the teacher at recess: “Taco Bell, stop picking on Charmin! Don’t make me come over there!”

Happy Corporate Baby Name Day!

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Curiosity Day

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Today is Curiosity Day. On August 5, 2012, NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity landed on the red planet after a procedure so complicated its engineers dubbed it Seven Minutes of Terror.

On November 26, 2011, an unmanned spacecraft carrying the 1,982-pound SUV-sized rover launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. After traveling 354 million miles, it entered Mars’ thin atmosphere, its heat shield reaching 1,600 degrees as the craft slowed from 13,000 to 1,000 mph. A supersonic parachute was deployed to decrease the speed further, to 200 mph.

The shield was jettisoned to allow the ship’s radar to “see” the surface. Rockets fired to slow the rate of descent to several feet per second. They couldn’t get too close to the surface because of the dust cloud they would create, potentially damaging Curiosity’s sensitive equipment.

To solve this problem, engineers designed a carrier they called a “sky crane,” which used the rockets to hover at a safe height while gently lowering the rover the rest of the way via cable. (Another nickname: “rover on a rope.”) Once it was deposited on the ground,  the carrier severed the tether and veered away, crashing into the surface several hundred yards away.

The process from atmospheric entry to touchdown took seven minutes. There was a 13.8-minute delay receiving signals at Mission Control; there could be no intervention from Earth, so there was no margin for error. The outcome had already occurred. Everyone involved with the $2.5 billion project waited helplessly until the signal reached them: Curiosity had made it.

The rover is equipped with a small nuclear power plant. Since landing, its instruments have discovered carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur in rock, methane in the atmosphere, and the remains of an ancient streambed. All are indicators that life may have existed there in the past.

It has also sent back some great selfies like this one, combining multiple images taken with the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of its robotic arm. ( See how here.)

curiosity day

Another of the rover’s instruments is the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), which utilizes vibrating plates to move soil samples through the chemistry module. On August 5, 2012, engineers directed them to produce musical notes and “sing” Happy Birthday to Curiosity.

We can’t help but be inspired by people with the vision, ingenuity, and gumption to take on the challenge of the seemingly impossible and not give up until they achieve it. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses the phrase “Dare Mighty Things” at the end of its Seven Minutes video. It’s taken from a speech by President Theodore Roosevelt:

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Curiosity was built to last one Martian year, 687 Earth days. As of August 5, 2025, it has been running for 4749 Earth days. We salute everyone who worked on this project. Curiosity is out there on Mars, right now, doing its thing. If we work together, is there anything humanity can’t do?

Happy Curiosity Day!

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US Coast Guard Day

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Today is U.S. Coast Guard Day.

After the Continental Navy disbanded in 1785, no provision existed in the U.S. Constitution for the establishment of a permanent maritime force.

In 1790, Alexander Hamilton, the country’s first Secretary of the Treasury, founded the service that would become the Coast Guard.

Established to enforce tariff laws and manned by crews of civilians, the fleet became known as the system of cutters, named for the type of vessel used: armed ships, usually single-masted, that measured at least 65 feet in length.

From 1798 through 1800, the U.S. and France fought an undeclared naval war known as the “Quasi-War,” precipitated in part by the U.S. reneging on the repayment of loans received from France during the American Revolutionary War.

Congress passed legislation authorizing President John Adams to reestablish the U.S. Navy and conscript revenue cutters from the Treasury Department during the conflict.

In September of 1800, Adams and Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, signed a treaty ending hostilities between the two countries.

The Revenue Cutter Service and the United States Life-Saving Service, created in 1848 to save shipwrecked sailors, merged in 1915 to become the U.S. Coast Guard.

Happy U.S. Coast Guard Day!

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