fun, strange holidays grouped by month

Donald Duck Day

donald duck dayJune 9 is Donald Duck Day. It celebrates the date in 1934 when he first appeared in a Disney cartoon called “The Wise Little Hen.” His rise was meteoric. Only nine years later, in 1943, Donald won an Oscar for his role in a satire about Nazis, only to see the film shelved by Disney for the next 71 years.

In his 1941 authorized biography, The Life of Donald Duck, he revealed he’d been born on Friday the 13th. When he starred in “Donald’s Happy Birthday” in 1949, his car’s license plate number read 313, which many fans took to mean he was born on March 13th.

This has caused a schism between those who celebrate Donald Duck Day on June 9th and those who insist it should be observed on March 13th. Although his publicist has not returned our calls, we believe Donald Fauntleroy Duck would approve of at least two days dedicated in his honor.

His performance in “Der Fuehrer’s Face” helped it win the 1943 Academy Award for best animated short film. In it, he awakens in a nightmare world where he is a Nazi. (Its original title was “Donald Duck in Nutzi Land” but was changed to “Der Fuehrer’s Face” after the novelty song by that name became a runaway hit for Spike Jones and his City Slickers.)

Propaganda films weren’t unusual, but because Donald appeared as a Nazi, however unwillingly, the cartoon was considered objectionable and relegated to the Disney vault after the end of World War II. In 1994, a group of 1,000 members of the animation industry voted it one of the 50 greatest cartoons ever made. Ten years later, Disney finally released it in a set called “Walt Disney Treasures: On the Front Lines.”

In June 2025, the set could still be found on secondary markets, such as eBay, at high prices because Disney produced a limited edition of 250,000 sets in 2004. We can’t find it on the Disney YouTube channel, but if you’re curious, the cartoon is available through a few unofficial sources. Here’s one:

There are links here and here to a version that includes a short explanatory prologue.

We want to leave you with an observation made by Chandler Bing from the TV show “Friends.”

You know what’s weird? Donald Duck never wore pants. But whenever he’s getting out of the shower, he always puts a towel around his waist. I mean, what is that about?

It’s a question for the ages. May we all remain as ageless as our favorite waterfowl, and have a happy Donald Duck Day!

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June 8 is Hannah Duston Day

Today is Hannah Duston Day. On June 8, 1697, she became the first official heroine of the American colonies when her husband was awarded the sum of 25 pounds in her honor. As a woman, she was technically her husband’s property and had no right to collect the money herself, but we suppose it’s the thought that counts.

On March 16, 1697, Hannah, her infant daughter, and a nursemaid named Mary Neff were kidnapped from her home in Haverhill, Massachusetts, by a band of Abenaki “Indians.” Native Americans had been incorrectly labeled “Indians” by Christopher Columbus two centuries earlier when, due to a navigational error, he landed in the Antilles but named its indigenous people after the Indian Ocean he thought he’d reached. He was off by over 10,000 nautical miles.

Hannah and Mary were forced to march north with at least ten other hostages. Early on, the baby was pulled from Hannah’s arms and killed. For six weeks, they trudged along; those who couldn’t keep up were murdered.

On April 29, they stopped for the night in Boscawen, New Hampshire. While the Abenakis slept, Hannah and other prisoners killed ten of them, including six children, scalped each one, then escaped back to Haverhill.

hannah duston day

After returning home, she traveled with her husband to Boston, where she told her story to Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister who wrote it down and went on to recount it to rapt congregations throughout the colonies.

Their trip had another purpose. Hannah had intended to collect the bounty offered for each scalp she’d taken, not realizing that the state-sponsored payment program had expired. She and her husband delivered a petition to the Massachusetts General Court requesting a reward for “the just slaughter of so many of the Barbarians, as would by the law of the Province which [existed] a few months ago, have entitled the actors unto considerable recompense from the Publick.”

As a result, the court awarded Mr. Duston the sum of 25 pounds. It would seem we have now come full circle. In fact, we have arguably dismantled this holiday. But there is still more to be told.

As Mather’s sermon was rewritten and retold, it began to change; the murder of sleeping children was de-emphasized or dropped. By the 19th century, the doctrine of manifest destiny held that the expansion of the U.S. was virtuous, inevitable and directed by God, providing justification for such morally bankrupt acts as “Indian removal.”

Author Henry David Thoreau and poet John Greenleaf Whittier, among other storytellers of the era, seized upon Hannah Duston’s account, casting her as a quintessentially American heroine.

In 1874, a statue was erected on the island of Boscawen, New Hampshire, the first US monument to honor a woman. In her right hand, she holds a hatchet; in the left, a bunch of scalps.

hannah duston day

Not to be outdone, the city of Haverhill, Massachusetts, erected a monument of its own in 1879. Although Duston holds no scalps, she brandishes a hatchet while pointing toward the ground. (Is she choosing the next sleeping person to kill and scalp?)

hannah duston day

Unsurprisingly, the statues are the subject of controversy, but for now, they still stand. The one in Boscawen is a bit worse for wear—someone shot off her nose.

hannah duston day

Image: vcnaa.com

The New Hampshire Historical Society discontinued the sale of its Hannah Duston bobblehead after coming under harsh criticism in late 2014. But it’s still selling its limited edition bobblehead of Chief Passaconaway, the 17th-century English settler-loving sachem of the Penacook tribe.

While Hannah Duston Day is certainly an uncomfortable reminder of our nation’s history, perhaps it can also shine a light on the rationalization of prejudice and help us confront and defeat the glorification of hatred.

[Note: Records use several different spellings of Duston, including Dustin, Dustan, and Durstan. For the sake of uniformity and because it’s the spelling used on both monuments, we have chosen to use Duston.]

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June 7 is VCR Day

vcr day

Ampex VRX-1000, 1956

Today is VCR Day. It commemorates the date in 1975 when Sony Corporation supposedly released the Betamax videocassette recorder (VCR) made specifically for home use. Some historians place the release in November 1975. In any case, it beat JVC’s Video Home System (VHS) to market by a year.

A VCR records the analog audio and video of a television broadcast or other signal source onto a removable, magnetic tape videocassette for subsequent playback. A programmable timer allows the user to schedule the recording to initiate, run, and conclude while unattended. It can also play back prerecorded tapes.

The history of the VCR dates back to the Ampex VRX-1000, which was released in 1956. Due to its substantial size and prohibitive cost of $50,000, it was affordable only to television networks and the largest individual stations. Toshiba, Philips, and RCA joined the fray; Sony partnered with Ampex for a while to share technology.

In 1965, Sony introduced the reel-to-reel type CV-2000, which stands for Consumer Video, as its first home-use model. (One ad shows the price as $695.) Despite Sony’s marketing efforts, it was primarily used for medical and industrial applications. Companies jockeyed for position for another decade.

There are many theories about why Sony won the battle to beat JVC to market in 1975, only to lose the war. One irrefutable fact is that each videocassette format was compatible only with its own VCR, ensuring that VHS and Betamax would never be able to play nice.

Sony may have gambled on its customers’ desire for quality over quantity, offering higher-definition tapes that could only record up to one hour of programming. While we value that today, it was much less of a selling point in 1975, when simply being able to record a show and watch it was more of a priority than being able to parse every speck of dust on M*A*S*H in hallucinatory detail.

When JVC released its VCR a year later, it used VHS tapes that held two hours. By the time Sony caught up, it was too late. VHS had become the standard. In 1981, Betamax had only a 25% market share. By 1986, it had dropped to 7.5% and continued to decline. Although it began selling VHS recorders in 1988, Sony continued to manufacture Betamax recorders until 2002 and only stopped producing Betamax tapes as of March 2016.

Of course, VHS didn’t stay on top forever. JVC stopped manufacturing standalone VCRs in 2008, long after DVD and Blu-Ray players had supplanted them. Streaming services put another nail in the VCR’s coffin.

Can a direct neural interface be far behind? As long as it doesn’t require the skull drilling we see in science fiction movies and the monthly fee is good, we say bring it on!

Until then, let’s celebrate our technological past and have a happy VCR Day!

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National Doughnut Day

Today is National Doughnut Day, also known as National Donut Day, celebrated in the U.S. on the first Friday of June.

In 1938, the Chicago chapter of the Salvation Army, an international charitable organization, hosted the first Doughnut Day event to raise funds for the needy during the Great Depression while honoring the women who had served doughnuts to soldiers during World War I.

After the U.S. entered the war in 1917, the Salvation Army conducted a fact-finding mission to France and concluded that American enlisted men would benefit from baked goods, writing paper, and mending services provided by canteens (called “huts”) set up in nearby abandoned buildings. Four of the six staff assigned to each hut were women, to help “mother” the men.

The reconnaissance team had failed to consider the difficulty of baking under those conditions. A couple of the 250 volunteers came up with the idea of frying doughnuts, which would eliminate the need for ovens. They were a big hit. Soon, the soldiers began to refer to the women as “Doughnut Girls.”

While the origin of National Doughnut Day is all but forgotten, bakeries across the nation continue the tradition by offering a free doughnut to customers today. Some places like Dunkin’ Donuts offer a free doughnut with the purchase of a drink, which is, of course, not free at all, but who’s going to complain? It’s still an excuse to have a doughnut!

Happy National Doughnut Day!

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