Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
July 21 is Invite an Alien to Live with You Day
Today is Invite an Alien to Live with You Day. Relax! We aren’t talking about the aliens that a certain reality star turned politician has said are coming to murder us and steal our jobs—although, once we’re dead, they’d technically just be taking advantage of sudden employment opportunities. This type of illegal alien comes from the […]
National Lollipop Day
Today is National Lollipop Day! Early incarnations of the lollipop date back thousands of years. Archeologists have found evidence that ancient Egyptians used honey to preserve fruit, then inserted sticks to make it easier to eat. New Haven, CT, confectioner George Smith claimed he got the idea for the lollipop from the stirrers he used when mixing […]
July 19 is National Daiquiri Day
Today is National Daiquiri Day. Although conflicting legends abound, the most likely origin story credits an American engineer named Jennings Cox for the drink’s invention. In 1898, Cox supervised an iron mining operation in a town off the coast of Cuba called Daiquiri. Every night he and his crew gathered at a local bar after work. One […]
Wrong Way Corrigan Day
Today is Wrong Way Corrigan Day. On July 17, 1938, Douglas Corrigan (January 22, 1907 – December 9, 1995), a pilot and aircraft mechanic who had recently flown from California to New York, took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, ostensibly to make the transcontinental trip back to Long Beach. Things didn’t go according to […]
July 16 is National Personal Chef Day
Today is National Personal Chef Day, created by the United States Personal Chef Association (USPCA) to recognize the hard work and dedication of personal chefs across the country. A private chef works exclusively for one client, sometimes living in the home. A personal chef can be hired by as many clients as his or her schedule […]
July 15 is Saint Swithin’s Day
Today is Saint Swithin’s Day, a Roman Catholic feast day dedicated to the ninth-century Saxon Bishop of Winchester. (Spellings of his surname have varied. Swithin is correct in modern English, while Swithun was the spelling of choice in Old English. In the original Saxon language, according to Butler’s The Lives of the Saints, it was spelled Swithum.) […]
July 13 is Beans ‘n’ Franks Day
Today is Beans ‘n’ Franks Day. July is National Hot Dog Month. July 14 is National Hot Dog Day. We’ve no idea when hot dogs and baked beans were first combined. The 500th birthday of the frankfurter was celebrated in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1987. Citizens of Vienna (Wien), Austria, dispute Frankfurt’s claim, citing their city’s name as […]
National Simplicity Day
July 12, 2017, is the 200th anniversary of Henry David Thoreau’s birth. His name is held in high regard and his work evokes a fondness and nostalgia in its readers and inspirational-quote-mongers. Romantic notions of his retreat into nature and the wisdom it brought him are largely fictional. At Worldwide Weird Holidays, we’re okay with […]
July 11 is Cheer Up the Lonely Day
Today is Cheer Up the Lonely Day, created by Francis Pesek of Detroit, Michigan. His daughter L.J. Pesek described him as “a quiet, kind, wonderful man who had a heart of gold.” “He got the idea as a way of promoting kindness toward others who were lonely or forgotten as shut-ins or in nursing homes with […]
July 10 is Clerihew Day
Today is Clerihew Day, a holiday that celebrates the birthday of British author and journalist Edmund Clerihew Bentley (July 10, 1875-March 30, 1956), who invented the purposefully silly type of rhyming verse that bears his middle name. A clerihew consists of four lines in AA, BB rhyming couplets. (The first and second lines rhyme with […]