Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
July 9 is Rock ‘n’ Roll Day
Today is Rock ‘n’ Roll Day. It marks an end as well as a beginning. On July 9, 1956, Dick Clark took over as the host of a show called Bandstand. Less than three weeks before, it had slipped through another man’s hands. Bandstand premiered in 1950 on WFIL-TV in Philadelphia, PA, and consisted of […]
July 8 is the Soapy Smith Wake
Today is the 43rd annual Soapy Smith Wake. Since 1974, descendants of Jefferson “Soapy” Smith have held an annual wake for him on the anniversary of his death in Skagway, Alaska, on July 8, 1898. Jefferson Smith was a con man who lived to prove the axiom, “A fool and his money are soon parted.” He […]
July 7 is Nettie Stevens Day
Nettie Stevens Day celebrates the scientist who discovered that sex is determined by XX and XY chromosomes. On July 7, 2016, the 155th anniversary of her birth, the only reason many people learned her name was by clicking on that day’s Google doodle. She studied mealworms and found that a male’s sperm carried both X and […]
July 6 is Umbrella Cover Day
Today is Umbrella Cover Day. Although the holiday got its official start in 2014, its roots reach back to 1996, when Maine native Nancy 3. Hoffman founded the Umbrella Cover Museum, dedicating it to “the appreciation of the mundane in everyday life” and “finding wonder and beauty in the simplest of things.” Hoffman changed her middle name from Arlene […]
Bikini Day
Today is Bikini Day. On July 5, 1946, French designer Louis Réard unveiled a two-piece swimsuit at a swimming pool in Paris. He named it the “bikini” after the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, where the U.S. had conducted an atomic bomb test only five days earlier. He believed his swimsuit would cause an “explosive […]
July 4 is Rube Goldberg Day
Today is Rube Goldberg Day. On July 4, 1883, Reuben Garrett Lucius “Rube” Goldberg was born in San Francisco, CA. In his 87 years on the planet, he was a cartoonist, engineer, inventor, author, sculptor and scriptwriter. He is best known for his cartoons depicting absurdly complex contraptions used to perform simple tasks. One such […]
July 3 is Disobedience Day
Today is Disobedience Day. We don’t know who invented the holiday but we can surmise why it falls on July 3rd each year. Without disobedience, there could be no independence.
Ducktona 500
Today is the 29th annual Ducktona 500 in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin. Hundreds of numbered rubber duckies will be dumped into the Sheboygan River and race downstream to win $1,000 for the lucky holder of the corresponding raffle ticket. For 26 of those years, the races were illegal. In 2013, the Wisconsin Department of Justice warned the […]
July 1 is International Joke Day
Today is International Joke Day. In 2001, Richard Wiseman enlisted the aid of the British Association for the Advancement of Science(BAAS), founded in 1831 and now known as the British Science Association (BSA), in conducting a yearlong study designed to discover the world’s funniest joke and learn about the psychology of humor. They created the LaughLab website […]
June 30 is Social Media Day
Today is Social Media Day, created in 2010 by Mashable “to recognize and celebrate social media’s impact on global communication.” (In related news, we just found out Mashable still exists!) You might be thinking, “Wait just a goldarned minute! Isn’t every day Social Media Day?” The answer is yes, but rein in the potty-brained self-talk, […]