Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
February 4 is Liberace Day
Today is Liberace Day. It commemorates the death of Władziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987), the American pianist, singer and entertainer known as Mr. Showmanship. He had begun playing piano at four years old and by the age of thirty became the highest-paid entertainer in the world, touring internationally, releasing albums, […]
February 3 is the Day the Music Died
On February 3, 1959, musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson were killed when their plane crashed in an Iowa cornfield. The tragic accident became known as “The Day the Music Died,” after a lyric in singer-songwriter Don McLean‘s 1971 anthem American Pie. At the time, they were on their way to […]
February 2 is Sled Dog Day
Today is Sled Dog Day which recognizes the heroism of 20 men and 150 dogs who raced to save the town of Nome, Alaska from an epidemic. In January of 1925, children began to fall ill, gasping for breath. At least four died. Diphtheria is a highly contagious respiratory disease, often lethal without treatment. It’s curable, […]
February 1 is G.I. Joe Day
Today is G.I. Joe Day. In February of 1964, toymaker Hassenfeld Brothers (later shortened to Hasbro) introduced its first doll specifically intended for boys at the American International Toy Show in New York. The company hoped to duplicate the success of Mattel’s Barbie, which had been introduced in 1959 and sold a record 351,000 units in its […]
January 31 is Scotch Tape Day
Today is Scotch Tape Day and celebrates the invention of cellophane tape in 1930. The story begins in the early 1920s at Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, now known as 3M, which made only sandpaper at the time. Richard Gurley Drew, a banjo-playing college dropout hired as a research assistant, soon changed the course of the company’s history. While […]
January 29 is Curmudgeons Day
Today is Curmudgeons Day, which celebrates the birth, in 1880, of comedian, writer, drinker and self-professed curmudgeon W.C. Fields. William Claude Dukenfield grew up in Philadelphia, PA, a city that later became the butt of many of his jokes. While this is true, many other aspects of his origin story are difficult to substantiate. He adopted […]
January 28 is National Kazoo Day
Today is National Kazoo Day when kazoo players celebrate the long history of the instrument in America. No one knows the exact date of the kazoo’s invention. A popular story holds that it was designed in the 1840s by an African-American man named Alabama Vest. German clockmaker Thaddeus Von Clegg constructed a prototype which Vest introduced at the 1852 […]
American Fancy Rat and Mouse Show 2017 Canceled
The 2017 American Fancy Rat and Mouse Show scheduled on January 28th has been canceled due to an outbreak of Seoul virus infection, a member of the Hantavirus family of rodent-borne illness, in the Midwest. In December 2016, two people operating a breeding facility in Wisconsin became infected. Six employees at two Illinois-based ratteries tested positive for Seoul […]
January 27 is Thomas Crapper Day
Today is Thomas Crapper Day and commemorates the death, in 1910, of the man widely believed to have invented the flush toilet. Although that is, as they say, crap, Crapper was a shrewd marketer, leveraging his status as plumber to the British royal family to popularize indoor plumbing. He owned the first showroom of bathroom […]
January 26 is Lotus 1-2-3 Day
Today is Lotus 1-2-3 Day, when we celebrate the original “killer app.” On January 26, 1983, Lotus Development Corporation released the application for the IBM PC, named for its three-pronged functionality: as a spreadsheet, graphics package and database manager. Co-founder Mitch Kapor named the company after a yoga position. A child of the Sixties, he studied […]