Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
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 […]
National Opposite Day
Today is National Opposite Day. Then again, maybe not. Many sources quote many other sources that claim it occurs on January 25th each year. We would never repeat such a vague assertion. On August 27, 1927, U.S. president Calvin Coolidge, at his vacation residence in the Black Hills of South Dakota, handed his secretary, Everett […]
January 23 is National Handwriting Day
Today is National Handwriting Day, created in 1977 by the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association to remind us of the increasingly lost art of cursive writing and, we presume, to sell a few pens. This unofficial holiday takes place on the birthday of John Hancock. Hancock (January 23, 1737 – October 8, 1793) served as president of the […]
January 21 is National Hugging Day
Today is National Hugging Day. The holiday was created in 1986 by Reverend Kevin Zaborney, whose National Whiner’s Day is a favorite here at Worldwide Weird Holidays. Hugs make us happy, help relieve stress, and communicate affection without saying a word. National Hugging Day’s official website recommends asking for permission first. National Hugging Day has gained worldwide popularity […]
January 20 is National Disc Jockey Day
Today is National Disc Jockey Day. It marks the death of legendary radio DJ Albert James “Alan” Freed (December 15, 1921 – January 20, 1965). Freed’s radio career began in 1945 at WAKR in Akron, Ohio, where he played rhythm and blues (R&B) records. He moved to WJW Cleveland in 1951 and continued to champion music without […]