Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
February 5 is World Nutella Day
Today is World Nutella Day. It seems pretty straightforward, right? In 2007, fangirl Sara Rosso declared February 5th a holiday to honor the delicious chocolate hazelnut spread. Nutelladay.com became a place for people to celebrate, swap recipes and share tales of devotion. As of May 2013, the World Nutella Day Facebook page had 40,000 likes. […]
Ice Cream for Breakfast Day
Today is Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, a holiday invented in 1966 by a mother desperate to amuse her children while they were snowed in during a blizzard in Rochester, NY. Unsurprisingly, it was a hit. Since then, its popularity has grown exponentially, circling the globe. As Florence Rappaport explained to the Washington Post in 2004, […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 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 […]