Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
The Great Texas Mosquito Festival
Since 1981, the Great Texas Mosquito Festival has been celebrated on the last Thursday, Friday and Saturday of July in Clute, TX. Visitors are greeted by a 26-foot-tall mosquito clad in a cowboy hat and boots. Promoters claim it’s the world’s largest and we certainly hope they’re right. Highlights include the Mosquito Calling Contest, where entrants […]
Amelia Earhart Day
Today is Amelia Earhart Day, celebrating the aviation pioneer’s birth on July 24, 1897. In 1932, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, for which she received the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross. A member of the National Woman’s Party and an early proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, Earhart’s self-confidence and spirit of […]
Gorgeous Grandma Day
Today is Gorgeous Grandma Day, created by author Alice Solomon. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1984, at age 50, she felt she and her generation had been written off and branded “senior citizens” by society. Solomon believed this occurred the moment she hit the half-century mark. “In an instant and only one day older, I was […]
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 president 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 […]
National Lollipop Day
Today is National Lollipop Day! Early incarnations of the lollipop date back thousands of years. Archaeologists* 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 […]
National Daiquiri Day
Today is National Daiquiri Day. Although conflicting legends abound, the most likely origin story credits an American engineer named Jennings Cox with inventing the drink. 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 […]
Insurance Nerd Day
July 18th is Insurance Nerd Day, created in 2016 to celebrate everyone employed in the insurance industry. It originated as a social media campaign to dispel the myth that insurance is a “boring” career path and to attract young people entering the workforce. Since then, the movement has been gaining momentum and, thanks to the […]
World Listening Day
Today is World Listening Day. It honors the birth on July 18, 1933, of Raymond Murray Schafer, the Canadian composer, teacher, and environmentalist who invented the study of acoustic ecology at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University in the late 1960s. Acoustic ecology utilizes field recordings to create and preserve the planet’s disappearing soundscapes while combating schizophonia, a term Schafer […]
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 […]
National Hot Dog Day
Today is National Hot Dog Day, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (NHDSC), an august body created by the North American Meat Institute, which has declared July to be National Hot Dog Month. The NHDSC serves as a clearinghouse of information about the preparation and nutritional quality of hot dogs and sausages, funded by contributions […]