Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
August 15 is Taffy Sculpting Day
Today is Taffy Sculpting Day on the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ. It is the first competition in the city’s annual Weird Week. According to organizers, today’s “wacky, but not tacky” contest challenges participants to build a work of art from saltwater taffy. One year, an entrant modeled a Ferris wheel from the candy. Tuesday […]
August 13 is TugFest
Today is the 30th annual TugFest. In 1987, residents of Port Byron, Illinois, and LeClaire, Iowa, decided it would be fun to have a tug-of-war. They didn’t let the fact that the towns are separated by the Mississippi River get in their way. The tradition continues today with 11 teams of 20 tuggers on either side of […]
July 18 is 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 uses field recordings to create and preserve the planet’s disappearing soundscapes while battling schizophonia, […]
July 14 is 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 […]
July 9 is Flitch Day
Today is Flitch Day, a custom dating back to 1104 in Little Dunmow, a village in Essex, England. First, a little background is in order. A flitch is half a pig, cut lengthwise, salted and cured, also known as a full side of bacon. The story goes that a year and a day after their nuptials, Lord […]
International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship
July 2, 2016, is the 43rd Annual International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship, held each year in Eau Claire, MI, on the first Saturday of July. Tree-Mendus Fruit Farm hosts this event, calling it a “Spit-tacular Day” where you can “spit your pit in public with only a minimal loss of dignity while gaining fame.” It’s the only […]
World Championship Rotary Tiller Race
June 25, 2016, is the World Championship Rotary Tiller Race, the main event of the PurpleHull Pea Festival in Emerson, Arkansas. In 1990, Emerson native and part-time newspaper columnist Glen Eades decided his hometown needed a little excitement. As he explained, “We were so boring we didn’t even have a cop.” He approached Mayor Joe Mullins about […]
Giggin’ for Grads Night
Today is the 4th Annual Giggin’ for Grads Night, created in 2013 by the DeKalb County Young Farmers and Ranchers Club of Smithville, Tennessee, to raise funds for agricultural scholarships. In case you’re unfamiliar with the terminology, “gigging” is the use of a sharpened implement such as a pointed stick, called a “gig,” to spear […]
Polar Bear Swim
June 18, 2016, marks the 42nd annual Polar Bear Swim, celebrated in Nome, Alaska. Unlike many places in the USA’s lower 48 states (and Hawaii, of course), where taking a dip in the middle of June is a pleasure, splashing in the Bering Sea is not for the faint of heart. The water is barely above freezing. […]
National Flip Flop Day
June 17, 2016, is National Flip Flop Day, a holiday invented by U.S. national restaurant chain Tropical Smoothie Café. On the third Friday of June from 2 pm – 7 pm local time, every customer wearing flip flops will receive a free Jetty Punch Smoothie. Since 2007, the chain has raised funds for Camp Sunshine in Casco, […]