Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
International Eat an Apple Day
Today is International Eat an Apple Day, celebrated on the third Saturday of September. So, eat an apple. That is all.
August 25 is Thoughtful Thursday
Today is Thoughtful Thursday, originated by Lorraine Jara in 1988 as part of Be Kind to Humankind Week. She created bk2hk.org after hearing about a boating accident near her hometown of Toms River, NJ. Two young men, drowning after their rowboat capsized, were pulled from the water by two young women in another small boat. They had no […]
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, […]
National Flip Flop Day
National Flip Flop Day is a holiday invented by the U.S. national restaurant chain Tropical Smoothie Café. On the third Friday of June, from 2 pm to 7 pm local time, every customer wearing flip-flops will receive a free Jetty Punch Smoothie. From 2007 to 2020, Tropical Smoothie Café customers donated $ 7.5 million for Camp […]
May 28 is Julia Pierpont Day
Today is Julia Pierpont Day, named in honor of the woman who originated Decoration Day. In 1866, Julia Pierpont, wife of the Governor of Virginia, noticed that the graves of Civil War soldiers in Richmond’s cemeteries looked neglected. She started Decoration Day to show respect for those who had given their lives by tending to […]
International Virtual Assistants Day 2016
Today is 2016’s International Virtual Assistants Day (IVAD), which honors the support staff who will never hit on a coworker, pass gas in the conference room, or steal someone else’s yogurt from the company fridge. It takes place on the third Friday of May, during the Online International Virtual Assistants Convention (OIVAC). On OIVAC’s home page, […]
Barbed Wire Festival
May 5, 2016: The 50th Annual Barbed Wire Festival kicks off this evening in La Crosse, Kansas. The first convention for collectors of barbed wire was hosted there in 1967. According to the festival’s website, 2,000 people attended, earning La Crosse, described by Wikipedia as a “city” of 1,342, the title of “Barbed Wire Capital […]
National Hairball Awareness Day
Today is National Hairball Awareness Day, observed annually on the last Friday of April. Hairballs are a nuisance and just plain gross, as anyone who’s stepped on one in bare feet can attest. They’re no fun for cats, either, causing discomfort and irritation. In some cases, they can be an indicator of serious illness. Talk […]