Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
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 […]
National Personal Chef Day
Today is National Personal Chef Day, created by the United States Personal Chef Association (USPCA) to recognize the hard work and dedication of personal chefs across the country. A private chef works exclusively for one client, sometimes living in the home. A personal chef can be hired by as many clients as his or her schedule […]
Saint Swithin’s Day
Today is Saint Swithin’s Day, a Roman Catholic feast day dedicated to the ninth-century Saxon Bishop of Winchester. (Spellings of his surname have varied. Swithin is correct in modern English, while Swithun was the spelling of choice in Old English. In the original Saxon language, according to Butler’s The Lives of the Saints, it was spelled Swithum.) […]
Beans ‘n’ Franks Day
Today is Beans ‘n’ Franks Day. July is National Hot Dog Month. July 14 is National Hot Dog Day. We’ve no idea when hot dogs and baked beans were first combined. The 500th birthday of the frankfurter was celebrated in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1987. Citizens of Vienna (Wien), Austria, dispute Frankfurt’s claim, citing their city’s name as […]
National Simplicity Day
July 12, 2025, is the 208th anniversary of author and consummate liar Henry David Thoreau’s birth. His name is held in high regard, and his work evokes a fondness and nostalgia in readers and inspirational-quote-mongers. Thoreau’s account of his retreat into nature and the wisdom it brought him is largely fictional. At Worldwide Weird Holidays, […]
July 11 is Cheer Up the Lonely Day
Today is Cheer Up the Lonely Day, created by Francis Pesek of Detroit, Michigan. His daughter L.J. Pesek described him as “a quiet, kind, wonderful man who had a heart of gold.” “He got the idea as a way of promoting kindness toward others who were lonely or forgotten as shut-ins or in nursing homes with […]
July 10 is Clerihew Day
Today is Clerihew Day, a holiday that celebrates the birthday of British author and journalist Edmund Clerihew Bentley (July 10, 1875 – March 30, 1956), who invented the purposefully silly type of rhyming verse that bears his middle name. A clerihew consists of four lines in AA, BB rhyming couplets. (The first and second lines […]
Leap Year Only Flitch Day
July 9, 2025: Flitch Day awards a side of bacon to a couple still in love after a year and a day of marriage. It is only celebrated every leap year, so the next one will take place in 2028. Here’s the post for last year, which was a momentous occasion. July 9, 2024: Today […]