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February 1 is NOT G.I. Joe Day but Neither is February 9

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When I first wrote about G.I. Joe Day 10 years ago, many longstanding sources declared February 1st “G.I. Joe Day.” Years later, I stumbled across a Joe superfan forum and was surprised to see that I’d been singled out as the nefarious originator of this damnable lie that went on to infect the entire Internet.

I certainly inspired some vitriol, including from a user (perhaps ironically) named “skinny,” who wrote this:

When dealing with historical facts, accuracy is important.

December 7, 1941
September 11, 2001
June 6, 1944
July 4th 1776.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule. Presidents day celebrates two Presidential birthdays on the same day. George was first so we celebrate on his Birthday. Sorry Abe.

Then there is the whole confusion about Easter so we just pick a random day in April or March.
and of course Christmas…

May the 4th is just catchy and has no significance other than cuteness to Star Wars.

However in this case we have an actual date to go by. Remember, G.I. Joe was introduced at Toy Fair in New York City on Sunday, February 9th, 1964.

Not so fast, mon frère. According to the New York Times, the American Toy Fair opened on March 9, 1964. It reported on the toy fair in its pages on March 10th, 11th, and 12th. Since I researched the archives of its printed editions, which I’m quite certain were reported contemporaneously, I’m going to give the newspaper my vote of confidence.

According to one Joe memorabilia site, a short film and prototypes were shown to prospective buyers before the fair’s opening date, but there’s no evidence that a meeting took place on February 9th. (You can watch the film here or on YouTube. Ignore the title, which misstates the toy fair as having taken place in 1963.)

So, “skinny,” it looks like we both got it wrong. In my case, though, I’m not going to compare your offense to, oh, say, getting the date of a terrorist attack wrong.

Without further ado, here is my original post. The first two sentences have been corrected. I stand by the rest.

Today is NOT G.I. Joe Day. In March of 1964, toymaker Hassenfeld Brothers (later shortened to Hasbro) introduced its first doll specifically intended for boys at the American Toy Show in New York. The company hoped to duplicate the success of Mattel’s Barbie, which had been introduced in 1959 and sold a record 351,000 units in its first year.

But there was a problem. Parents wouldn’t buy dolls for their sons. Playing with dolls was considered a girl’s activity, and boys generally wanted nothing to do with that. Some parents feared it might cause them to become effeminate and possibly even homosexual.

In a brilliant bit of marketing, the toymaker solved this issue by coining the term “action figure,” which has been used for countless toys since. It further masculinized the toy by making it a military man: G.I. (Government Issue) Joe. The name came from a 1945 American war film called The Story of G.I. Joe.

GI Joe Day

They also placed a scar across his right cheek. Not only did it denote manly ruggedness, combat, and valor, but it also enabled Hassenfeld Brothers to copyright the toy. (A generic human figure cannot be copyrighted.) The scar made it an identifiable character, as did a production glitch that gave Joe an inverted thumbnail.

Four original G.I. Joes were released in 1964. In June 1964, Joe was featured in LOOK magazine. An African-American soldier followed in 1965. In late 1966, the makers of “America’s Moveable Fighting Man” received a patent for its 21 points of articulation. Unlike standard toy soldiers, which were one-third the size and made of hard plastic, the Joes were fully poseable, allowing more creative play.

The Joes had been introduced while the U.S. was in the middle of an undeclared war in Vietnam. As it escalated and casualties mounted, the toys that had symbolized the brave fight against all foes, Communist and otherwise, lost their luster.

Women picketed the 1966 toy show in New York, holding umbrellas that read, “Toy Fair or Warfare?” Sears later dropped all war toys from its catalog. Fearing a boycott, Hasbro (which had shortened its name in 1968) phased out military uniforms and added flocked hair and beards. By 1970, the company had replaced the war-oriented Joe with the G.I. Joe Adventure Team.
gi joe day
There were individual Land, Sea, and Air Adventurer Joes, along with the more generalized Adventurer Joe and the mysterious Man of Action Joe. The kung-fu grip was born. Hasbro upped the merchandising quotient by selling props for scenes like White Tiger Hunt, Revenge of the Spy Shark, Secret of the Mummy’s Tomb, Capture of the Pygmy Gorilla, and Sandstorm Survival.

We don’t know whether kids got bored with every aspect of playtime being mapped out for them, or whether Hasbro was ahead of its time in roping parents into buying ancillary items, something that seems normal today. By 1976, the Joe brand was in trouble. Hasbro tried to cash in on the superhero craze by adding BulletMan to the lineup and throwing in a villainous caveman from outer space for good measure.

Nothing worked, and production shut down in 1978. Joe was “furloughed,” according to Hasbro, never expected to return. But the stratospheric profitability of Star Wars merchandise would give Joe one more chance. Shrunken to the same size as those action figures–a little less than 4 inches tall—Joe came back on the scene in 1982.

In an inspired feat of cross-promotion, Hasbro produced a television cartoon, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, as a vehicle for selling toys. It debuted as two five-part miniseries in 1983 and 1984 and ran as a regular series from 1985 to 1987. The show introduced new heroes, villains, and storylines, spawning an ever-increasing number of action figures and turning viewers into avid collectors.

Each episode concluded with a Joe teaching kids valuable lessons like “don’t go with strangers,” “don’t paint your bike in the garage,” and “blind kids can find lost kittens, too.” The kids would say, “Now we know!” and Joe would reply, “And knowing is half the battle!”

Now you know.

PS: I joined the fan forum to apologize and clarify that I hadn’t originated the date and had believed the sources that placed it on February 1st. The moderator, Jeff, wrote to me privately:

Don’t worry about it… some people are just waaayyyy serious about GI Joe and take it too far. Like skinny comparing it to 9-11… jesus.

I locked the thread because it was stupid drama.

I responded:

Thanks. I really do hate getting things wrong but I didn’t make it up. I don’t create the holidays.

As I read through the thread afterward, I saw that there was some disagreement. I assume someone chose February 1st to just get it sort of right. I don’t know who created it, so I can change the date on my blog but every other blog which has that date, most predating mine by years, will still be wrong.

Or is it right? Unless I can get to Source Perrier to find who created the holiday, I can’t know that GI Joe is actually meant to signify his “birthday” or just a general day celebrating GI Joe.

I know people take their interests very seriously. I recently incensed a square dancer by including it as a “weird” holiday. I suggested if he was sensitive, maybe square dancing is not the hobby for him.

I stand by that statement, too.

Have a happy G.I. Joe Day, whenever that may be!

Curmudgeons Day

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Today is Curmudgeons Day, which celebrates the birth in 1880 of comedian, writer, drinker, and self-professed curmudgeon W.C. Fields.

curmudgeons dayWilliam Claude Dukenfield grew up in Philadelphia, PA, a city that later became the butt of many of his jokes. While this is true, many other aspects of his origin story are difficult to substantiate.

He adopted the name W.C. Fields as a vaudevillian in 1898 and took delight in recounting a tragic personal history. Fields allegedly ran away from home after his alcoholic father beat him over the head with a shovel, ending up sleeping in a hole in the ground, stealing food and clothing to survive, and was often caught and thrown in jail.

At thirteen, he supposedly got a job as a juggler on a pier in Atlantic City, NJ. When business was slow, he would feign drowning at the behest of his employers, who believed the fake rescue they then staged would draw in customers.

Like the best lies, his story had elements of truth. He did sometimes run away from his short-tempered father, but only as far as his grandmother’s house. He was developing a juggling act. But at age seventeen, he was living at home and performing it at church and local theaters.

In fact, Fields began his career in vaudeville and took his stage name in 1898. (He specialized in pretending he’d lost the items he was juggling.) But his family supported him and saw him off on his first tour.

By the early 1900s, he was a headliner in the U.S. and Europe and was often referred to as the world’s best juggler. He toured Australia and South Africa in 1903. By 1904, Fields had become so successful that he bought his father a summer home and enabled him to retire. That’s a heck of a way to repay the man who hit your head with a shovel.

He performed at Buckingham Palace and took the stage at the Folies Bergère when Charlie Chaplin was on the docket. Fields wrote and starred in his first film, Pool Sharks, in 1915. He appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 through 1921.

In 1923, he made his Broadway debut in the musical “Poppy,” and reprised the role two years later in D.W. Griffith’s screen adaptation, renamed Sally of the Sawdust. By 1944, Fields had made 41 films, including The Bank Dick, My Little Chickadee, and Tillie and Gus.

Fields was a staunch advocate of drink and had one in his hand much of the time. (A favorite line: “I certainly do not drink all the time. I have to sleep, you know.”) It should come as no surprise that wear-and-tear on his body caused by alcohol finally did him in.

In the early months of 1945, Fields was admitted to Las Encinas Sanatorium in Pasadena, CA. He never left, dying of a gastric hemorrhage almost two years later, on December 25, 1946—the holiday that Fields, an atheist, said he most despised.

He might have gotten a kick out of the fact that a medical condition is named after him. Rhinophyma, a form of rosacea that causes the nasal tip to redden and become bulbous, is sometimes referred to as “W.C. Fields syndrome” or “whiskey nose.”

He would certainly be a fan of Curmudgeons Day. He said so many curmudgeonly things in his life, movie scripts, and in ad-libs during filming that a Google search for “W.C. Fields quotes” returned about 2,280,000 results. We recommend you make a snack before you dive in. You’re going to be online for a while. Here are a few to whet your appetite:

“Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.”

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then give up. No use being a damned fool about it.”

“I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.”

“Children should neither be seen nor heard from, ever again.”

“I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.”

“I do if they’re properly cooked.” — (when asked if he liked children)

One frustrating element of Curmudgeons Day is its stubborn resistance to punctuation. Should we read it as a mere grammatical error? Did a curmudgeon write it this way to irritate other curmudgeons (and the odd English major?) We’ll let you decide.

Happy Curmudgeons Day!

Thomas Crapper Day

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thomas crapper dayToday is Thomas Crapper Day, commemorating the death in 1910 of the man widely believed to have invented the flush toilet. Although that is, as they say, crap, Crapper was a shrewd marketer, leveraging his status as plumber to the British royal family to popularize indoor plumbing. He owned the first showroom of bathroom facilities and publicized the toilet at a time when no one spoke of such “necessities.”

Crapper is one small part of the largely untold history of the device that transformed the world. Humans have been building indoor plumbing for millennia. Excavations have uncovered evidence of flushing toilets dating back to 2600 B.C., during the mature Harappan phase of the Indus Valley Civilization.

John Harrington (also spelled Harington) invented a version in 1596 with a cord that, when pulled, would allow a rush of water from the “water closet,” flushing away waste. He installed one at his home and also built one for his godmother, Queen Elizabeth I. He called it the Ajax as a play on”jakes,” a slang term for toilet in use at the time. He may be the reason we sometimes call it a “john.”

An author, Harrington wrote “A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax.” Superficially, its subject was his invention; in truth, it was a thinly-veiled allegory about political stercus (manure) poisoning the state. The book got him banished from court for a time, and the queen called him her saucy godson.

(Side note: A scent called Stercus was introduced at Smell Festival 2014 in Bologna, Italy. The perfumer named his brand Orto Parisi to honor his grandfather, who fertilized his garden with his own excrement. The bottle was displayed on a slab of dried, pressed manure inside a golden frame. Order here if you dare.)

thomas crapper day

Yup, that’s a tray made of poop.

Fellow Brits refined Harrington’s design. Alexander Cumming invented the S-trap in 1775, which used a sliding valve called a “stink trap” to seal the bowl’s outlet and prevent sewer stench from entering the home. It is still in use today. Two years later, Samuel Prosser patented the “plunger closet,” which featured a separate flush tank.

After noticing that the toilets he installed in London tended to freeze in winter, Joseph Bramah replaced the sliding valve with a hinged flap and also developed a float valve system for the flush tank. Many sources state that a coworker named Mr. Allen devised the apparatus. But Bramah received the patent in 1778 and, as a result, we can’t even find Allen’s first name in historical records. In 1852, George Jennings patented his own improvements and later constructed London’s first public toilets.

At last, we’re back to where we started. When did Thomas Crapper receive patent #4990, prominently featured in his advertisements? He didn’t. Albert Giblin was awarded patent #4990 for his “Improvements to Flushing Cisterns” in 1898. (Many sites mistakenly report the year as 1819. We have located the original patent and drawings.)

thomas crapper day

Adam Hart-Davis of Exnet used the British Library to painstakingly track down all patents awarded to Thomas Crapper. According to him, “Mr. Crapper took out exactly six, starting in 1881 (#1628) to do with ventilating house drains, and ending in 1893 (#11604) for a mechanism to flush a lavatory by means of a foot lever. None of his patents was #4990. None of his patents was for a valveless water-waste preventer (WWP).”

It’s possible that Giblin, of whom little else can be learned, sold his patent to Mr. Crapper. One source states that he was Crapper’s employee, which would explain a lot. What we can say with certainty is that Thomas Crapper and Company, claiming to be “The Original Patentees and Manufacturers of Bathroom Appliances,” is still in business today.

The company website tells the story of Crapper’s design of the first automatic flush toilet, featuring a spring-loaded seat that would fly up, pulling rods that triggered the flushing action. Unfortunately, with time and use, the rubber buffers attached to the seat’s underside began to break down and become sticky.

“This caused the seat to remain down, attached to the loo pan for a few seconds as the user got to his feet. Seconds later the seat, under stress from the powerful springs, would free itself and sweep violently upwards – striking the unfortunate Victorian on the bare bottom!”

It became known as the “Bottom Slapper” and was not a commercial success. (One could say it was a hit and then it wasn’t.) We trust that the royal family, who contracted Crapper to install plumbing fixtures at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, were never subjected to that indignity.

thomas crapper day

Manhole covers bearing the company name have become minor tourist destinations. One in particular, outside Westminster Abbey, another site supplied by Crapper, has become a popular spot to take brass rubbings. Some of the enthusiasm for this activity may stem from the misconception that the slang term “crap” for human waste originated with Thomas Crapper. In fact, it predated him by hundreds of years.

He may have been indirectly responsible for the American habit of calling a toilet “the crapper.” Every time U.S. soldiers stationed in Britain during World War I used a bathroom, they saw “CRAPPER” in the porcelain of the toilet and sink. The association between “crap,” “Crapper,” and the act of crapping in a Crapper was so irresistibly hilarious that they brought it home with them, and their descendants continue to use it every day—-in word and deed.

thomas crapper day

If this holiday, focused as it is on a distasteful bodily function, seems undeserving of your attention, ask yourself this question: If you could only choose one, which could you live without? Your toilet or your iPhone?

Take that, Apple.

National Pass Gas Day

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Today is National Pass Gas Day. Hot on the tail, if you will, of National Bean Day comes this celebration of all things flatulent. A 1995 study — yes, there have been studies — estimates that we pass gas 13.6 times a day. (Perhaps the remaining 0.4 refers to those that were smelt yet not dealt?)

national pass gas dayFarts: What are they good for? For one thing, they relieve pressure in our colon at various stages of digestion. Stretching of the intestinal walls can cause bloating, discomfort, and constipation.

Did you know that the rumbling or gurgling sound caused by the movement of gas in the intestines is called borborygmus [bawr-buh–rig-muh s]? Drumlike swelling of the abdomen due to air or gas in the intestine or peritoneal cavity is called meteorism or tympanites [tim-puh–nahy-teez].

A 2011 study found that while a rapid increase in bean intake may cause some flatulence, it will normalize over time.

A performer named Mr. Methane bills himself as the world’s only professional flatulist. He was inspired by 19th-century French vaudevillian Le Pétomane (the fart maniac). In 2009, Mr. M auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent and farted The Blue Danube in Simon Cowell’s general direction. The YouTube video has over 64 million views. He was invited to perform at the 2013 World Fart Championships in Finland. (At 47, he was too old to compete.)

In 1982, a psychiatric journal published the case study of a 33-year-old woman with “obsessive flatulence ruminations” who was treated with the “paradoxical instructions to intensify flatus emissions.” This helped cure the woman, a respiratory therapist, but we’re guessing her patients’ breathing problems intensified during her treatment period.

Now, to the heart of the matter. Fart jokes are perennial, delighting both young and old. Check out George Carlin’s stand-up routine about farting in public.

If you’re left wanting more, have some fun with the Ultimate Fart Soundboard. We would never suggest you pass gas, but somehow, we know you will. Have a happy National Pass Gas Day!