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World Thinking Day

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February 22, 2026, is the 100th World Thinking Day. It doesn’t mean we get to lay off thinking for the rest of the year. It doesn’t mean the Earth is a sentient being. What is it? Read six (very short) paragraphs to find out.

In 1899, Robert Baden-Powell wrote a field manual for fellow British soldiers called Aids to Scouting. The following year, he was declared a war hero for his bravery in conflict, and the book became well-known. It was especially popular with boys, who staged elaborate games based on his instructions about observation and tracking.

After learning of this, Baden-Powell formed the Boy Scouts in 1907. The next year, he published Scouting for Boys, a guide stressing the importance of good deeds and morality. He designed a uniform and set up a central office to register new Scouts. By the end of 1908, there were 60,000 Boy Scouts.

In September 1909, 10,000 Scouts attended the first national Boy Scout rally at Crystal Palace in London. Many girls showed up, claiming to be members. Baden-Powell founded the Girl Guides, also known as Girl Scouts in many countries, as a separate entity in 1910, eventually appointing his wife, Olave, to run it.

The Girl Scouts held its first conference in Oxford, England, in 1920. It was held every two years until 1954 and every three years since. The 39th World Conference is taking place in Cambodia.

At the fourth World Conference in 1926, delegates met at Camp Edith Macy in Briarcliff Manor, NY, a facility owned by the Girl Scouts of the USA. Participants decided to dedicate a day to reflecting on their counterparts around the world and expressing their thanks to the organization that brought them all together.

They called it Thinking Day and chose February 22 as the date for its annual observance because it was the birthday of both Robert Baden-Powell and his wife, Olave Baden-Powell. It’s since become known as World Thinking Day, and millions of girls celebrate it.

Is all this new knowledge making you crave some cookies? There’s an app for that. The Girl Scout Cookie Finder is available on iOS and Android. Who says history can’t be delicious?

Happy World Thinking 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.

International Sweater Vestival

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Today is the International Sweater Vestival, also known as Sweater Vestival or the Festival of Sweater Vests. Always occurring on the first Friday of December—identified by some as the second Friday after Thanksgiving—it celebrates the sartorial splendor inherent in the collective donning of sweater vests.

The first known mention of “Sweater Vestival” occurred in 2008 when Carolyn Johnson interviewed the holiday’s creator for the Boston Globe. Who is this mysterious genius? Is it Johnson herself? Perhaps fearing scandal, Johnson isn’t telling; one might say she’s playing her cards close to the vest. Here is an excerpt from the article.

Q: Why should I wear a vest? Isn’t this a made-up holiday?

A: It certainly is made-up, and that is exactly why you should take part. All holidays are made-up – a collective recognition of some person or historic event or cause. These can range from the sincere to the ironic to the nonsensical. In apparent seriousness, for example, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm established Narcolepsy Awareness Day on March 9. A more arch holiday is 11/11, set aside for the Corduroy Appreciation Club to “hail the wale.” Name your cause and there’s a day: International Talk Like A Pirate Day (Sept. 19), World Wide Knit in Public Day (the second Saturday in June), or National Boss Day (Oct. 16).

The purity of a holiday’s origins tends to get buried in the commercial detritus that blossoms in the middle aisle of local drugstores. So understand that the Sweater Vestival is a nascent holiday – a rare opportunity to get in on the ground level of a holiday, before manufacturers are churning out tiny, edible, foil-wrapped vests.

[Editor’s note: seen on store shelves since 2015]

Sweater Vestival Day

tiny, edible foil-wrapped vests

 

More importantly, it is not a holiday about historical figures or causes or ideals: It is about all the other people who wear the vest.

Q: Can you tell me more about the holiday’s origins?

A: The second Friday after Thanksgiving is a lull in a jam-packed holiday season and a perfect day for people to continue the holiday cheer with something subtle yet uplifting. Unlike other faux holidays – such as Festivus, which first appeared on the sitcom “Seinfeld” as a protest against holiday-season commercialism – Vestival is not a joke at all. It also happens to be funny.

Q: Why is Vestival important?

A: On a superficial level, Sweater Vestival isn’t about something “deep.” In contrast, on a superficial level most other holidays are: Veterans Day is about the serious topic of honoring soldiers who have fought in wars to protect this country. President’s Day salutes our forefathers. Valentine’s Day is about love. But if you look beneath the surface, Valentine’s Day is more about candy and overpriced bouquets. Presidents’ Day has become synonymous with sales at car dealerships, and many people see Veterans Day as just another day off, not an opportunity to consider wars and the weight of history.

Despite its seemingly shallow artifice, though, Vestival carries unusual depth. People wearing vests smile at each other in recognition, discuss the origins of their vests, or give each other compliments. At a time when people can feel more alone than ever, wearing a sweater vest is a reason to connect.

What are you waiting for? Grab those thrift store finds, gifts from Christmas past languishing in the back of your closet, or any sweater you have the urge to liberate from its sleeves. (Common sense advice: obtain permission before wielding the scissors if the aforementioned sweater belongs to someone else.)

Embrace the cold shoulder(s) and have a happy International Sweater Vestival!

Start Your Own Country Day

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Today is Start Your Own Country Day. According to legend, it was introduced at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City to honor “those free-spirited souls who dared to hope and believe in a better world where they too could declare any land their own.”

start your own country

We’ve been unable to confirm that account. No matter its origin, Start Your Own Country Day promotes awareness that, within certain parameters, it is possible to form a micronation.

That might sound appealing to anyone who is unhappy about the outcome of, say, a recent election, but doesn’t want to move to Canada because it’s too cold up there, and packing is a miserable task.

But there is more involved than not paying taxes and designing a fun yet meaningful flag. The new nation must provide and maintain roads, power, emergency services, sewage treatment, waterworks, telecommunications infrastructure, and Internet service.

The 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States declared that a nation requires four things to exist: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Let’s take a look at two people who’ve pursued their dreams of telling the whole world, “You’re not the boss of me!”

The Republic of Kugelmugel

start your own country day

The lack of building permits for the construction of a spherical house turned Edwin Lipburger from an artist into a dissident and the president of his one-person nation, bordered on all sides by Vienna, Austria, yet independent of it. The house itself contained the country of Kugelmugel and its sole inhabitant.

Lipburger was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison for refusing to pay taxes and, among other things, for printing his own stamps. Public sympathy for the artist persuaded the Austrian president to pardon him and halt the demolition of his house.

Lipburger now lives in exile in Vienna, while his structure has been relocated to the nearby Wiener Prater amusement park, where it has become a tourist attraction. Though barbed wire surrounds the Republic of Kugelmugel, it is still possible to get a glimpse of the spherical nation by looking through the fence.

The Principality of Hutt River

start your own country

Prince Leonard Casley seceded from Australia on April 21st, 1970, founding the Principality of Hutt River as part of an agricultural protest. The sovereign state claimed to pay no taxes but donated an equivalent sum to the Australian government each year, which apparently didn’t care what Leonard wrote in the memo line as long as it got the check. The kingdom lasted 50 years.

Like the Republic of Kugelmugel, the Principality of Hutt River issued its own stamps. It also minted coins, printed banknotes, and sold commemorative teaspoons, cufflinks, postcards, magnets, tie clips, letter openers, and other items, many of which can still be found online on eBay and CoinsNB.

What this nation had going for it was its size. Situated 595 kilometers north of Perth, it covered about 75 square kilometers — 18,500 acres — of land, roughly the size of Hong Kong. Even if the UN didn’t recognize the country’s presence, Google did. The Principality of Hutt River was one of the few micronations to appear on Google Maps. (As of this writing, it still does. Shh, don’t tell Google!)

Visitors paid a small fee and had their passports stamped upon arrival. Prince Leonard said he hosted thousands of tourists each year. Reviewers described Hutt River’s campground accommodations as “rustic.” Despite its closure, TripAdvisor still rates it “#620 of 2,913 things to do in Western Australia,” which doesn’t seem like a ringing endorsement for tourism in the area. Luckily, nearby Kalbarri offers river cruises and whale watching as a balm for adventurers who’ve driven 30 kilometers on a dusty road in search of a micronation only to arrive at a locked gate and dirt as far as the eye can see.

The story of the realm’s end is a sad one. Leonard abdicated the throne in favor of his son Graeme in 2017 and passed away in 2019 at the age of 93. Eighteen months later, Graeme dissolved the principality. Per its official website:

In June 2017, the West Australian Supreme Court ruled against Prince Leonard following litigation initiated by the Australian Taxation Office, which asserted that Prince Leonard owed a substantial sum. After Prince Leonard’s passing, it became evident that the ATO intended to foreclose and sell the land to recover the claimed debt.

In August 2020, HRH Prince Graeme declared that, after consulting with the Casley Royal Family, due to the prevailing circumstances all Principality staff and assets would be relocated, and the land returned to agricultural use in Western Australia.

Kugelmugel and Hutt River aside, many micronations still exist. Before you pack your bags, check out Wikivoyage, Atlas Obscura, or NomadMania, but be warned: these sites will take you down an hours-long rabbit hole if you let them. Still married to ink on paper? Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations is the only printed travel guide of its kind. It was published in 2006, so it pays to call ahead for current travel information before you trek to a country like Molossia, which has been at war with East Germany since 1983 and pegs its currency to the value of Pillsbury cookie dough.

If you’re feeling inspired, check out this handy online guide to starting a micronation, complete with Model Constitutional Code. Whether you choose to celebrate today by creating a new country, traveling to one, or just relaxing at home, have a happy Start Your Own Country Day!

Update: A year after we first posted about this holiday in 2017, we were cited as a source in The Times Herald [paywall-free link here]. We know a “micromention” isn’t as cool as a micronation, but we’ll take it!