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National Blame Someone Else Day

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national blame someone else dayJune 13, 2025: National Blame Someone Else Day is celebrated on the first Friday the 13th of each year. It varies widely, occurring in February 2026, August 2027, October 2028, and so on. According to almost every source we checked, the holiday was invented by Anne Moeller of Clio, Michigan, in 1982.

That fateful day, her alarm didn’t go off, so she was late for work. More bad luck ensued. When Anne realized it was Friday the 13th, she decided she should create a new holiday.

Did that happen? The tale has circulated among various sites and news outlets, but none of them cite a verifiable source. When a story is repeated a (shockingly low) number of times, it reaches a tipping point and attains the status of fact. This is often due to expediency and laziness, which are often passed off as the need to churn out copy and the rationalization that no one cares if it’s true.

We assume that if you’ve taken the time to seek out information about a holiday, you would prefer the details to be true whenever possible. We do our best to plumb every wacky holiday for its funniest facts. If you’re out there, Anne Moeller, and that’s not how it all went down, we apologize and thank you for creating this holiday. Until we hear from you, we hold you responsible. We assume you’d be okay with that.

Happy National Blame Someone Else Day 2025!

June 12 is National Jerky Day

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Today is National Jerky Day, created in 2012 by the Wisconsin Beef Council to bring awareness to the history, nutritional benefits and status of meat snacks as the “fourth-largest-grossing sector in the overall salty-snack category.”

For 2014’s celebration, Jack Link’s beef jerky company built a replica of Mount Rushmore, covered it in 1,600 pounds of jerky and displayed it in New York City’s Columbus Circle. They called the monument “Meat Rushmore.”

national jerky day

Meat Rushmore

Preserving meat via drying and salting dates back at least as far as Ancient Egypt. It became popular in Spain in the 1500s when conquistadors brought it back from South America. The name “jerky” is derived from the Native American Quechua term “ch’arki” (dried meat).

Today, there are hundreds of varieties: turkey, chicken, duck, buffalo, alligator, ostrich, kangaroo, camel, rabbit, python, antelope, rattlesnake, elk, venison, wild boar, alpaca, and pheasant in flavors like ginger-lime, ghost pepper, butter mesquite, and honey sriracha.

Shark, salmon, tuna, and trout are available for pescetarian jerky fans. One purveyor offers gluten-free buffalo and elk jerky. Another offers pineapple jerky for herbivores. (Caution: Manufactured in a plant that processes meat and meat-like  products.)

One variety that hasn’t survived is Zombie Jerky. From the tone of some of its Amazon reviews, it may have, in fact, consisted of the undead. It’s a shame the company went under after its epic struggle to get its packaging approved. The USDA found the original description of the main ingredient, “naturally occurring zombies,” factually inaccurate, objected to “teriyucki” as a confusing flavor, and rejected the assurance that the product is “mutagen-free” and “doesn’t turn you into a zombie” as potentially misleading. (Everyone knows mutagens are a tasty side-benefit of jerky!)

national jerky day

Are you trying to cut back on coffee but need a morning pick-me-up? Perky Jerky is marinated with guarana seeds, which have twice the caffeine of coffee beans, but is all-natural and therefore healthier for you, right? Well, coffee beans are natural, too, and have the advantage of containing little to no jerky, as far as we know.

In 2023, Meat+Poultry reported on a new cannabis-infused jerky created by The Good Shroom Co:

OG Jerk contains 60 grams of beef jerky (2 x 30 gram vacuum sealed packages) infused with a total of 9 mg of THC (2 x 4.5 mg of THC vacuum sealed packages), which permits the consumer to consume in doses accordingly and enjoy beef jerky in the process.

We applaud the genius of a product made to simultaneously create and cure the munchies. In February of 2025, the Canadian company changed its name to Mercanto Holdings. Some corporate buzzkill must have said it sounds more legit. At least its Canadian stock exchange designation will remain MUSH, so there’s that.

Alas, even OG Jerk couldn’t make us hungry enough to try Earthworm Jerky. This Amazon reviewer takes us on a stream-of-consciousness rollercoaster ride.

It reminds me of an old joke. One woman says to the other, “The food here is terrible!” And the other says, “Yes, and such small portions!”

However you decide to celebrate, have a happy National Jerky Day!

National Doughnut Day

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Today is National Doughnut Day, also known as National Donut Day, celebrated in the U.S. on the first Friday of June.

In 1938, the Chicago chapter of the Salvation Army, an international charitable organization, hosted the first Doughnut Day event to raise funds for the needy during the Great Depression while honoring the women who had served doughnuts to soldiers during World War I.

After the U.S. entered the war in 1917, the Salvation Army conducted a fact-finding mission to France and concluded that American enlisted men would benefit from baked goods, writing paper, and mending services provided by canteens (called “huts”) set up in nearby abandoned buildings. Four of the six staff assigned to each hut were women, to help “mother” the men.

The reconnaissance team had failed to consider the difficulty of baking under those conditions. A couple of the 250 volunteers came up with the idea of frying doughnuts, which would eliminate the need for ovens. They were a big hit. Soon, the soldiers began to refer to the women as “Doughnut Girls.”

While the origin of National Doughnut Day is all but forgotten, bakeries across the nation continue the tradition by offering a free doughnut to customers today. Some places like Dunkin’ Donuts offer a free doughnut with the purchase of a drink, which is, of course, not free at all, but who’s going to complain? It’s still an excuse to have a doughnut!

Happy National Doughnut Day!

National Yo-Yo Day

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national yo-yo day

Greek boy with yo-yo, 440 BC

Today is National Yo-Yo Day, created by Daniel Volk in 1990 to celebrate the birthday of Donald F. Duncan (1892-1971), whose company popularized the toy.

A simple yo-yo resembles a small spool with a string knotted around a center groove or axle. Holding the free end of the string, one uses spin, gravity and momentum to cause the yo-yo to unwind and rewind. While it travels back and forth easily, the knot prevents it from doing sophisticated tricks.

The first known painting of a yo-yo is on a Greek vase from approximately 440 BC. Illustrations from 18th-century Northern India and France show adults playing with yo-yos.

In 1928, Pedro Flores moved from the Philippines to Santa Barbara, CA, and opened the Yo-yo Manufacturing Company. His design had a doubly-long string, twisted to make a loop that would slip around the axle, enabling a range of motions and configurations. By November 1929, Flores had three factories which produced a total of 300,000 units per day.

Soon afterward, Donald F. Duncan purchased Flores’ company and trademarked the name “Yo-Yo.” In 1965, he sued Royal Tops Manufacturing Company for using the name and a federal court of appeals rescinded his trademark, ruling that “Yo-Yo” had become a common part of speech. As a result of the suit and associated legal bills, Duncan sold the company three years later. He died in a car accident in 1971.

Side note: Companies are required to keep their brand names from becoming genericized. Every mention of Kleenex includes “tissues.” Nintendo pushed the term “games console” to protect its name. Band-Aid changed its jingle from “I am stuck on Band-Aid, ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me” to “I am stuck on Band-Aid Brand, ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me.” Google sends cease-and-desist letters to anyone who uses the term “googling.” What could Duncan have done to prevent people from saying they were “yo-yoing”?

Daniel Volk, a Yo-Yo Master who appeared on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late 1960s, created National Yo-Yo Day in 1990 as a tribute to Donald F. Duncan. The Duncan Yo-Yo was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, NY, in 1999.

To see a world-class performance, watch this 2013 TED Talk by Japanese yo-yo artist BLACK, a two-time world champion who quit school to become a professional performer and landed a one-day part in Cirque du Soleil. Did anyone in the exceedingly earnest, reverent audience so typical of TED Talks think, “While I’m amazed by his talent and filled with joy at his story of hope, when I return to my life of relative comfort and privilege, how will he make a living with a yo-yo”? Or simply, “What’s for lunch?”

Happy National Yo-Yo Day!