July Archives - Page 8 of 9 - Worldwide Weird Holidays

Ducktona 500

July 2, 2017/1 Comment/in July

Today is the 29th annual Ducktona 500 in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin. Hundreds of numbered rubber duckies will be dumped into the Sheboygan River and race downstream to win $1,000 for the lucky holder of the corresponding raffle ticket.

For 26 of those years, the races were illegal. In 2013, the Wisconsin Department of Justice warned the village of Mishicot that its annual duck race constituted gambling, outlawed in the state.

On April 16, 2014, Wisconsin governor and future failed presidential candidate Scott Walker took time from his busy schedule of union-busting, protesting the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage, opposing immigration and denying the need for climate change regulations to sign a law creating an exemption for duck races, similar to ones already enacted in Minnesota and Michigan.

Thank you, Governor Walker, for making Wisconsin safe for rubber duckies and the people who race them.

July 1 is International Joke Day

July 1, 2017/2 Comments/in July

Today is International Joke Day. In 2001, Richard Wiseman enlisted the aid of the British Association for the Advancement of Science(BAAS), founded in 1831 and now known as the British Science Association (BSA), in conducting a yearlong study designed to discover the world’s funniest joke and learn about the psychology of humor.

They created the LaughLab website to enlist the participation of people around the world. Its survey asked each test subject to share his or her favorite joke, then collected demographic information such as age, sex and country of residence, and finally asked them to rate a random selection of jokes submitted by others.

To elicit quantifiable results, the survey required all participants to rate the jokes’ funniness using a special “giggleometer” invented specifically for the study.

By the end of the experiment, LaughLab had received more than 40,000 jokes and 1.5 million ratings. After collating the results, and taking into account which jokes made men laugh versus women, kids versus adults, country versus, well, other countries, Wiseman and the BAAS determined the world’s funniest joke. It was submitted by Gurpal Gosall, a 31-year-old psychiatrist from Manchester, England.

Here it is:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, “My friend is dead! What can I do?”. The operator says “Calm down. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says “OK, now what?”

Have a happy International Joke Day! What’s your favorite?

July 18 is World Listening Day

July 18, 2016/1 Comment/in July

Nice work, if you can get it.

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, a word Schafer coined to define a unique medical condition. “We have split the sound from the maker of the sound,” Schafer explained.

“Sounds have been torn from their natural sockets and given an amplified and independent existence. Vocal sound, for instance, is no longer tied to a hole in the head but is free to issue from anywhere in the landscape.” We have a strong sensory response to this: it smells like feces and sounds like tenure.

The first World Soundscape Project was born from Schafer’s annoyance at the noise pollution he felt was ruining beautiful Vancouver. It has evolved into a serious course of study. This business of listening seems to rely on a whole lot of talking.

The World Listening Project (WLP) was created in 2008 as a not-for-profit, tax-exempt organization dedicated to understanding societies, cultures and environments by listening and preserving audio. Finally, someone has found a way to achieve tax-exempt status for recording a garage band or just the sound a garage makes.

WLP and the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSE), under the auspices of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology (ASAE), created World Listening Day in 2010. Why? Per its site:

Cities’ sonic identities are continually fluctuating as residential and commercial infrastructures develop. The resultant social dynamics of industrialization and gentrification sponsor variegated relationships between people and the public and private places they occupy.

“…sponsor variegated relationships”? It looks like a thesaurus bled out all over an SAT. We get it: change sucks. Why can’t everything be like yesterday? If only we had a way to preserve it forever, like on DVD, but without the pesky visuals.

The theme of World Listening Day 2016 is “Sounds Lost and Found.” Per the organizers:

[W]e invite you to dig into crates of vinyl and cassettes, dive into digital archives, and engage deeply with memories and unheard languages to rediscover or identify these “lost sounds.”

While we agree that listening is an essential and underappreciated art, we don’t understand the need to starve other senses like sight to do it; we aren’t sure we can engage deeply with an unheard language. But maybe we weren’t listening closely enough. Would you mind repeating it?

July 14 is National Hot Dog Day

July 14, 2016/0 Comments/in July

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 from manufacturers and their suppliers.

National Hot Dog Day was established in 1991 to coincide with the Annual Hot Dog Lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. As a result, the holiday’s date is dictated by the congressional calendar and typically occurs in the third or fourth week of July.

Because of the 2016 Republican and Democratic national conventions, the lunch was rescheduled to today. Many hot dog franchises have chosen to celebrate the holiday on July 23rd, because last year’s National Hot Dog Day fell on that date.

With the support of many holiday calendar websites, July 23rd’s observance may stick around. But hot dog lovers and NHDSC aren’t complaining. In National Hot Dog Month, does it matter?

Ten percent of all hot dogs are purchased in July, according to Janet Riley, NHDSC’s “Queen of Wien.”

Here are a few more stats:

In 2015, nearly 1 billion pounds of hot dogs were sold in retail stores, adding up to more than $2.5 billion in sales.
From Memorial Day to Labor Day, Americans consume 7 billion hot dogs. That’s 818 hot dogs eaten every second during that period.
The NHDSC predicts that major league ballparks will sell 18.5 million hot dogs during baseball season this year.
Los Angeles was last year’s top hot dog consuming city: Angelenos ate more than 34 million pounds. New York took second place, followed by Phoenix, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Washington, DC and Tampa.

Have a happy National Hot Dog Day!

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