Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
Love May Make the World Go ‘Round, But Laughter Keeps Us from Getting Dizzy Day
Today is Love May Make the World Go ‘Round, But Laughter Keeps Us from Getting Dizzy Day, the first day of a weeklong celebration lasting through Valentine’s Day. It is the brainchild of Joel Goodman, who in 1977 founded The Humor Project, the first organization in the world to focus full-time on the positive power […]
February 5 is World Nutella Day
Today is World Nutella Day. It seems pretty straightforward, right? In 2007, fangirl Sara Rosso declared February 5th a holiday to honor the delicious chocolate hazelnut spread. Nutelladay.com became a place for people to celebrate, swap recipes and share tales of devotion. As of May 2013, the World Nutella Day Facebook page had 40,000 likes. […]
Ice Cream for Breakfast Day
Today is Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, a holiday invented in 1966 by a mother desperate to amuse her children while they were snowed in during a blizzard in Rochester, NY. Unsurprisingly, it was a hit. Since then, its popularity has grown exponentially, circling the globe. As Florence Rappaport explained to the Washington Post in 2004, […]
February 4 is Liberace Day
Today is Liberace Day. It commemorates the death of Władziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987), the American pianist, singer and entertainer known as Mr. Showmanship. He had begun playing piano at four years old and by the age of thirty became the highest-paid entertainer in the world, touring internationally, releasing albums, […]
February 3 is the Day the Music Died
On February 3, 1959, musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson were killed when their plane crashed in an Iowa cornfield. The tragic accident became known as “The Day the Music Died,” after a lyric in singer-songwriter Don McLean‘s 1971 anthem American Pie. At the time, they were on their way to […]
February 2 is Sled Dog Day
Today is Sled Dog Day which recognizes the heroism of 20 men and 150 dogs who raced to save the town of Nome, Alaska from an epidemic. In January of 1925, children began to fall ill, gasping for breath. At least four died. Diphtheria is a highly contagious respiratory disease, often lethal without treatment. It’s curable, […]
February 1 is G.I. Joe Day
Today is G.I. Joe Day. In February of 1964, toymaker Hassenfeld Brothers (later shortened to Hasbro) introduced its first doll specifically intended for boys at the American International 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 […]
January 31 is Scotch Tape Day
Today is Scotch Tape Day and celebrates the invention of cellophane tape in 1930. The story begins in the early 1920s at Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, now known as 3M, which made only sandpaper at the time. Richard Gurley Drew, a banjo-playing college dropout hired as a research assistant, soon changed the course of the company’s history. While […]
January 29 is Curmudgeons Day
Today is Curmudgeons Day, which celebrates the birth, in 1880, of comedian, writer, drinker and self-professed curmudgeon W.C. Fields. William 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 […]
January 28 is National Kazoo Day
Today is National Kazoo Day when kazoo players celebrate the long history of the instrument in America. No one knows the exact date of the kazoo’s invention. A popular story holds that it was designed in the 1840s by an African-American man named Alabama Vest. German clockmaker Thaddeus Von Clegg constructed a prototype which Vest introduced at the 1852 […]