Welcome to Worldwide Weird Holidays, where you’ll find a new reason to celebrate every day of the year.
August 30 is Hellespont Swim Day
Today is Hellespont Swim Day, when participants will follow the path swum in 1810 by Lord Byron, an English poet and a leader in the Romantic movement. Byron chose the course in honor of the Greek myth of lovers Leander and Hero. Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite, lived in a tower in Sestos (the present-day […]
August 29 is National Chop Suey Day
Today is National Chop Suey Day. It honors the popular Chinese-American dish of uncertain provenance. Legends abound regarding the origin of chop suey. Some say it was invented in the 1860s by a Chinese cook in San Franciso who, fearing he would be beaten by a rowdy bunch of miners demanding food after hours, served them a […]
August 28 is National Bow Tie Day
Today is National Bow Tie Day, inaugurated on August 28, 2012, to celebrate the quirky neck accessory. Croatian mercenaries of the 17th century tied scarves around their necks to hold their shirt tops together. French soldiers brought the style home after the end of the Thirty Years’ War. They called it the cravat, derived from […]
August 27 is National Petroleum Day
Today is National Petroleum Day, also known as Oil and Gas Industry Appreciation Day. Crude oil was first pumped from the ground in China’s Sichuan Province 2,500 years ago. Its discovery in the U.S. is credited to Edwin L. Drake who, on August 27, 1859, struck oil 70 feet below the surface of Titusville, PA. The […]
August 26 is Women’s Equality Day
Today is Women’s Equality Day, created in 1972 to commemorate the date in 1920 when, after decades of effort by activists across the country, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, granting women the right to vote. Fifty years later, on August 26, 1970, feminist Betty Friedan led a nationwide protest called the Women’s Strike […]
August 24 is Pluto Demoted Day
Today is Pluto Demoted Day. On August 24, 2006, at a meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, 424 members of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to enact new rules governing the classification of planets. The IAU narrowed the definition of a planet after the discovery of several worlds at the edge of our solar system. Pluto […]
August 18 is Mail Order Catalog Day
Today is Mail Order Catalog Day. On August 18, 1872, Aaron Montgomery Ward issued the first mail order catalog of Montgomery Ward & Company of Chicago, Illinois. It was a one-sheet list of 163 items. Several years earlier, while working as a traveling salesman, Ward learned that customers in rural areas lacked access to quality […]
August 17 is Black Cat Appreciation Day
Today is Black Cat Appreciation Day. Although we’ve been unable to track down the origin of this holiday, we’ve found that the ASPCA celebrates the occasion each year by discounting its adoption fees for black cats and kittens, which it states are less likely to be adopted because of superstition. Black Cats weren’t always considered […]
August 16 is International Wave at Surveillance Day
Today is International Wave at Surveillance Day, created in 2001 by privacy activist Zorbitor to provide “a chance for the watched to reach out to the watchers both at home and in public venues.” First, a little history is in order. Video Surveillance In 1942, the surveillance camera was invented by German engineer Walter Bruch and […]
August 14 is Navajo Code Talkers Day
Today is Navajo Code Talkers Day, a holiday that honors the distinguished record of soldiers who transmitted military messages in the Navajo language during World War II. The Axis powers were unable to break the code, which helped safeguard U.S. military communications and may have hastened the end of the war. In May of 1942, 29 Navajo recruits graduated […]