Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
While we would love to provide an exhaustive list of the weird holidays we’ve come across, here are some of our favorites:
Today, Chase’s Calendar of Events is seen as the official source of “special days” for editorial and news departments. The book rose to prominence in the late 80s. For a long time, people wanted to keep the government out of the holiday game, but by the turn of the century, the government began making official stipulations for federal holidays.
In the late 80s, America was quickly transforming into a commercial society, and companies jumped at the chance to promote themselves with special days and commemorative days from Congress. During the 1985-1986 congressional session, one in every three laws was about making a holiday.
The government soon clamped down on all this, seeing it as a waste of time. All that energy was siphoned into Chase’s calendar.
Anyone can submit a “special day” to Chase, but one woman is renown as the de facto architect of holidays: Adrienne Sioux Koopersmith. She has created over 1,900 special days and is known as “America’s Premier Eventologist.”
Source: Where Do All Those Weird Holidays Come From?
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