Celebrate Every Day

Welcome to August 13th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate cute steaks and a game with a checkered past. If you’ve ever wondered, “Where’s the beef?” after being served a filet mignon, then it’s probably not the steak for you. Mignon means “cute” in French and while filet refers to the most quality cut of the tenderloin, beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. The Frenc...

Welcome to August 12th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate rocking the world and rocking around the clock. What do Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, and Thor have in common? Go ahead. Take a second to think about it. Give up? They’re all middle children. Well, not the actual Thor. It’s Chris Hemsworth—the actor who plays him. And oddly enough, so is Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki ri...

Welcome to August 11th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate desserts and one liners that are da bomb. When something is really great, we say it’s “the bomb.” But back in the day we called a bombe dessert. This molded confection that’s layered with ice cream, fruit and nuts gets its name from its resemblance to a cannonball. These beauties showed up in the French cookbooks of the...

Welcome to August 10th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate a trying sport and a tried and true dessert. Few pastimes have inspired so much anger and frustration as golf. For something so popular, it sure makes people angry. Take, for example, Winston Churchill, who called the sport “…a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly...

Welcome to August 9th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate leaders who made a contribution for better or worse. When you vote for a President, the Vice President is part of the package, but originally things were quite different. In our country’s early years, the office went to whomever finished with the second most electoral votes. That was until the election of 1800, when Thoma...

Welcome to August 8th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate a well traveled bill and an overzealous fruit. Here in the United States, it’s estimated that one dollar bills exchange hands at least 110 times a year. And because they’re passed around so frequently, they have a shorter lifespan than our larger currency. A one dollar bill lasts only about 6 years, whereas a one hundred...

Welcome to August 7th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate a moveable feast and the oldest military honor. John Montagu was obsessed with gambling. So much so that he played cards for hours on end, even forgetting at times to eat. Then one day, he devised a meal that could be eaten with one hand. He requested that a servant bring him some meat between two pieces of bread, and thu...

Welcome to August 6th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate an age old condiment and the quest for perfect flavor. On this day we celebrate one of the oldest condiments in the history of the world. No, it’s not that long-forgotten bottle of ketchup in the back of your fridge. It’s mustard. The ancient Romans ground mustard seeds into a powder which they combined with vinegar to ma...

Welcome to August 5th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate beers and dogs that go the distance. When German immigrants arrived in the United States, they introduced America to lager beers, a traditional German style. So it’s ironic that lagers became popular during World War II at a time when our country hated everything German. American soldiers serving in Europe discovered the...

Welcome to August 4th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate one smart cookie and a bitter beer. Ruth Wakefield ran the Toll House Inn with her husband in Whitman, Massachusetts. Ruth was a renowned baker, but she is best known for adding semisweet chocolate to her butterscotch cookie dough. This recipe became a regional favorite, and during World War II it caused a cookie craze. S...

Welcome to August 3rd, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate protein on the go and Summertime’s juiciest fruit. Nuts have been a healthy snack for thousands of years. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon featured pistachio trees. And the Ancient Greeks believed that hazelnuts could cure baldness. But here in America, the most popular nut is actually a legume. Thanks to the cartoon charac...

Welcome to August 2nd, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate two old school ways to treat the kid in all of us. Any kid who’s spent a rainy afternoon cooped up in the house with a coloring book owes a debt of gratitude to Kate Greenaway. The Victorian-era artist became famous for her work with popular children’s authors of the day. In the late 1800s, she teamed up with the McLaughl...

Welcome to August 1st, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate our gal pals and the other things that make us happy too. While these two redheads were both comedians, their age gap of 22 years made them an unlikely pair. But when Lucille Ball first saw Carol Burnett in an off-Broadway production of Once Upon A Mattress, she had to go backstage and pay her respects to this funny gal....

Welcome to July 31st, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate the extraordinary deeds of an ordinary breed and a mighty fruit. No one is really sure how the scruffy little dog named Owney came to be at a post office in Albany, NY. He just showed up one day and became a part of the team. People speculate that Owney was attracted to the smell of the leather mail bags, which he even fol...

Welcome to July 30th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate healthy cheesecake and a juicy Summer fruit. Family recipes often get passed down through several generations before anyone thinks to write them down. According to historical records, the Ancient Greeks invented cheesecake over 4,000 years ago. It was considered a healthy food that was a good source of energy. So much so t...

Welcome to July 29th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate a perfect pucker and a bar food favorite. Lipstick has sparked some controversy throughout the ages, and it may surprise you to learn who was on each side of the argument. George Washington himself wore lip rouge. Winston Churchill believed that lip color boosted morale in an excellent way. On the other hand Queen Victoria...

Welcome to July 28th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate savoring the sweet life and a Summer oasis. We can all thank the Mayans and Aztecs for bringing us drinking chocolate, but today we celebrate the sweet candy bars that most of us crave. It was a Dutch chemist who invented the process of separating cocoa butter from cacao in the early 1800s. But in 1875 when Daniel Peter ad...

Welcome to July 27th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate the “essence of smooth” with a sweet dessert and a dram of class. If someone offered you a dish called “burnt cream” you’d most likely say no thanks. But say it in French and you get the much more appealing “crème brûlée.” It starts off with cream that is steeped with vanilla, sugar and egg yolks that all end up in a warm...

Welcome to July 26th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate a courtly carb and risking it all. In the 17th Century an Austrian baker presented the King of Poland with a new creation. Based on the king’s love of horses, the baker made a circular, doughy bread shaped like a stirrup, or “boogel.” Rumor has it that bagels have been a favorite in Poland ever since. And when Polish immig...

Welcome to July 25th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate a dynamic duo and the ride that proves what comes around goes around. According to Greek Mythology, Aristaeus was the god of olive-growing, bee-keeping, and…most importantly…cheese-making. To add to his repertoire, he asked his uncle to teach him how to make beer and wine. And as far as teachers go, Aristaeus couldn’t ask...

Welcome to July 24th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate legends of the still and the sky. Tequila dates back to the 16th century when Cortez and his Spanish conquistadors arrived in North America. While they didn’t think much of the fermented mezcal wine, the Spanish introduced the copper still and a legendary improvement was forged. Today the production of tequila is protected...

Welcome to July 23rd, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate the spirit that won the old West and an ice cream that stands out from the crowd. Many of us have wondered what it would be like to completely reinvent ourselves. In the late 1800s, all it took was to move to the American West. Take for example John Henry Holliday. He came from a respectable family in Georgia and studied d...

Welcome to July 22nd, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate paying your dues and taking it easy. The small town of Hamelin, Germany found itself overrun by rats. One day a man arrived in Hamelin wearing brightly colored clothes and playing a flute. He told the townspeople that he could get rid of the vermin that plagued their homes. His flute music not only hypnotized the rats, the...

Welcome to July 21st, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate making a difference and the good things that come in small packages. Project Harmony founded National Be Someone Day to help end child abuse and bring communities together through education and awareness. They remind us that it only takes a few seconds to make a difference in a child’s life and by taking the pledge to repo...

Welcome to July 20th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate a sweet ending and a royal dog. One of the staples of Chinese takeout didn’t come from China at all, but rather from Japan. In the late 1800s, Japanese bakers began making crackers with small notes inside. Japanese immigrants to America opened up Chinese restaurants to capitalize on the growing popularity of Chinese food....