Celebrate Every Day

Welcome to February 19th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate animals that inspire nobility and lash envy. Arabian horses were the first breed of horse ever domesticated. About 5,000 years ago, the Bedouin people broke wild horses and used them for transportation in the deserts of the Middle East. Because of generations of being raised in such harsh conditions, Arabian horses are...

Welcome to February 18th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate the ancient origins of wine and batteries. People have enjoyed alcohol throughout history. But its discovery was likely a happy accident. Fermentation occurs naturally with grapes because yeast is on their skin. Because this happened without having to do anything to the crushed fruit, ancient people viewed the process...

Welcome to February 17th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate pastimes that are for the birds and one kind moment in history. Birdwatching can be fun, but you have to be very patient. Why not make the birds come to you, courtesy of a bird feeder? There are few things more relaxing than sitting at your kitchen window, coffee in hand, watching birds in your tree only a few feet awa...

Welcome to February 16th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate shaking the tree and rescuing a grouch. 80% of the world’s almonds come from California. As of 2020, the state was harvesting 3.1 billion pounds of the nuts annually. Unlike other nuts, almonds aren’t picked. Instead, the trees are shaken so that the almond fruit falls to the ground. Yes, almond fruit. What we call an...

Welcome to February 15th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate getting serious about dairy and a smooth candy king. Wisconsin is one of the biggest dairy producers in the United States, each year generating over 30 billion pounds of milk-related foods. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the state takes butter very seriously. In fact, Wisconsin outlawed the sale of margarine f...

Welcome to February 14th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate reaching new heights and what the birds teach us about love. The past few decades have seen an odd trend taking place. Cities trying to outdo one another with giant Ferris wheels. On New Year’s Eve 1999, the London Eye was unveiled and stood at a height of 443 feet. A few years later, China built one that was 525 feet...

Welcome to February 13th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate our favorite snacks. The 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago unveiled many amazing things to its visitors. Advancements in transportation, weaponry, and wonders from around the world. But one its most enduring legacies is the popularizing of snack food. Fairgoers were given a box of Cracker Jack upon entry. As much as people...

Welcome to February 12th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate how far movies have come and a Presidential birthday treat. Before there were movie theaters, there were Kinetoscopes. These cabinet-like devices looked a little like arcade games. For a quarter—which was a pretty steep price in 1894—people could watch a movie. By themselves, anyway. Kinetoscopes showed short films via...

Welcome to February 11th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate unusual pairs and the ways they change the world. What do you get when you combine a West Coast rapper and one of the most famous homemakers in the world? One of the oddest celebrity friendships ever—that’s what. When Martha Stewart had Snoop Dogg as a guest on her show back in 2008, the two immediately hit it off over...

Welcome to February 10th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate shaddocks and bumbershoots. Have you ever eaten a shaddock fruit? Or had shaddock juice with breakfast? If you have no idea what we’re talking about, grapefruits used to be known as shaddock fruits. Hundreds of years ago, the British sea captain Philip Shaddock is said to have planted the first grapefruit seeds in Barb...

Welcome to February 9th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate Italian royal taste and kosher fun for everyone. You may not recognize the name Raffaele Esposito, but he holds a special place in history as the father of the modern pizza. Esposito had already earned a reputation as a pizza maker in Naples, Italy, when King Umberto and Queen Margarita made their visit in 1889, and the...

Welcome to February 8th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate the Hawkeye State and the ripple effect of an English Boy Scout. If you’re into competitive cycling, the Tour de France is your brass ring. However, if you love cycling but aren’t really the competitive sort, the RAGBRAI might be for you. RAGBRAI or Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, isn’t so much a race...

Welcome to February 7th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate strange elements and pasta love letters. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. Here on Earth, it appears almost everywhere in some form or another. You can find it in the air, water, and in the Earth’s crust. But what is the rarest element? That would be Astatine. It’s a highly radioactive element with a...

Welcome to February 6th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate by saying no to the fork and frozen freedom of choice. Fans of Asian cuisine may have noticed that chopsticks from Korea are different from chopsticks found in other Asian countries. Rather than bamboo or wood, Korean chopsticks are made from metal. According to one legend, this began around the year 500 AD when the roy...

Welcome to February 5th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate predicting the unpredictable and a hall pass for your inner child. Until the 1860s, if people wanted to know what the weather would be, they had to rely on looking at the skies or using “weather wisdom”—a knowledge of patterns they’d gained over the years. This method was very popular with sailors and farmers, who paid...

Welcome to February 4th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate sticky mascots and outstanding service. Bubblegum had been around for years when Bazooka gum was first introduced to the market. The thing that made this gum unique was its mascot, Bazooka Joe. He wasn’t just a smiling cartoon on the packaging, Joe was an integral part of the product. Upon opening the wrapper for a piec...

Welcome to February 3rd, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate vegetables for dessert and an odd twist of fate. Carrot cake is one of those foods that seems odd on paper. Why on earth make a dessert out of something otherwise seen as healthy? Well, for starters, carrots actually have a pretty high sugar content for a vegetable. In Medieval Europe and the Middle East, sweets were no...

Welcome to February 2nd, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate weather predicting rodents and striking potato gold. Today is the midway between the start of winter and the spring equinox. It used to be a pagan celebration of the coming of warmer weather. Christians in Europe adopted aspects of this celebration to create Candlemas. One of the traditions associated with Candlemas was...

Welcome to February 1st, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate unbeatable spirit and the Lone Star State. The 2003 movie Seabiscuit, based on the novel by Laura Hillenbrand features the intersections of three men and a horse and epitomizes the spirit of “getting up when life knocks you down.” Based on the true story of Red Pollard, a bruised and broken jockey, Tom Smith a down on h...

Welcome to January 31st, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate life in reverse and popping your stress. Doing things in reverse is usually best done slowly. But not always. Take, for example, Pal Onnen of Hastings, Minnesota. She set a record by spelling 56 random words backwards in a minute. Or Aaron Yoder who can run a mile backwards in under 6 minutes. And then there’s Daniel Ab...

Welcome to January 30th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate influential tea totalers and fancy crescent rolls. The English love tea. In fact they built a global trade empire around it. But the beverage was actually introduced to the country by someone from Portugal. Tea had already been brought from China to Europe, but the Brits didn’t really care for it—they were using it as m...

Welcome to January 29th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate puzzling pastimes and corny adventures. Putting together a puzzle is a fun way to spend a quiet day indoors. Of course, depending on the number of pieces, it can get frustrating. 100 pieces? Piece of cake. 500 pieces? A bit of a challenge. 1000 pieces? Now we’re getting a little crazy. But, let’s put things into perspec...

Welcome to January 28th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate the buzz on kazoos and our inner Big Wig. Today we celebrate a uniquely American instrument that was first known as the Down South Submarine. We know it better as the kazoo. This musical oddity was invented in the 1840s by a man named Alabama Vest and the German watchmaker Thaddeus von Clegg. The kazoo has created some...

Welcome to January 27th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate the gift of life and having your cake and eating it too. Every 2 seconds someone in the United States needs a blood transfusion. That means over 41,000 donations are required each day to meet that need. You may already be aware that there are 4 blood types: O, A, B, and AB, but actually there are 8 if you consider that...

Welcome to January 26th, 2022 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate love for our partners in life and our own libraries. Frida Kahlo was smitten from the moment she set eyes on the mural La Creación in Mexico City. Not only with the art, but also with the man painting it—the famous artist Diego Rivera. It was about 15 years before they were formally introduced and they fell in love and...