The post on the World Elephant Day happened to be the 200th contribution to my blog so I thought that, on reaching one thousand -if ever-, I will propose a “World Bushsnob Day” to commemorate the event, at least among its readers.

I thought that, before I got too carried away with the idea, I would investigate if there were still dates available for such a new World Day. Having a “blog post queue” from past history as well as more recent safaris, I decided to do a fast and dirty check in the web to ascertain what the chances were of having my own day.

Results were, to put it mildly, very discouraging!

Wikipedia[1] indicates the existence of 259 World Days with an average of 22 days per month! March, May and October are almost fully booked with 26 days each, being the highest months. I thought that a glimmer of hope still existed for new celebratory days in June and December with 15 and 16 days respectively. However, my hopes were dashed when I learnt that there are also 27 other World Days commemorated on moving dates and an additional ten listed as “other”.

As the information from this source had a strong influence from the USA, and thinking that I needed to get my day eventually approved by the UN (being a former employee!), I checked the UN World days. There are 130 International Days currently observed by the world body, an average of 11 days per month. As this gave me some hope, I looked at some examples of World Days that I could emulate.

I found that almost anything you could think of has its day and, to enrich your knowledge on commemorative days, I will mention a few notable ones.

21 January is National Hug Day or National Hugging Day, an annual event dedicated to hugging created by Kevin Zaborney (?).

7 February is Rose Day, the start of Valentine Week that ends with Valentine’s Day on February 14.

13 February and 21 November are World Radio Day and World TV Day respectively. As I am a radio lover, I find the former amply justified!

22 February. World Thinking Day is celebrated by all Girl Guides, Girl Scouts when they think about their “sisters” (and “brothers”) in all the countries of the world, the meaning of Guiding, and its global impact. (I think this should be an important day for all humanity, particularly politicians!).

14 March. Pi (π) Day. Pi Day is observed on this date as it is 3/14 in the month/day date format. Pies are eaten and π issues discussed! Closely related to this day is “π Approximation Day”, again as 22/7 was the fraction used by Archimedes to calculate the constant.

The World Sleep Day (Friday of the second week of March) aims to celebrate the benefits of good and healthy sleep among other issues. As a siesta lover, I also wholeheartedly endorse it.

20 March is World Sparrow Day and it is devoted -you guessed correctly- to raise awareness of the house sparrow and other common birds to urban environments and the threats to their populations.

World Laughter Day takes place on the first Sunday of May and I also support this day as I am convinced of the benefits of a hearty laugh!

4 May is Star Wars Day, observed by the film fans. The date was chosen for the easy pun on the catchphrase “May the Force be with you” (May the Fourth be with you).

25 May. Towel Day is celebrated as a tribute to the author Douglas Adams by his fans that openly carry a towel with them, as described in Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that I had not read!

24 June and 2 July are two dates that World UFO Day is celebrated depending whether you go for the date that aviator Kenneth Arnold reported what is generally considered to be the first widely reported unidentified flying object sighting in the United States while or the supposed UFO crash in the 1947 Roswell UFO Incident.

20 August. World Mosquito Day is a commemoration of Indian doctor Sir Ronald Ross’s discovery in 1897 that female mosquitoes transmit malaria between humans.

15 October is, suitably, Global Hand-washing Day, a campaign to improve this routine event. A well-chosen date as the following day (16 October) is World Food Day, commemorated by FAO of the UN!

5 July is World Toilet Day, a campaign to motivate and mobilize millions around the world on issues of sanitation. It was originally established by the World Toilet Organization(!) in 2001 and later -in 2013- the United Nations made it one of its international days.

Finally, as I drink both, I am pleased to see that International Tea Day is observed on 15 December and 1 October is International Coffee Day!

While on the issue of hygiene, food and drinks, I looked for possible related days and I was further amazed by what I found. I will only give you some selected examples that are observed worldwide and/or some countries[2].

Seeing the humongous number of World Days currently on offer and the little I -and I guess many of us- knew about them made me thing twice about proposing my own. Further, it emphasized that, because of this celebratory overkill we forget the important issues that we should remember, not just one day per year but every day!

I have decided that the impact and relevance of a new World Day would be really negligible so I will need to think on something else to commemorate my 1,000th post, that is if I get to 1,000 posts in a condition to celebrate…

 

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commemorative_days

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_days#cite_note-14

[3] Interestingly, in 2014 Uruguay was second in per capita whisky consumption with 1.77lt after France (2.15 lt). Higher than the cradle of the drink, the UK!!!