Daily entries of obscure holidays, folklore, and curiosities
On the evening of May 16, 1770, a fourteen-year-old Austrian archduchess named Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna was married to the fifteen-year-old French Dauphin Louis-Auguste in the Palace of Versailles, and the ceremony was so spectacular — thirty-thousand spectators, fireworks over…
At 7:52 in the morning on May 20, 1927, a twenty-five-year-old airmail pilot from Little Falls, Minnesota, named Charles Augustus Lindbergh opened the throttle of a single-engine monoplane called the Spirit of St. Louis and began his takeoff roll from…
At 12:52 in the afternoon on May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren began reading the Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, and the American South understood immediately what it meant, even before…
Every time you look at a world map — the one on the classroom wall, the one on the news broadcast, the one in your head when someone says “Africa” — you are, almost certainly, looking at Gerardus Mercator’s work.…
May 14, 1804, is the day the Lewis and Clark expedition pushed off from Camp Dubois at the mouth of the Missouri River, beginning the journey that would end at the Pacific Ocean 16 months later. It is also the…
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting this site! In 1917 and 1981, May 13 produced two…
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting this site! Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820,…
There is a European folk tradition that identifies May 11 as the beginning of the Ice Saints — the three-day window when winter makes one last attempt on the spring garden. The Ice Saints are Mammertus, Pancras, and Gervase (or,…
The Golden Spike, Churchill becoming PM, Mandela inauguration, and the folk tradition of dandelion wine.
Victory Day in Russia, the first commercial Polaroid camera, and National Lost Sock Memorial Day.
365 weird, wonderful, and obscure holidays — perfect for content creators and conversation starters.
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