Here is an easy read on a few whacky July holidays that you probably never heard of and I thought would be a great Friday smile or with the first one, send shivers up our spines.
This unofficial holiday is a slithery one....mostly because nowhere can I find which date it was first celebrated or who started the tradition. Here is what I know:
July 16th is unofficial “World Snake Day” holiday, thought to have started after 1977 when the band the Ramones wore a t-shirt from a Snake Farm in New Braunfels Texas. But can’t find true facts to confirm
Because snakes tend to have a negative connotation and a lot of people are terrified of them, advocates for snakes wanted to have a day to increase awareness about the different species around the World.
Snakes are the oldest mythological character and revered by civilizations all over the world. Medusa had many of them J
There are 3,848 species known so far. 600 of them are venomous but only 200 that can pose considerable risk to human life
They have no eyelids and sleep with eyes open
Even though they have nostrils they smell with chemicals picked up with their tongue
King Cobra, the largest most venomous snake, fascinates people the most. Especially when they see it being coaxed out of a basket
Rattlesnakes have poisoned many people and the Python is the world’s largest snake that squeezes the life out of i’s prey
Snakes are found in every continent except Antarctica
They can’t bit or chew so they swallow their food whole
Snakes have up to 1,200 bones
They shed their skin 3 – 6 times per year
They defend themselves by camouflage, biting and envenoming those threatening them
Fortunately snakes are not hunted, but their numbers are declining due to climate change
In honour of Snake Day, World Animal Protection put together a short Quiz on how much you know about snakes. Why not try it out with your kids and learn something new?
Emojis, the first language born of the digital world, have become a staple in the way we communicate. The tiny emotive characters were designed to add emotional nuance to otherwise flat text. The 3,136 emojis are used an estimated 5 billion times a day worldwide on Facebook and Facebook Messenger alone.
Jeremy Burge founder of Emojipedia, created the first “World Emoji Day” on July 17, 2014. This day was chosen to promote the use of emojis based on the way the calendar emoji is shown on the iPhone. Emoji is a Japanese word created by Shigetaka Kurita in 1990 meaning "picture word". Kurita designed 176 of these picture words for DoCoMo Mobile Phone Company and were intended to facilitate electronic communication and appeal to the teenage market. The release of the first iPhone in 2007 had an emoji keyboard embedded in it and was only intended to nab Japanese users. However people in other parts of the world quickly found this keyboard and emojis became a worldwide sensation.
This year 217 new emojis have been approved to be released making a total of 3,353 emojis that can be used. I for one love the evolution of these colourful pictures and can't wait to see the new ones. If you want to give honour to these tiny characters use the hashtag #WorldEmojiDay on July 17th.
Every July 18th World Listening Day is hosted by non-profit organization World Listening Project which is devoted to understanding the world and its natural environments, societies, and cultures through the practice of listening and field recording. They explore “acoustic ecology” a discipline that studies the relationship between humans and the natural world as mediated through sound. The goal is for everyone to practice less talking and more listening.
This date was chosen to honour Raymond Murray Schafer, a Canadian composer and environmentalist who is seen as the founder of acoustic ecology. Born on July 18, 1933, he developed the fundamental ideas and practices of acoustic ecology in the 1970’s.
World Listening Day was established in 2010 and since its inception thousands of people from six contents have participated. Each year has a theme tied to it and this year the theme is “The Unquiet Earth”, the opportunity to engage with the constant earth sounds that are beyond our hearing capacity. Small, hidden, subterranean, aerial, underwater, infra and ultrasonic sounds, inaudible to the naked ear, can bring a new, potentially hopeful, perspective on the future of the planet and humanity.
Listening is an art that requires complete attention and patience from a person and benefits another in need of it. Listening is also beneficial for the listener, improving listening skills and sharpening their awareness of their surroundings. As important as our sense of hearing is, we often don’t use it effectively, blocking out most sounds and voices, and not really listening to the message. Let’s stop and listen on July 18th to everything around us, might amaze us on what we truly hear.
Let’s get our heart pumping on July 20th and take part in “World Jump Day”. Torsten Lauschmann, a German artist from the United Kingdom, created the first event on July 20th, 2006. Lauschmann created a website to promote the day and supposedly had over 600 million registered jumpers. His hope was by having enough people jump at the same time, it would change the orbit of Earth. He believed this would help reduce global warming. Some scientists believe changes in Earth’s orbit could affect climate change however, it is unproven that having millions of people jump at the same time would make a difference in Earth’s orbit.
Even though World Jump Day proved to be unscientific, it is still celebrated by millions of people around the world because there are many benefits to jumping, such as:
Increases energy
Strengthens bones
Firms and tones muscles
Stimulates metabolism
Increases oxygen circulation
Strengthens the heart
Jumping is also a lot of fun and can make us feel like a kid again.
If you want to observe World Jump Day then at 4:39 am PST, grab a partner and start jumping. Either on a trampoline, jump into a pool, doing jumping jacks or jump with a rope. Do whatever kind of jumping you want and post it on social media with the hashtag #WorldJumpDay
Those were some interesting unofficial holidays and none that I knew of. Hope you learned something and don’t forget to share with your kids so they can learn something too.
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