Towel Day
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Towel Day is celebrated every May 25 as a tribute to the late Douglas Adams. The commemoration was first held on the last Friday in May 2001, two weeks after his death on May 11, and since then has been extended to an annual event. On this day, fans carry a towel with them throughout the day. The towel is a reference to Adams' popular science fiction novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value— you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you—daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with." (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter Three)
Other possible dates were February 11 (42nd day of the year), March 11 (Birthday) and May 11 (his death). May 25 was chosen because it was close to his death and kept by custom although it gave some atempts to switch to one of the alternate dates.
External links
- Fan posting proposing the idea (http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A557093) on h2g2
- Towel Day website (http://www.towelday.kojv.net/) hosted on a fan's personal websitecs:Ručníkový den