Towel Day

File:Towelday Towel.jpg

Towel Day 2005, Innsbruck, Austria, where, by his own accounts, Adams got the inspiration to write the Guide.

An Israeli fan celebrating Towel Day

Towel Day is celebrated every May 25 as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. The commemoration was first held in 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's popular science fiction comedy series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Other possible dates were 11 February (42nd day of the year), 11 March (Birthday), 2 April (4/2 using American date-writing conventions) or 4 February (4/2 using British date-writing conventions), 11 May (his death), 22 June (42 days after his death), and 18 October (42nd Thursday of his year of death). 25 May was chosen because it was as close to his death as expedient notification of fans could allow, and kept by custom although there were some attempts to switch to one of the alternate dates.

Origin

The original article that began Towel Day was posted at "Binary Freedom", a short lived Open Source forum.

Towel Day: A Tribute to Douglas Adams
Monday May 14, 2001 06:00am PDT

Clyde ponders the passing of an incredible mind and proposes a "Towel Day" in tribute.

Friday morning I went to breakfast at Big Boy's (mmmm, Breakfast Bar); oddly enough, we sat in booth "42" and had a good laugh about it being the answer to "Life, The Universe and Everything". Later that day, headlines flashed the news that Douglas Adams, creator of the longest trilogy in history, had died. I was stunned; it was reminiscent of the loss I felt when Jim Henson died.

Douglas Adams will be missed by his fans worldwide. So that all his fans everywhere can pay tribute to this genius, I propose that two weeks after his passing (May 25, 2001) be marked as "Towel Day". All Douglas Adams fans are encouraged to carry a towel with them for the day.

Make sure that the towel is conspicuous- use it as a talking point to encourage those who have never read the Hitchhiker's Guide to go pick up a copy. Wrap it around your head, use it as a weapon, soak it in nutrients- whatever you want!

Most minds in the universe are constrained to the laws of Physics; let us remember those who broke the law and got away with it.

So long Douglas, and thanks for all the fish!

— D Clyde Williamson 2001-05-14 (reprinted here with permission)

The reason for a towel

The use of a towel is homage to the frequent references to towels in the five books of the hitchhiker trilogy. We are introduced to it first as an item in Ford Prefect’s satchel:

... in Ford Prefect's satchel were a few ballpoints, a notepad and a largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer.

—Adams, Douglas (1979). The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Cavaye Place London SW10 9PG: Pan Books Ltd. ISBN 0330258648.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)

The reason that Ford Prefect has a towel is explained, in the book by reference to "The Book". The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines a towel as:

... about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have.

—Adams, Douglas (1979). The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Cavaye Place London SW10 9PG: Pan Books Ltd. ISBN 0330258648.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)

The book goes on to quote from "The Book" to explain why a towel is so versatile and necessary listing a number of uses; wrapping it round you for warmth; sunbathing on it; sleeping under it; wetting it for use in hand-to-hand combat; waving it in emergencies as a distress signal; and wrapping it round your head to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal because this is such a "mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you". You can also, of course, dry yourself off with it, if it still seems to be clean enough.

Although there is no mention of saving oneself and family from a tsunami by use of a towel this was exactly what a father did on December 26 2004 in the face of the Boxing Day Tsunami.

Real Towels

The actual towel used in the film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was auctioned in 2005, along with other memorabilia in aid of charities supported by the late Douglas Adams, Save the Rhino International and The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund the towel on its own fetching £225.

File:DNA with H2G2 towel.JPG

Douglas Adams with an officially licensed Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy  towel on his shoulder.

There was a limited edition official HHGTTG towel produced in 1985 and Douglas Adams could be seen with one in an interview broadcast on the BBC Television programme Omnibus on August 4 2001 in an episode devoted to Douglas Adams.

Other towels, all in limited editions have been produced; towels made for ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, the official Hitchhiker's Appreciation society, bearing the words Don’t Panic in red on a white towel; a white towel which was being given away for free at the 2004 San Diego Comic Convention as advertising for the upcoming film by Disney; a white and pink towel produced for Pan Books in 1995.

Towels given away at the premier of the film in various countries are extremely rare an example of the French '’H2G2, le guide du voyageur galactique" towel fetching 71 Euro on ebay when sold in September 2006.

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Towelie from South Park.

In the cartoon South Park a character named Towelie is a walking, talking towel that was artificially created in a lab for military/subversive purposes. As a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy he frequently reminds people to bring towels, because you'll never know when you'll need a towel.

The origin of the towel joke

The full version of this story was first found in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts and reprised in The Salmon of Doubt, but the short version is as follows: Adams had gone on holiday in Greece, but every time he had decided to go to the beach with his fellows, he discovered that his towel would disappear, and could only be found after hours of searching.

After the holiday had ended, he decided that anyone who really had their life in order would "know where his towel is". He had no idea that this towel joke, which first appeared in the seventh radio episode, and subsequently in the first book, would catch on so brilliantly.

Trivia

• Towel Day coincides with Universal Day of the Jedi and with Nerd Pride Day, another two geek holidays also celebrated on May 25.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy itself defines a towel as "about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have". Its uses, as listed, include: wrapping it round you for warmth; sunbathing on it; sleeping under it; wetting it for use in hand-to-hand combat; waving it in emergencies as a distress signal (see below); and wrapping it round your head to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal because this is such a "mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you". You can also, of course, dry yourself off with it, if it still seems to be clean enough.

• Also noted is a towel's psychological value: "For some reason, if a strag [Hitch hiker slang: strag = non-hitch hiker] discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel, he will automatically assume that he's 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. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that might accidentally have been 'lost', on the grounds that anyone who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with."

• Thus the phrase: "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? Now there's a frood who really knows where his towel is." [Hitch hiker slang: sass = meet, know, have sex with; hoopy = really together guy; frood = really amazingly together guy.]

• Ford Prefect purchased his own largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer while he was stuck on Earth:

... in Ford Prefect's satchel were a few ballpoints, a notepad and a largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer.

—Adams, Douglas (1997). The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide. 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022: Portland House. ISBN 0517124858.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)

• One spectacular use for a towel was found when Ford and Arthur Dent were stranded in the past on prehistoric Earth (in the radio series): they waved it desperately at a ghostly potential spaceship that turned out to be the possibility of Zaphod Beeblebrox coming back in time to rescue them. This he duly did, causing a minor volcanic eruption on landing that covered the wet towel in lava, where it was preserved for millions of years, eventually being blasted into space as a meteorite when the Earth was blown up by the Vogons, this fossil being picked up by Zaphod – thus alerting him to the need to go back in time to rescue his friends. Needless to say, he was operating the Infinite Improbability Drive in the ship at the time.

• Ford's mysterious friend and fellow hitch hiker Roosta had a towel soaked in nutrients, to be sucked for sustenance – there was a wide variety of different flavours in the various coloured stripes, plus barbecue sauce in the brown-flower motiff, prompting Zaphod upon trying it to proclaim, "It tastes as bad as it looks!" Roosta admitted that he often found, after such a 'meal', he had to then suck the other end – which contained antidepressants.

External links

• Towel Day website
• Fan posting proposing the idea on h2g2
• Discordian version The holyday described in Ek-sen-trik-kuh Discordia: The Tales of Shamlicht
• People around the world celebrate Towel Day (in pictures)
• Industrial Market Trends newsletter