Towel Day

File:Towelday Towel.jpg

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

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.

Towel Day coincides with Nerd Pride Day, another holiday also celebrated on May 25.

Origin

An Israeli fan celebrating Towel Day

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)

American citizen Chris Campbell and his friends of SystemToolbox.com registrated towelday.org with a web site for the purpose of spreading the word. Towel Day was an immediate success among the fans and many people sent in pictures to show off themselves with their towels.

People ask Why a towel? and the answer is found in the third chapter of the first book. This and any further questions are answered at the Towel Day website where there also is a forum and a wiki. Trivial additions should be proceeded with there, not at Wikipedia.

Alternative dates

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.

Towel Day in the news

Towel Day has been paied attention by several news sources around the world. A few of those are major Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, National Public Radio, Los Angeles and NRK Nyheter, another major Norwegian newspaper.

Aside from that, Towel Day was reckoned by several smaller medias, especially Swedish newspapers and news sites on the web.

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