Hug a Book Today

Today, April 23rd, is the fifteenth celebration of the World Book and Copyright Day, or as it's sometimes known, the International Day of the Book. I heard about it today for the very first time. Learnin' something everyday...

So, the origins of the Day of the Book, and the reason books are celebrated on April 23rd and not, say, August 7th or May 20th (those happen to be the birthdays of people close to me, so I celebrate anyway), is that the events and creation of the "day" was first held in Spain, in 1995, and April 23rd is the day Miguel de Cervantes died. In Spain they rolled the idea into the annual St. George's Day celebration, which is held on St. George's Day (also 4/23). Since medieval times men have given their lovers a rose on this day, and since 1925 the women have responded with the gift of a book.

Now, April 23rd is also observed as the day that Shakespeare died, and in some corners of the globe, 4/23 is claimed to have been a day of loss of two of literature's biggies, but this isn't totally accurate. Cervantes died on April 23rd on the Gregorian calendar, which we use today, while Shakespeare died on April 23rd in the Julian calendar, making it ten days behind what we consider the "real" calendar. [Aside for Norm: there's an interesting section of Pynchon's M&D where Mason relays to Dixon that when England switched from the Julian to the Gregorian, instead of going to bed on September 1st and waking up the 11th, like everyone else, he lived those ten days by himself, lonely, terrified, then passively waiting...]

Now, don't get World Book and Copyright Day confused with Monday's day: April 26th marks World Intellectual Property Day. Seriously, I couldn't make this up if I tried.