It’s entirely appropriate that in a year that might deserve to be flushed down the drain, November 19 is World Toilet Day. It’s a serious holiday, though, started by the UN to get people to do something about sanitation worldwide. Although even the UN has a slight bit of trouble keeping a straight face; when they launched the holiday in 2012, the theme was — and I’m not making this up — “I give a shit, do you?”
November 19 is also the date of two other holidays that are a slightly odd combination: it’s International Men’s Day and at the same time Women’s Entrepreneurship Day. Both holidays have to do with small countries — Men’s Day has been celebrated since 1994 in Malta, and Women’s Entrepreneurship Day was founded by Wendy Diamond in 2014 based on work she did as a volunteer in Honduras.
Men’s Day was originally in February, but in 1999 Trinidad & Tobago revitalized the holiday and moved it to today to honor the 1989 Trinidad and Tobago football team. The date is also the birthday of Jerome Teelucksingh’s father. Teelucksingh was the driving force behind getting the holiday celebrated more widely than just in Malta. In Malta, they were evidently so pleased to see somebody else adopt the holiday that they went along with the date change.
Men’s Day might seem a slightly odd idea, of course. For decades when children pointed out that there’s a day for mothers and one for fathers but not one for kids, parents would say “every day is children’s day.” One might point out that every day seems pretty much like men’s day, too. Teelucksingh defends it by saying it represents an “attempt to remove the negative images and the stigma associated with men in our society.” Maybe in Trinidad & Tobago, it’s not easy being green…er, I mean, being male. By the way, Trinidad & Tobago is not what you might think if all you know about it is that it’s a Caribbean island nation. It’s got the third-highest gross domestic product in the Americas; behind only the US and Canada, and it’s not considered a “developing country.” Its major industry isn’t even tourism. They have an industrial economy with big oil and gas reserves.
Women’s Entrepreneurship Day celebrates, as you’d expect, women who create and run new ventures and organizations. It’s celebrated at the United Nations every year, and the US Congress issues annual endorsements. The whole thing is the work of Wendy Diamond, who runs it as an entrepreneurial operation. Diamond is an entrepreneur herself, and founded several pet-oriented businesses including a magazine (Animal Fair) and several media franchises — all focused on pets. Her dog Lucky Diamond set a Guinness World Record for the dog photographed with the most celebrities. Her other dog Baby Hope Diamond holds the record for the most expensive pet wedding. The pet wedding world’s record stands at $270,000, by the way, in case you were thinking of a challenge. The money was actually donations to the New York Humane Society.
Diamond’s talent for publicity may be related to her birthplace, Chagrin Falls, Ohio. The name may ring a bell. It’s a real place, but it also regularly appears in various kinds of media. Calvin and Hobbes fans probably noticed that the cover of The Essential Calvin and Hobbes has a picture of Chagrin Falls on the cover. It also appears regularly in the comic Tom the Dancing Bug, which is drawn by the same artist, Bill Watterson. If you enjoy vintage US TV series, you might know that Ensign Parker of McHale’s Navy hailed from Chagrin Falls. If you’re more into modern series, you might have heard Ted Mosby explain in How I Met Your Mother that he used to be a lifeguard in the Chagrin Falls Country Club. There is a long-running swim meet in Chagrin Falls, but the town doesn’t really have a country club. If you prefer music, you might recall the 1998 album Phantom Power by The Tragically Hip. The title of track 10? Chagrin Falls.
In 1995, The Tragically Hip were the musical guests on Saturday Night Live. They performed Nautical Disaster, which wasn’t about any specific disaster. The title certainly fits the events of November 19, 2002, when an oil tanker split open off the coast of Spain and spilled 18 million gallons of heavy fuel oil — a bigger spill than the Exxon Valdez. It fouled coastlines in Spain, Portugal, and France, and resulted in changes both in shipping lanes — tankers are no longer routed along the west coast of the Iberian Peninsula — and in tankers themselves. They’re now built with double-walled hulls to (theoretically, at least) make spills less likely.
Submarines are built with double hulls now too, but just like tankers, that wasn’t the original practice. Underwater ships go back further than you’d expect. One of the first was the H.L.Hunley, built by the Confederacy during the US Civil War. The crew were also the engine; they cranked a shaft by hand to spin the propeller. It was first tested in 1863, and went on to be the first submarine to sink a ship during a war. 1863 was quite a year; on November 19, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. By coincidence, it was James A. Garfield’s 32nd birthday. Like Lincoln, he went on to become US President. Also like Lincoln, he was assassinated.
Among Presidents that have been assassinated, or nearly so, is Ronald Reagan. In fact, he was the first to survive being shot in an assassination attempt. Maybe the difference was that unlike Lincoln and Garfield, Reagan’s wife Nancy wasn’t anywhere near him at the time of the attack. Maybe that was luck. Or maybe it was something else. Don’t forget that it’s World Toilet Day, after all, and where was Nancy Reagan born? Flushing, New York.
