Using event calendars to find themes for Toastmaster club meetings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you have long been interested in a topic, it is easily used as the theme for a club meeting. But last week I was assigned the role of Toastmaster for today’s Capital Club meeting. And I didn’t have a topic in mind.

 

An easy hack is to look up the day in an event calendar, like the online CheckiDay, which said it’s the Islamic New Year, on the first of Muharram in their lunar calendar. The New Year starts at sundown on July 18. It is a less important holiday than either Eid-ul-Fitr (end of hajj) or Eid-ul-Adha (end of Ramadan).

 

And CheckiDay also said it is National Daiquiri Day, National Hot Dog Day, and National Raspberry Cake Day.

 

There is a much more serious event calendar, an annually-published paperback reference book titled Chase’s Calendar of Events. I went to look in it at the Boise Hillcrest Library. The cover describes it as:

 

“The ultimate go-to guide for special days, weeks and months”

 

And says it has:

 

“12,500 entries, 192 countries. 365 days. All in one book.”

 

When we divide 12,500 by 365.25 we find an average of 34 items per day! Any one of them could become a meeting theme.

 

Back on June 9, 2017 I blogged about how June is Effective Communications Month, but somehow I didn’t get the message. In that post I described the book as a conversation piece for insomniacs. But it has historical birthdays and other significant events.

 

Actors Benedict Cumberbatch (1976), Anthony Edwards (1962), and Topher Grace (1978, short for Christopher) were born on this day. Others include firearms inventor Samuel Colt (1814), French impressionist painter Edgar Degas (1834), radio and TV personality Art Linkletter (1912), surgeon Charles Horace Mayo (1865) who founded a clinic, and politician George Stanley McGovern (1922). Last but not least, Rosalyn Sussman Yallow (1921) shared the 1977 Nobel Prize in Medicine for development of radioimmunoassay technique.

 

The first entry under July 19 in Chase’s Calendar is about an event in the U. S. Civil War:

 

“In a second attempt to capture Fort Wagner, outside Charleston, SC, Union troops were repulsed after losing 1,515 men as opposed to Southern losses of only 174. The attack was led by the 54 th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, commanded by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who was killed in the action. This was the first use of Black troops in the war. The film Glory was based on the Massachusetts 54 th, and this was the attack featured in the film. Fort Wagner never was taken by the union.”

 

Two other entries note that in 1954 Elvis Presley’s first single record was released: That’s All Right (Mama) backed by Blue Moon of Kentucky, and in 2007 the AMC TV series Mad Men had its premiere.

 

The Wikipedia page for Hot Dog Day says it comes from the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council.

 

Anyone with an idea can propose a holiday by writing a press release. On July 13, 2011 I blogged about Will anyone swallow July being named Freedom from Fear of Public Speaking Month? In 2008 Beverly Beurmann-King proposed July 2nd as Freedom from Fear of Public Speaking Day. For 2009 she changed it to a week. Humor columnist Dave Barry was responsible for making International Talk Like a Pirate Day into a holiday event.