May 27 is National Grape Popsicle Day

Honestly, some "special" days seem more of a stretch than others.

Today certainly seems like one of the stretchier ones -- and yet, if you run "National Grape Popsicle Day" through your favorite Internet search engine, you will find multiple references to such an observance and unanimous accord that today is the day for same.

What you won't find -- and we know this because the crack research staff at The Blog of Days has frittered away, er, spent many otherwise productive minutes investigating these very questions -- is any explanation as to why today is specifically devoted to grape popsicles. We can tell you, however, that the popsicle was invented in 1905 by an 11-year old kid, Frank Epperson, in what amounts to a happy accident. Although today might make more sense if the first one was grape-flavored, history apparently does not record the flavor of that first cross between soda water and icicle. We can tell you that -- common usage notwithstanding -- Popsicle is should be rendered with a capital "P," at least when referring to the specific Popsicle brand of frozen treat.

Also uncertain is why today would be called "National" Grape Popsicle Day. Is Grape Popsicle Day celebrated on different days around the world -- next Tuesday in Uzbekistan, perhaps? Today is Mother's Day in Bolivia -- it was Mother's Day yesterday in Poland -- but we didn't call May 13 "National Mother's Day" in America. Do you suppose that -- just maybe -- with some of these micro-mini-holiday-ettes, the word "National" is popped on the beginning to make the day (at least arguably) seem more important? Solving this mystery is a long-term objective of our crack research staff -- but, so far, our investigation has not yielded any tangible results.

And lastly, while we're confessing our research failures, our investigation also failed to discover the identity of the person responsible for putting jokes that even six-year olds find corny on popsicle sticks. Of course, one can readily understand why this person would want to remain anonymous....