Almost but not exactly everything you wanted to know but didn’t dare to ask about Towel Day

Towel Day is an annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams. On that day, fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honor. They also take pictures of themselves with their towels and post it everywhere on the net. Some fans gather to celebrate the event. Towel day is an act of love, and love is always better when you’re not a poor individual sitting on your own, alone. On this day, you’re also welcome to drink six pints of bitter and eat some peanuts (at lunchtime if possible).

BUT WHY A TOWEL?

Let’s quote here The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy.

 

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with”.

Douglas Adams

The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy

WHERE CAN I BUY MY TOWEL?

There’s not really an official towel, so you can choose the towel you want. The official H2G2 fan club ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha sells a towel (with a nice “Don’t panic” printed on it) and towel-day.com also sells its own towel (with a white on red “Don’t panic” – you can buy it here). You can check all the H2G2 towels that have been made on the towel wiki.

Some websites :

Towelday.org
Towel-day.com
Some towel day pictures on flickr
The Towel wiki – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Towel