Did you know long weekends were invented by a Victorian banker?

That's one of the rabbit holes I went down for Edition #59 of Curiosity Saved The Cat, which went out this Sunday 💫

His name was John Lubbock, and in 1871, he decided that workers and the financial system needed structured days on which banks could legally close (but not for the reason you might expect, as he had an interesting hobby he wanted to pursue).

What I found even more interesting is the variation across countries in the number of public holidays. Nepal has 35 public holidays a year, Mexico has 8, and Vietnam keeps it at 6. Every holiday was invented by someone, somewhere, often for reasons that have very little to do with how we celebrate them now.

The edition also goes into how Cinco de Mayo went from a battle where the Mexican army defeated the French against all odds to a generic party occasion outside Mexico, the French concept of the "pont" (making a bridge between a holiday and a weekend to turn one day off into four), and why May 1st had to be actively fought for in some countries before it became a day off at all.

The question for this week is: if you could create one new public holiday for the world, what would it commemorate, and why do you think we don't already pause for it?

Curious if anyone here has an answer 👀

You can check out this week's edition here: https://curiositysavedthecat.com/p/59-why-does-every-country-pause-differently